“As Far as Possible”: Discovering Our Limits and Finding Ourselves

This paper gives new structure to an ongoing dialogue that the two of us have sustained over many years, while events in our personal lives, from the tumultuous to the banal, have been folded into our struggles for clinical understanding, clinical mastery, and clinical wisdom. At the moment, we have arrived at something like a clearing. Some issues messily involving countertransferences, impasses, and personal matters for both of us in different though parallel ways have settled out for us into what seem to be some recognizable patterns. Our aim is to articulate these and share them with you, quickly, before the next phase of unclarity descends. In the broadest possible context, we want to connect our experience to a consideration that the discovery of one's limits is a vital part of one's ongoing development as an analyst. As a preliminary, we will outline the clinical subject of our conversations and locate this subject within the literature. Then we will provide as much personal detail as we can, ethically, and conclude with some further associated material.

Over a period of more than a few years, there have been some particularly vexing cases about which we have “confessed” our frustrations to one another. “Confessed” captures a quality of shame. There was also bewilderment, since consultations undertaken by both of us had failed to give way either to resolution or to any more than short-lived understanding. In addition, some of these consultations made us feel quite a bit worse, pointing out our failures and shortcomings according to this theoretical persuasion or to that; still worse, our efforts to follow such advice met without