Keywords: Psychoanalysis, Badoni, Winnicott, Bion
MARTA BADONI
Interview taken from Davide D’Alessandro’s book “Psychoanalysts on the couch. Patients, the mind and them”, Moretti&Vitali 2023.
What is analysis and what is it for?
Analysis is a path of deepening self-awareness in search of suffering that is not always known and of latent curiosities.
It requires time and rhythms and therefore takes place through a rhythmic and frequent sequence of sessions/meetings with another person, the analyst, supposed to have tools capable of accompanying the analysand without setting a goal.
Why did you decide to rely on an analyst many years ago?
I was looking for a ‘group’ that would allow me to find myself after a very traumatic experience, I was suffering, but curious about my psyche and that of others. I think that the choice to undergo analysis with a view to becoming an analyst myself was a compromise, an additional motivation, as well as representing aspects of reparation for my narcissism. As a compromise, its becoming is part of the analytic game.
How did he choose his analysts?
I went to the first analyst on the advice of other analysands, but the first analysis was interrupted after a few months due to considerations shared with the analyst. I came to the second analyst ‘by chance’, but it was a lucky accident for me.
What does it take to make a great analyst?
Don’t take yourself too seriously, notice how you function, sustain a curiosity free from intrusiveness.
Do the many schools of psychoanalysis help or confuse?
They neither help nor confuse whether good documentation is expected.
Who do you think was the most convincing Master of psychoanalysis?
It goes without saying that without Freud, analysis would not have existed and that his way of addressing problems is compelling. Among all the others Klein, Winnicott, Bion, Green, Racamier, Bollas. The last three were tested live, briefly and casually, on fragments of analyzes I conducted.
For James Hillman we are called to “make soul”. For her?
To animate a story, to give it substance.
Who or what decides when the analysis ends?
Beyond analyzes terminated due to setbacks of various kinds, as far as I’m concerned the end of the analysis arises from within the analysis, from how it was conducted and participated by analyst and patient and above all from the analyst’s ability to grasp signals of ‘term’ in the patients’ attitude. This also applies to child patients.
What is the most severe form of neurosis that is frequently found in front of?
The one in which repetitive behaviors are most encysted.
Do words or silences matter more?
Both take care if they arrive at the right time and in the right way.
The analyst, like the father, must also be killed or, if he prefers, exceeded?
Perhaps this also depends on whether or not you plan to become an analyst.
I believe that the truest part that remains for life after an analysis is something profoundly maternal. I don’t feel like a killer, certainly the drive to discover new things for oneself and for others must necessarily deal with envy and one’s own competitive tendencies.
How do you work to break down resistance?
We arm ourselves with patience and try to work on them, better that they don’t collapse, but that they transform.
Is the management of transference or countertransference more complicated?
I don’t feel like making a choice, after all the two often go together: the ‘management’ of one as well as the other, both unconscious, is referable to the analyst’s ability to work at a preconscious level.
For Freud, dreams are the royal road to access the unconscious. Self was always well interpreted, I might add. You can have confirmation of a good interpretation?
Certainly yes: it is the patient who will tell us with his own words or dreams or attitudes whether the interpretation has reached him, opening up new interpretative paths for him. Haidée Faimberg has written very interesting things about listening to listening. It is the patient’s response after an interpretation that will help us understand if we have ‘touched’ him and how. As Jannacci said: “You need an ear!”.
He struggled more to work with his own unconscious or with that of others others?
To work with mine, I had an analyst close to me for a long time: I struggled, suffered, but also quietly rejoiced in seeing new spaces open up and acquire new tools. For each ‘Other’ the undertaking is different: the degree of effort is a compromise between our ‘toolbox’ and the type and functioning of the unconscious of others.
The high cost of a long analytical journey has pushed many to move towards the so-called short analyses, but an analysis can exist brief?
There may be short interventions made by an analyst that can certainly help. Unfortunately, the Institution series could and should pay more attention to the length of the analyzes and the costs.
Analysis is a path of freedom. Does she like this definition or is incomplete?
I really like it, I would add about conscious freedom.
What is the risk that lurks around the analyst’s corner?
Of feeling oracular, of becoming ‘routine’ of dampening the initial enthusiasm, of trusting one’s own knowledge too much, of ‘putting the sensorium to sleep’.
I think the riskiest is putting the sensorium on stand-by.
For Thomas Ogden it takes two to think, but they are Are there really only two people who meet during the session?
It takes two people to ‘open the dance’ or to open a curtain, the rest comes by itself.
Is the sphere of sexuality always at the center of the analysis or is there something else?
It is a differently expressed sexuality, perhaps more violent, more surprising, more uncomfortable.
How much the Covid-19 pandemic has affected you and what they were the impact on your patients?
I was already very old, so I belonged to the protected sphere and no longer worked in the studio.
The analysis in online mode, thanks to Covid, has become widespread tax. Integration between the two modalities is desirable, or the prerogative of the analysis remains the presence in the study of the two bodies without any mediation?
For the reasons above I would be presumptuous in answering this question. I belong to the few who had no patients during Covid. From some supervision interventions on patients followed online I say that the ‘thing’ has interesting aspects, but it needs to be studied further.
