THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF AN EMBRACE (A PSYCHOTHERAPEUTIC MEDITATION) (PSYCHOANALYSIS, TRANSFERENCE, PARADOX, LOVE)

When Sigmund Freud withdrew from the embrace of an hysterical patient in hypnosis and called the embrace a "false connection," he not only developed a key insight into what he thought was the mystery of hypnotic trance but also the core of his soon to be created science of psychoanalysis, transference. Although in modulated form as compared to hypnotic trance, transference was to carry the neurosis, and since it was a false connection it was to be analyzed.; The embrace as transference began a trajectory running through psychoanalytic thinking and practice and informs the work of Sandor Ferenczi, Wilhelm Reich, Jacques Lacan, D. W. Winnicott, Wilfred Bion and Milton Erickson. However, the declaration of transference as a false connection inadvertently grounded it in paradox rather than analysis as spelled out in a joke related by Freud. The joke, the transference, and the paradox of the liar have a similar structure, and Freud and these six other therapists had to contend not only with the embrace but an attendant epistemology based upon paradox. A major portion of this essay is concerned with that polylogue among these seven thinkers informed by love and paradox which took a new urgency as the hysteric gave way to the borderline as the paradigm patient of our day.; As the hysteric sought a solution in psychoanalysis, the borderline required a new kind of psychotherapy. The borderline also demanded a new conceptualization in which binary logic as a psychoanalytic "position" came into question. The work of Winnicott, Bion and Erickson is predicated upon a sophistication regarding paradox, and their counter-embraces are appropriate to a new view of the patient's hug, simulated, but concealing a real embrace. Hysterical logic gives way to a borderline logic as the therapeutic interaction is now perceived more critically including the analyst's response.; This essay is grounded in the author's own experience as a psychotherapist, self-analyst and theoretician, and its unique gaze and synthesis derive from this triple speech.