The value of insight as a mutative factor in psychoanalysis has long been a central question in psychoanalysis. Most analysts of this generation believe that although insight has clear value, it isn’t normally sufficient to produce structural change in most patients. Alternatively, the tide has shifted strongly to the view that the analytic relationship per se, has more explanatory power in understanding why patients change. In this presentation, Dr. Hirsch attempts to deconstruct which elements of the analytic relationship might have the most mutative power. Dr. Hirsch’s argument reflects the belief that analysts’ productive use of uncomfortable countertransference experience is key to ideal therapeutic outcome, whereas failure to productively use countertransference experience, usually experience that is consciously recognized by the analyst, is the primary factor in contributing to compromised or failed analyses.
Mutative Action: From Interpretation to Productive Use of Uncomfortable Countertransference
Agenda
- 7:30 pm Welcome and Introduction
- 7:35 pm Presentation by Dr. Hirsch
- 8:40 pm Q&A
Learning Objectives
- Identify which elements of the analytic relationship are seen as having the most mutative power.
- Define the key importance of the analyts’ productive use of uncomfortable countertransference and why this is seen as most mutative from a relational perspective.
Meet the Presenter
Irwin Hirsch, PhD
Irwin Hirsch, PhD is co-founder, former director, and currently faculty and supervisor of the Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis; distinguished visiting faculty, William Alanson White Institute; adjunct clinical professor of psychology and supervisor, New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis; and faculty and supervisor, the National Training Program, the National Institute of the Psychotherapies. He has authored over 90 psychoanalytic articles and book chapters and six books, including the 2008 Goethe Award–winning Coasting in the Countertransference; The Interpersonal Tradition; The Interpersonal Perspective in Psychoanalysis, 1960s–1990s, co-edited with Donnel Stern; Further Developments in Interpersonal Psychoanalysis, 1980s–2010s, co-edited with Donnel Stern; More Human than Otherwise; and Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Intense Involvement in Sports, co-edited with Phillip Blumberg and Robert Watson. Dr. Hirsch serves on the Editorial Boards of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Psychoanalytic Dialogues, and Psychoanalytic Perspectives.
References
Cimino, S. (2026). Reflections on the concepts of bad faith and bastion and their use in clinical practice. Psychodynamic Practice, 32(2), 164–190.
Hirsch, I. (2021). Mutative action: From insight to productive use of uncomfortable countertransference experience. Psychoanalytic Dialogues 31:674-683.
Weisel-Barth, J. (2021). Theoretical and clinical perspectives on narrative in psychoanalysis: The creation of intimate fictions. Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group.
Disclosures
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Financial Disclosure
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