Overcoming the analyst's self-referentiality in the therapeutic relationship

Psychoanalysis was born as a therapeutic tool. The analyst's objective is to treat the patient, who in turn asks to be treated in order to achieve a condition of greater well-being or alleviation of suffering. The analyst-patient relationship has always been the fundamental instrument of therapy. From Freud's "archaeologist" analyst, to the analyst co-builder of the relationship and of the analytical path of relational psychoanalysis, in any case the analyst-patient couple receives a large part of what happens and is discussed in the session. In the first case the attention to the patient's past, in the second to the present experienced by both in session. I believe that in this path of psychoanalysis the analyst's self-referentiality has remained unchanged. The patient's life is outside the study, but reality often remains in the background, while it should be the centre of attention of both, because it is in the improvement of the patient's life that the goal of care is, and the analytical work must serve the future of the patient. Only with a diagnosis and therapy that takes into account the patient's relational context, a real change is possible.