Negative Therapeutic Reaction

I know of no way around the negative therapeutic reaction with these patients as archetypal negative energies are constellated by the frustrations of the analytic situation.

Kalsched argues that with borderline/trauma patients the negative therapeutic reaction is structurally unavoidable, driven by archetypal negative energies activated by the analytic frame’s inherent frustrations rather than by superego guilt alone.

Kalsched, Donald, The Inner World of Trauma: Archetypal Defences of the Personal Spirit, 1996thesis

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the negative therapeutic reaction is losing in strength. It makes great demands on the analyst and on the patient to analyse splitting processes and the underlying hate and envy in both the positive and negative transference.

Klein locates the negative therapeutic reaction’s diminution in the progressive integration of split-off envy and hate, insisting that analysis of both positive and negative transference is the necessary and demanding path to its resolution.

Klein, Melanie, Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946-1963, 1957thesis

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those patients whose envy and hate are split off but form part of the negative therapeutic reaction. I have often referred to the infant’s desire for the inexhaustible, ever-present breast.

Klein identifies split-off envy and hate as the core constituents of the negative therapeutic reaction, grounding the clinical phenomenon in the infant’s primary relation to an idealized omnipotent object.

Klein, Melanie, Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946-1963, 1957thesis

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“The Problem of the Negative Therapeutic Reaction,” Psa. Quar., 201

Horney’s bibliography entry documents her 1952 paper as a distinct contribution to the literature on the negative therapeutic reaction, situating it within her broader account of neurotic pride, vindictiveness, and suffering.

Horney, Karen, Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Toward Self-Realization, 1950supporting

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negative therapeutic reaction 4; see also Freud

Kalsched’s index cross-references the negative therapeutic reaction directly to Freud while embedding it within his own architecture of archetypal defenses and the numinosum, marking the term’s dual Freudian and Jungian genealogy in his text.

Kalsched, Donald, The Inner World of Trauma: Archetypal Defences of the Personal Spirit, 1996supporting

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I have the distinct impression that a person will persist in a negative orientation to the father archetype, for example, simply because that is the aspect of the image which has been personalized in his or her own life and therefore has an element of security.

Edinger, without naming the negative therapeutic reaction explicitly, describes the psychological dynamic underlying it: patients cling to destructive internalized images because those images, however damaging, carry the security of the familiar and the personalized.

Edinger, Edward F., Science of the Soul: A Jungian Perspective, 2002aside

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he does not want to overcome his hostility but rather to become less inhibited or more skillful in expressing it… Both of these factors put a kind of premium on being discontented.

Horney characterizes the neurotic’s investment in vindictive claims and chronic discontent as a structural analog to the negative therapeutic reaction, where improvement threatens the patient’s covert agenda of grievance and domination.

Horney, Karen, Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Toward Self-Realization, 1950aside

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