Some Problems With the "Analytic Third"

"In contemporary psychoanalysis, few ideas have generated as much enthusiasm and confusion as the concept of the analytic third. Introduced by Thomas Ogden in the 1990s and later elaborated by other relational theorists, the "third" is said to represent a shared field or co-created space between analyst and patient. Rather than viewing the analytic process as something that happens within the mind of the patient, relational theorists describe it as something that happens between two minds, each shaping and being shaped by the other."

"It is a compelling metaphor. But from an object relations perspective, it raises serious conceptual and theoretical problems. Object relations theory, from Klein to Winnicott and Kernberg, has always insisted that what matters in treatment is the patient's internal world of relationships, the dynamic interplay of self and object representations that structure mental life. To shift the focus from the inner world to the "relational field" is to risk losing sight of the very thing psychoanalysis was designed to explore."

The analytic third posits a co-created shared field between analyst and patient that shapes both participants. Relational formulations prioritize this between-minds field over intrapsychic processes. Object relations theory emphasizes the patient's internal world of self and object representations as the locus of psychopathology and therapeutic change. Treating the analytic third as a literal entity reifies a metaphor and constitutes a category mistake by substituting a relational abstraction for individual mental structure. Shifting attention to the relational field risks eroding the core aim of analysis, obscuring internal dynamics, and allowing psychopathology to vanish conceptually into a diffuse interpersonal construct.

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