Article: ‘Ontological Psychoanalysis or “What do you want to be when you grow up?”‘ by Thomas Ogden (2019)

In his 2019 paper, ‘Ontological Psychoanalysis or “What do you want to be when you grow up?”‘, Thomas Ogden describes two dimensions of psychoanalysis: epistemological psychoanalysis and ontological analysis. He is careful to point out that these dimensions frequently overlap, and neither ever exists in pure form, but that they do nevertheless involve quite different modes of therapeutic action. Epistemological psychoanalysis, as practiced by Freud and Klein, has to do with knowing and understanding; while ontological psychoanalysis, in Winnicott’s or Bion’s hands, is more concerned with being and becoming. The titular question, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ is the key (but probably often implicit) question posed by the ontological analyst, and Ogden implies that the analysis is only approaching its goal once the patient is able to answer the question truthfully and wholeheartedly: ‘Myself’.

Though he never states it explicitly Ogden leans very heavily…