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expertise is crucial to the process, the analyst’s stance is primarily one of helping the patient find his own mind, rather than mainly being an expert in the content of the patient’s mind. The underlying thesis in creating a psychoanalytic mind is that what is accomplished in a relatively successful psychoanalysis is a way of knowing, and not simply knowing. Working in the preconscious cuts across theoretical lines, and is the basis for one element in a new common ground. Further, it is a crucial ingredient in creating a psychoanalytic mind. Transformation of words as actions into symbolic, representational thinking is part of helping the analysand to develop a psycho- analytic mind as an expansion of the capacity to play with thoughts, which is dependent on their being representable. That is, rather than primarily searching for buried memories, we attempt to transform the under-represented into ideas that are representable. The movement is from lifting repression to a paradigm of transformation, from pre-conceptual, ( concrete), and preoperational, into symbolically represented. Thus, before any meaning can be interpreted, the psychic mechanism (i.e., conflict, defense, self- reparation, internalized objects, etc.), and content, will need to be represented verbally in a way that leads to symbolization. Words and thoughts serve as efficient, and structuring signs for what is signified. Among crucial principles of working within the transference , the author mentions the analysand’s readiness to understand the interpretation in an emotionally meaningful way; accepting and letting the transference into the room and clarifying it before attempting to do anything with it. While the enacted transference is most often about repetitions of fantasies and memories associated with internalized object relations, it does not mean that it can or should always be interpreted as such. Ever since 1912, Freud (1912a) held two views of transference. The narrow one, which is most commonly used, and a broader one, which included seeing the analytic relationship representing the stage on which the patient re-enacts his symptoms, memories, dreams, and current experiences. So defined, the transference can be a state of mind in the analysis, not only a representation of past object relations. Contemporary analysts came to understand how defending a fragile self-state can lead to an aggressive transference, or how fears of love lead to distance. However, it still seems Freud’s view of the transference as a repetition of a past object relationship dominates our current views of transference. Transference as the result of a state of mind seemed to have faded as a causative factor. The expression of the transference first needs to be empathically captured and clarified by the analyst. Only by clarification can the analyst see if the defense is thick or thin. Clarification of thin resistances in the enacted transference leads to further associations and expansion of the ego capacities. The emergence of this perspective brings Ego Psychology closer to aspects of the work of Andre Green, Betty Joseph, and Nino Ferro among others.
III. Bfb. Trauma and Posttraumatic Mental Functioning: ‘Zero Process’ Only gradually trauma acquired a position of central interest to Ego Psychology. Historically, three sources contributed to the need for deeper appreciation and understanding
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