“THE UNCONSCIOUS ANALYTIC THIRD” AS A METAPHOR FOR PROCESSING STAGNATION IN THE PSYCHOTHERAPEUTIC DYAD

Abstract

The Ukrainian professional psychotherapy community faces extremely urgent tasks and challenges thatrequire the search for appropriate metaphors and tools for solving them, namely: overcoming the traumaof war, splitting, identity crisis, the issue of establishing and repairing contact, overcoming and workingthrough crises and impasses in communication. The author considered the use of the metaphor of the third invarious contexts, in particular: the third in development, the third in culture, the third in relationships. Thanksto the performed analysis, the article singles out and summarizes such a metaphor of psychotherapeutic workas the “Unconscious Third”. The author cites a case from his work that illustrates the use of this metaphor. Purpose is a comprehensive consideration of such a metaphor of psychotherapeutic work as the “UnconsciousThird”. Methods. The main method of obtaining results is theoretical analysis and synthesis, within whichselection and generalization of information is carried out; its comparison and critical interpretation, as well asthe formulation of the main characteristics of the unconscious analytical Third as a subject of research. Theresults. It is shown that we are witnessing a shift in focus from the “one person psychology” to the “psychologyof relationships”. In this regard, many concepts also need to be reinterpreted, since they are explanatoryconstructs and metaphors describing the psychotherapeutic process as an influence on the intrapsychicof analysand, on the other hand, in psychotherapy based on the “two person psychology”, we deal withinterpersonal relationships, which leads to the need to fundamentally rethink the used analytical tools. It isalso noted that the Third helps to notice, recognize and make sense of the impasses in therapy experiencedby the therapeutic pair as stagnation. Conclusions. Thanks to the metaphor of the “Unconscious Third”, itbecomes possible to identify and understand impasses in the psychotherapeutic process. The next issue is theirprocessing. The analyst must establish themselves as a subject in the analytical space. In order to achieve this,in the situation of psychotherapeutic dialogue, there must be a disclosure of the mental content, mental process,emotional reality or state of the self, which is consistent with the character of the analyst. Such a positionprovides for the possibility of mutual reflection on crises and impasses in work.