You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
I appreciated the opportunity to participate in an on-line discussion of my paper. Drs. Cook and Gillett were enthusiastic participants, who contributed their perspectives.
Dr. Cook discusses the paradox of negative affect, especially in connection with patients who have histories of abuse (as the patient in my paper did). I agree when she says that many patients feel ashamed or rejected if they have to reject their negative affect. That is true for all affects, and especially for patients who were abused. The issue at hand is that of agency. On the very deepest level of the psyche, I believe, people need to embrace their sadness, not simply out of masochism but out of ownership of their own authenticity and being. They have to own their lives and the events that confront them in order to make them personal, their own, as their own private individual experience, so as to have a sense of identity. It is a rite of passage, a baptism under fire, one which they feel cheated of by being persuaded to “put it behind them.” The idea of the Pietà must be universal and archetypal, applicable to all of us, not just ones who have been seriously abused. It has undergone many transformations, one of which is the sphinx, another the gorgon medusa (after destructive projective identifications), the earth mother archetype, the divine harlot, etc. The role of this archetype that I have explored in my paper is that of the divine container and exorcist who accepts and absorbs her infant's demons for which she feels partially responsible. In this sense the Pietà transference/countertransference is an aspect of the universal oedipal conflict.