Commentary

Dr Geerken has provided an opportunity to engage with her work over the first six months of a treatment, and living with her material has produced vast amounts of associations and of ongoing thought, both about this case and what it evokes in me, and, more generally, about the conditions that have to be in place to free associate and to be able to be in analysis.

La Vita Nuova is a project in its infancy: the report of the beginnings of an analysis, with Dr G's description of herself as a very new analyst, and the introduction of a new supervisor, hastily and abruptly, after three months. Throughout she describes her very strong affective responses to her patient, to the analytic situation and to its wider context. She often mentions her anxieties and her “failings of dosage, of timing, of tact”. All this conveys a sense of a young/new unsure analytic couple and it made me wonder from the start not just about the actual newness, but of the re-presentation in the transference/countertransference of an original, potentially traumatic encounter for both mother and baby. The material is strongly framed by extra analytic contacts, which further contribute to anxiety and uncertainty, and make the precise focus unclear for the analyst. This, and how it comes to be understood and experienced, seems likely to be an ongoing factor in the treatment. Right at the end of the period reported here, the patient takes a stand against her parents' intrusions — a real step forward. That it is the patient seems important in thinking about this analysis, and what its purpose may be, especially since the analyst talks to the patient at that time about their reversal of roles.

Beatrice, who is 19, was referred by a senior colleague who had recommended an analysis to which both parents and patient were already committed at the time of the initial consultation, so that the analyst felt she was encountering a fait accompli. Although all three seem keen for Beatrice's problems to be resolved, w