The Sleepy Analyst: Some Observations on States of Consciousness in the Analyst at Work
Abstract
THE SLEEPY ANALYST: : SOME OBSERVATIONS : ON STATES OF JAMES M.D. T. MCLAUGHLIN, CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE : ANALYST AT WORK I I F ONE IS TO JUDGE from the laughter that follows the utter- ing, in psychoanalytic circles, of the weary clichC, "Who listens?" and recalls its source,' one might infer that various ways of not listening, extending to sleepiness or actual- ly going to sleep in the analytic hour, are not unfamiliar to many of us. It is not easy to learn the frequency of these phe- nomena; and there is little mention of them in the literature I have been able to scan (Cohen, 1952; Dean, 1957). My own data, based upon observations from analyses of candidates, from supervision, and from my own experience, lead me to feel that such states are part of a coctinuum of consciousness over which the analyst ranges in his work, though he may but rarely find himself'at either the extreme of vigilance or its op- posite, deep sleep. This continuum includes all states of aware- ness between these, most particularly that state of altered con- sciousness we know as free-hovering attentiveness, which can extend at times to reverie, hypnogogic