Modern psychoanalysis is the term used by Hyman Spotnitz[1] to describe the techniques he developed for the treatment of narcissistic (also called preverbal or preoedipal) disorders.
Narcissism is understood (by Spotnitz) as a state in which unexpressed aggression and hostility are trapped within the psychic apparatus with corrosive effects on mind and body.
Meadow describes the contact function as responding, "’in kind,’ thus replacing subjectively determined timing as used in traditional insight-oriented interpretation with what might be called ‘demand feeding’.
[1][8] Although modern analysis forgoes interpretation as the main form of intervention, it retains the classical psychoanalytic focus on transference, countertransference, and resistance.
When the analyst is seen as an extension of the self, aggression may be more freely and safely expressed, lessening patients’ self-hatred and allowing them to slowly emerge from their narcissistic state.
[3][14] In The Edinburgh International Encyclopedia of Psychoanalysis,[15] an entry describing modern psychoanalysis reads in part: "The analyst was advised to use induced countertransference emotions as the basis for responses to the patient rather than cognitive explanations….The modern talking cure emphasizes experiences lived and spoken in the analytic room: de-emphasizing reconstruction of the past.
[17][18] Candidates conduct single case studies in which the psychoanalytic sessions are used as laboratories to investigate the unconscious motives of specific transference resistances.