Response: Jody Messler Davies, “Dissociation, Therapeutic Enactment, and Transference—Countertransference Processes” (Vol. 2, no. 2)

In Davies' discussion, she pursues important questions which provide a natural critical extension for my paper's focal point. Davies asks how the transference—countertransference matrix has constructed the patient's “girl self.” She suggests that the “girl self” personification has been coconstructed in this analytic dyad, much as I have suggested that the gendering of dissociative states is constructed by familial and cultural politics. Davies proposes recasting the patient's experiences in terms of a “boy self” expressing the view that this construction might be more empowering for a man who has suffered the degradation of incest. Further, she critiques this analytic exploration as one of “discovering” what was “inside” the patient rather than one of elucidating what evolved between patient and analyst. She ties this critique to what she views as an excessive emphasis on memory rather than on the relational constitution of the self. In raising these types of critiques, Davies pursues a line of inquiry which is a natural outgrowth of my perspective. For if dissociation is gendered by the patriarchal culture, and if it is, indeed, persons who “carry” and impose this patriarchal culture, we must inevitably ask how the analyst is gendering the dissociative experience of incest in the transference—countertransference