The Presence of The Third Party: Systemic Therapy and Transference Analysis
The Presence of The Third Party: Systemic Therapy and Transference Analysis
The Presence of The Third Party: Systemic Therapy and Transference Analysis
Introduction
What do we do when we act therapeutically? This is a question of
growing interest for all therapists, especially if we stop thinking
about the simple fact of professing a certain theoretical creed guarantees ipso facto the quality of our undertaking. At this stage, one
may wonder which are the implicit rules we obey in our work, which
is the tacit knowledge (Polanyi, 1966) we refer to. For those who,
like myself, consider themselves to be systemic therapists, the question becomes: What renders my therapies systemic, besides the fact
that I call them systemic?
In order to answer this question (or, better, to try to), it may be
useful to focus on the micro-processes that inform our daily work.
We may call them theory-based techniques, or rather expression of
a philosophical stance (Anderson, 2001, p.347). The fact is, within
this knowledge-in-action, to use Donald Schns (1983) words, our
theories are translated into therapeutic actions: while some of this
a
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essential fact that, when discussing and relating their stories, clients
are telling them to their therapist and are sensible of the approbation of the latter, however it is conveyed, i.e. through the subtlest of
nonverbal signals.
Some fundamental peculiarities exist, however: first, a therapeutic relationship is something of great importance in the life of a
client, but not necessarily the facet to which every thought, emotion
or emerging event, or something that has been evoked in the
dialogue, needs to be addressed. This is the heritage of the pragmatic fact that for many years systemic therapy has been essentially
a family therapy, based on the model of the Mental Research
Institutes black box (Watzlawick et al., 1967). Within it, relationships between human beings may be observed only from outside
by a therapist conceived as a detached rather than a participant
observer. The systemic family therapist therefore develops both
attention and interest towards the relationships between the people
facing her. In this way she works on a series of triadic or polyadic
relationships, rather than on the dyad that comes about with a
single client.
Such a position left its mark on individual systemic therapy. It
may be expressed through the introduction, within the dual relationships between therapist and client, of voices, presence, points of
view briefly of the words of the third parties that are relevant to
the life of a client. The systemic therapist is strongly interested in
the way her client sees others. Initially, this interest was put into
practice by evoking the significant third parties in the life of the
client, mainly through circular questions, summoning their presence on to the scene of the therapy. Boscolo and Bertrando have
called this procedure presentification of the third party:
Even in a dyadic relationship, such as exists in individual therapy, one
can use circular questions very profitably, particularly when employing
the presentification of the third party technique. In family therapy,
circular questions in general, and triadic ones in particular, have,
among other things, the effect of placing each family member in the
position of observer of the thoughts, emotions and behaviours of others,
thus creating a community of observers. This may be reproduced in
individual therapy as well; significant third parties belonging to either
the external or the internal (voices) world are presented, thus creating
a community that contributes to the development of different points
of view. One of the effects of this method is to challenge egocentricity:
the client is placed in a reflexive condition, and makes hypotheses that
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take into account the thoughts and emotions of others and not just his
own.
(Boscolo and Bertrando, 1996, pp. 110111)
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therapist tests her own emotions against this complex ecology, and
even against its reflection on the so-called therapeutic relationship.
One could say that in systemic individual therapy, the third party
is the context embracing both people (close context) and culture
(general context) that informs both the therapeutic relationship
and the clients existence. Individuals by their conversations and
their relationships make sense only within a matrix of context that
is given by the significant third parties who intervene in their lives.
The introduction of the third party into a therapy, then, is a testimonial to the way therapeutic relationships may be conceived in
their entirety. As such, it becomes one of the distinctive features of
systemic individual therapy.1
Transference analysis: the outside inside
Although transference, or the relationship between client and
analyst, was accepted early on as one of the crucial points of psychoanalysis, its role in the analytical technique remained controversial
for a number of years (see Esman, 1990). Not all analysts in the various psychoanalytic streams make use of transference analysis; for
example, transference is not particularly relevant in Jungs analytical psychology and Adlers individual psychology. Even within the
traditions of Freudian descent, transference is read (or may be
read) in different ways. Freud was the first to discover the dynamics
of transference, which he saw as a re-experiencing of past early
infantile experiences within the therapeutic relationship. Although
he initially considered transference as an obstacle to treatment, in
the end he was able to conceive of it as an essential tool for the
analytic process (Freud, 1912).2
According to this original Freudian version (Freud, 1912), in
1
This practice has something in common with Karl Tomms (1998) work on the
internalized others and distributed selves, and it has some resonance, in the
psychoanalytic field, with Ronald Brittons (1998) concept of triangular space. I
believe, though, that it maintains its specificity.
2 Freud remained for a long time focalized on the reconstruction of past experiences, and only late in his life gave transference analysis its full importance. The
first concept of transference was elaborated in the postscript to the Dora case
(Freud, 1905), but the first clinical evidence of an extensive use of transference in
the course of an analysis is to be found in the Rat Man case (Freud, 1909). For an
in-depth examination of the two case histories, and of the role of transference
ideas in Freuds treatment of them, see respectively Mahony, 1996 and 1986.
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I will define both the person in analysis and the person in systemic therapy
as client, according to the preferred usage in the family therapy field, although
the preference, in the psychoanalytic tradition, goes to the term patient.
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subject, and the way it is put to me, is most tempting. Instead, I get
him to talk to me about the reasons why he got that idea into his
head, and he tells me about his relationship with his wifes uncle,
from whom he had intended to buy a car. In his confrontation with
the uncle he mitigates somewhat his judgement of himself as a
chronic liar (if anything, it is the uncle who might seem to be a liar).
Yet he must have some reason for wanting to speak about me,
because he starts asking me questions once again until, suddenly, he
ends a sentence with a question: Arent you going to ask me about
my father? Now, the subject of his relationship with his father is
most delicate. Since I broached it during the eighteenth session
with a few questions based on something he had told me, we seem
to play hide and seek. The father cuts into and then leaves the
conversation, being evoked and then at once suppressed, as if talking about him presented a problem. This time too, after introducing the topic, he seems keen to avoid the argument at all costs, until
I force him to face it.
T [Therapist]: At some point you began to speak, didnt you, of the things
you leave to the last minute, etc. etc. and you said that you
choose the least advisable, didnt you, and all this has to do
in some way with the fact that you want or do not want to
speak about your father, but I dont quite understand how.
R [Roberto]: Oh, in the sense that I put things off?
T: No, not just in the sense that you put things off. There is some affinity
between this fact and. . . .
R: Oh, yes, yes, in the sense that I put off this thing, I put it off but I still
feel involved. And in the end I do it. . . . Come, help me.
T: So you still think that speaking about your father makes sense, yet you
go on not wanting to do it?
R: Yes.
T: This thing weighs on you, you cant think of anything else, the question
is why is it so difficult to broach the subject?
R: Because I dont know what to say, because I lack the necessary arguments.
T: This means that your relationship with your father is empty, that it has
no content?
R: Well, lets see. No, it isnt empty, but I dont know where to begin. . . .
My relationship with my father is not empty, perhaps I am repeating
myself, I have already said so, but my father makes me feel ill at ease. I
cant manage to. . . it is difficult to carry on a conversation with my
father, because he has such reactions. . . when my father gets angry,
wow, he really does get angry!
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of destroying them.
Though it was difficult to broach the subject, in the end Roberto
has begun to talk with intensity, with a peroration that was
addressed (even he notices it) more to his father than to me. Here
I could lead the conversation back to the relationship that exists
between us, but I prefer to insist on the relationship between the
two of them, adding, however, a small comment.
T: You mean, you wore out your bicycles.
R: . . . Over the bicycle I was spanked a lot, the bicycle too was spanked a
lot, but now and then he took away my bicycle, put a lock on it, and for
me it was torture, the worst punishment, I must admit, like saying that
I know nothing about cars. OK. I got rid of that one. You cant imagine
how pleased I am.
T: To have done away with this thing?
R: See how stupid I am.
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people, however, I am neither one nor the other, I am not the one I was
three minutes ago, when I was fighting to be myself. And yet Id like to
be that very one, the one that came out earlier, I even thought that my
voice was different.
T: I must admit that it was true.
R: But its the first time that I have noticed it.
In this way, a session that might have easily, in more than one
instance, focused on the relationship between us, focuses instead
on an important third party, the father. It is interesting to see how
Roberto oscillates between the father of his recollection and the
flesh-and-blood father as he experiences him at the present time:
he always works with representations of his father, but still he feels
the difference between the past father and the present one. It is
enough for him to declare his feelings to the presentified father in
order to experience himself, his own flesh, his own physical presence in a different way. Although the feeling does not last, it is
meaningful for him. Of course, even a discussion of his relationship with me may have resulted in something similar. The fact
remains that the result was arrived at by means of a presentification
of the third party.
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Conclusion
In this article, I have examined the differences between a systemic
individual therapy, as practised by myself according to the guidelines set by Boscolo and Bertrando (1996), and a sort of kindred
therapy. I have chosen a form of psychoanalysis, which in its turn
deals with relations, but looks into them through a preferential
enquiry into transference analysis (Gill, 1982). The choice of a
psychoanalytic therapy was not accidental: historically, systemic
therapy derives from psychoanalysis through differentiation but has
maintained a relationship fraught with opposition through the
years (Bertrando, 2000). Nowadays, a number of authors (ByngHall, 1995; Flaskas, 1996; Larner, 2000) have resolved to bridge the
gap between psychoanalysis and systemic therapy. In my opinion,
even in order to reach a mere entente, it is necessary first of all to
establish the differences that enable a distinction between the two
models.
I found a possible distinction in the way the therapeutic relationship is considered. All therapists have to work on and sometimes
struggle with the therapeutic relationship. Family therapists also
work on family relationships as they are acted out within the therapeutic scene. Individual therapists do not have this option: they deal
not with actual relationships with third parties, but rather with representations of such relationships and this is true of all individual
therapists.
All the same, therapies change when represented relationships
are viewed from different vantage points. Transference analysis is
one, individual systemic therapy is another. In the first instance, the
internal representations of relationship are worked through by
focusing on the relationship between client and analyst. In the
second, the same representations are considered by focusing
primarily on the relationship between the client and her relevant
others (we might say that, actually, in this perspective, the third
party is the therapist). There are probably many more such vantage
points that would be interesting to investigate. In such an investigation, we could also take into account the clients who up to now I
have considered as possible recipients for an approach always
proposed and practised by the therapists. We could instead focus on
the choice, on the part of the clients, of one therapy model over
another. Is it not possible even for clients to choose the therapy
which appears to be the most apt to encourage tendencies already
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