Article
The Analytic Third: Working with Intersubjective Clinical Facts
Through two clinical sequences, Ogden illustrates the analyst's effort to recognise, understand and put into words, for himself and for the patient, the moment-to-moment interplay of three subjectivities: the analyst's, the analysand's, and the experience the two create together, which he calls the analytic third. In the first sequence the analyst reaches this jointly created experience partly through what seem to be his own private reveries, states that can look like narcissistic self-absorption, distraction, compulsive rumination or daydreaming. In the second, the analyst's somatic delusion, together with the patient's sensory experiences and bodily fantasies, becomes the principal route by which he comes to understand the leading anxieties being generated between analyst and patient.
Main ideas
- Analytic experience involves the interplay of three subjectivities: the analyst's, the analysand's, and the jointly created analytic third.
- The analyst tries to recognise, understand and verbalise this moment-to-moment interplay, for himself and for the patient.
- The analyst's seemingly private reveries, which can resemble narcissistic self-absorption, distraction, rumination or daydreaming, give access to the analytic third.
- Bodily experience, the analyst's somatic delusion and the patient's sensations and bodily fantasies, can be the main route to the leading anxieties of the analytic pair.
What it shows
- 1994
Thomas H. Ogden introduced Analytic third
Ogden set out the concept in his 1994 paper and in the same year's book Subjects of Analysis, where a further chapter describes the subjugating third of projective identification.
- 1997
Thomas H. Ogden developed Reverie
Ogden extended Bion's maternal reverie into a clinical method. He treats the analyst's apparently stray thoughts, daydreams, feelings and bodily sensations during the session as a way into the analytic third, to be used in forming interpretations.
- 1994
Analytic third derives from Potential space
Ogden modelled the analytic third on Winnicott's idea that there is no infant apart from the mother-infant unit, and on the intermediate area that unit creates.