All the King’s Horses and All the King’s Men: Three Forms of Curative Audience in the Recovery from Psychosis

This article outlines an overlooked ingredient in the psychotherapy of psychosis, the “curative audience.” The idea that the psychotic patient recompensates not only with the help of a therapist but under the auspices of a third entity has not been previously discussed. This essay posits that three key forms of audience are essential in the reestablishment of the self in the recovery from psychosis: (1) The initial audience of the therapist; (2) the audience of the therapeutic alliance in contrast to the developing transference; (3) the emergent internal and external milieu that views the self in a new way.

Interestingly, all the schools of psychoanalysis have touched on the role of audience in the healing of patients with both neurosis and psychosis, yet its specific role has not been well documented. Performative statements exert self-cohering effects and can be seen to have their source in the curative audience. Two clinical vignettes are examined in the light of this notion of the curative audience from the point of view of the various schools of psychoanalysis.