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The patient is a 38-year-old Black African woman raising her 6-year-old son on her own. This is her 3rd year in analysis. She entered analysis because of her concerns regarding her attraction to sadomasochism. She had begun to worry that this attraction may disturb her capacities to properly care for her child. At the start of the treatment, I was frequently derailed by her accounts of physically painful sexual encounters. Because she spoke of these encounters as though they were permanent and integral aspect of her identity. I could sense no openings for direct interpretive work. Often exasperated and perched on a moral high ground, I could feel the temptation to speak harshly and judgmentally—that is, with the voice of moral sadism. Once I sensed that, I was OK. I could feel comfortable working more indirectly on her attractions to pain. This shift in me allowed her to settle into analysis, trusting me a little more. With this, her sexual life grew more regulated, less oriented to pain. She has found a partner and they will soon be living together.
In the sessions immediately preceding this one, the patient repeatedly focuses on the question of whether she is a “fit mother” and on whether her partner, a man her age, functions more as a hindrance than a help as she tries to raise her son. She is particularly concerned that the partner might be making excessive demands on her, demands which both diminish her self-confidence and distract her from her primary task of providing a safe and supportive environment for her child. Since October 7, the patient has tried hard to stay away from media coverage of the war in Gaza. She does not quite succeed at this, though. She has occasionally and glancingly mentioned war images to me. She has said the images are “too disturbing” and that she wants to keep them “as far away as possible.”