An Epistolary Reply Addressed to Mrs. C, a Half-Century following Her Analysis, from a Winnicottian Perspective

Dear Mrs. C,

Thank you for allowing us to use the transcripts of your treatment. Your willingness to let us do so gives us a window not only into your internal world, but also the era during which your analysis was conducted. These sessions from the late 1960s and early 1970s are imbued with a cultural moment in American history. We can see it more clearly now, some 50 years on; how you, a young social worker and heterosexual, newly married woman became a mother during your analysis; and how your analyst, a man who wears a suit to conduct the treatment, was an opaque, authoritarian, and strikingly unresponsive presence, a man who seemed to follow an a priori narrative of what would occur. The set-up is the very caricature of classical analysis that has undergone radical change over the last half-decade.

Mrs. C, I had the fantasy that as a consequence of your analysis, you, a young social worker, became an analyst yourself. Perhaps fate even led you to the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. If that were so, you'd be about 70 years old now, and you may be in the room today. Madam, if you're here, I hope you'll see our discussion today as an effort at healing, both for you and for our profession. There does seem to have been much that went on in your analysis that needs careful discussion, thought, and even apology. As a colleague, I know you'll recognize that things have changed within the profession; perhaps you, yourself, have contributed to that change. However, it is still important to understand what happened in your treatment, and also what didn't seem to happen.

Your analysis took place before psychoanalysts in this country fully embraced a developmental model of the psychoanalytic process. This is reflected in the sessions under consideration, in which there is precious little to nothing about your childhood development, or your childhood relations with your parents. In one mention, from Session 38, you described your feeling as an adult of being