Tuesday, October 22, 2013

analysand

analysand \un-NAL-uh-sand, -zand\, noun:

Psychiatry. a person undergoing psychoanalysis.

Put simply (and to my mind it was a ludicrously simple idea), instead of the analyst listening to the patient and then providing an interpretation, of whatever kind, Alkan would say what he thought the analysand would say.
-- Will Self, The Quantity Theory of Insanity, 1993
I had been an analysand myself for eight years, two or three times a week, with breaks for babies. When puzzled and distraught it is nice to have a hired hand to talk to - though a week's silent reflection might do as well.
-- Fay Weldon, Mantrapped, 2004

Analysand is a combination of analyze + -and. While this term existed in English since the 1850s, it was not until the 1920s that it took on its psychoanalytical sense.

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