Analytic Fostering

In this paper, I explore a mode of analytic engagement which I call “analytic fostering.” It is a proactive, generative approach that can be useful with patients whom I think of as “lost,” who have difficulties with evocative constancy, or the ability to call upon and retain stable representations of self and other. These patients, whose caregivers were likely to have been absent, uninvolved, withdrawn, or neglectful, struggle with the experience of feeling that they and others exist cohesively and continuously across space and time. Analytic fostering involves various intentional and playful ways of using one’s subjectivity to engage the lost patient in order to help her find herself within the analyst’s mind. When a patient who did not feel thought of or cared for as a child finds herself held in the thinking, feeling, and creative mind of an analyst who wants her to be there, this experience can be transformative for both participants.