Features of conducting a psychoanalytic primary interview

Psychoanalytical technique

Abstract

The article is devoted to researching and describing the peculiarities of the psychoanalytic initial interview, answering a number of questions: what makes a psychoanalytic initial meeting "psychoanalytic"; what should happen at the initial interview to make psychoanalytic treatment possible; what are the possible difficulties along the way. In this article, the author proposes to identify the advantages and disadvantages of different approaches in conducting initial interviews and to highlight debatable issues on the topic that continue to be explored in contemporary psychoanalysis.

Based on the understanding that the beginning of psychoanalytic work is first and foremost the creation of an analytic couple, the psychoanalytic initial interview is a completely new situation for both participants, it is not an ordinary meeting, but it is not yet the beginning of psychoanalytic therapy or psychoanalysis. Despite the perfect uncertainty and the situation of total unpredictability, the two interviewees must find a way to face the exciting and mostly unconscious issues in the patient's life. In this situation, the analyst must not only hear and understand the patient by following the patient, but first of all contain the tension, the "emotional storm" that unfolds at the first encounter; be able to assess the register of the patient's mental functioning in order to select the appropriate frame; and create the conditions that might allow engagement in the psychoanalytic process.