Hänsel, Grethel and the Breadcrumbs: Similarity and Analogy in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy

Abstract

The author notes the inevitable and necessary participation of the psychotherapist in the process of re-signifying the patient’s narrative. Indeed, the psychotherapist develops clinical reasoning in which several logical processes converge including deduction, induction and abduction. In understanding what is being narrated by the patient, a special role is also played by analogy, a form of reasoning whose purpose is to establish connections between different classes. The author, after defining the concept from the perspective of cognitive psychology, proposes a psychoanalytic reading by referring to Matte Blanco’s theory of the unconscious. From this perspective, analogy can be seen as the expression of a “bi-logical” mind in which unconscious logic (symmetrical) and conscious logic (asymmetrical) are integrated. The article also presents a brief clinical example.