In the Session

Don Moss describes a disturbing session in which he is thrown off his analytic game when his patient tries to push away the image of a burning child from the war in Gaza, thoughts she calls a “distraction.” I very much appreciate Moss's unflinching self-scrutiny as he recounts his reactions to this compelling session. It is not the subject of the war in Gaza that throws him, but the way she puts it: a “distraction.” Moss asks, “How can crying at the recollection of a burning child in a war be a distraction?” Indeed, framing it this way is curious, and as I have mulled over it, the crux of an important dynamic between Moss and his patient, and a question of significance for analysts working in this troubled world. This interchange appears in the context of the whole session (and relationship), which I turn to first.

Moss tells us that the patient sought treatment because of her worries that her attraction to sadomasochism might disturb her capacities to care properly for her child. Typically, contemporary women do not worry that their sexual behaviors will spill over into their maternal functioning. When a woman says she is worried she is not a good mother, she must have good, but perhaps unconscious, reasons for this worry. Why should her sadomasochistic sexual practices affect her mothering unless she senses her sadomasochism is more broadly and deeply embedded in her personality? Perhaps the worry reflects disappointments, conflicts and unhappy identifications with her mother, often entangled with a woman's worries about being a good-enough mother. The latter seems a possibility as the patient during this session goes round and round about her mother's competency versus her own competency as a mother. But competency