Conditions for love: The psychoanalytic situation and the analyst’s emotions

Abstract Freud has stated that the psychoanalytic cure is effected through the love of the patient for the analyst. This paper claims that the analyst’s love towards the patient is often essential as well. Countertransference love might indeed be associated with therapeutic risks, yet it is often a crucial part of the analytic process, since in order to be able to change, many people need to feel loved. The analyst’s curative love is defined by being both sublimated and passionate, modulated as well as libidinal. In addition, it is conscious, aware, and reflective, and hence any act based on it is directed solely to the patient’s psychic growth. Developing and maintaining such love is not easy. What comes to the aid of the analyst is the special construction of the analytic setting, which brings up a profound, loving interest in patients’ psyche as well as a “second self” that is consistently benevolent and loving and acts at a level of empathy rarely encountered in ordinary life.