The Body on the Couch, the Couch in the Dream: Analytical Function as a Compass and Anchor in Difficult Times

Abstract

In this article, the author argues that the current era, by normalizing dehumanizing experiences, generates patients who challenge the limits of what can be analyzed. She highlights the impact of this fact on the training of psychoanalysts and proposes rethinking training models. She draws on Arendt’s “banality of evil” to reflect on the marks of arrogance and intolerance, often disguised as success and security. Analytically, she links these phenomena to pregenitality and the fragility of the self—defenses against the fear of disintegration and emptiness, still without ideational representation. The author deepens the analytical function as a transformative path for colonized mental states, questioning the teaching of rêverie and intuition in training. She revisits authors such as Levine, Civitarese, Green, and Parsons. Based on a clinical vignette, the author analyzes the symbolism of the setting as an external expression of the mind in a dreamlike state, emphasizing the importance of the prior construction of an internal setting in the dyad and a non-colonizing formative attitude.