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It was mainly curiosity which led me to accept Dominique Scarfone's kind invitation to discuss a clinical presentation by a North American colleague. This curiosity grew when I considered the analyst's name and Pakistani origins and the fact that she was treating a Jewish patient. As Latin American and Uruguayan, I was thus being introduced into a complex cultural network so characteristic of today's world of reduced distances, intensified confrontations, and potentially devastating natural disasters.
Regarding the subtitle proposed by the author, ‘the use of ethnic and religious differences between analyst and patient’ (my emphasis), I would say that it presents to us, as do the bibliographical references, with one of Aisha's topics of interest, perhaps one of those ‘fundamental questions’ (Piera Aulagnier) which orientate the direction of each analyst's research, his/her recurrent themes and the theories we think we choose but which, in fact, choose us. Since for each analyst those ‘fundamental questions’ are not the result of conscious choice, but rather conditioned by her personal and analytic history, by the residues, traces and unconscious imprints which are the product of diverse transferential crossings-over (with one's own analyst, with supervisors, teachers and writers of our discipline and others). The effects of these are formative and have an impact on the way we approach our patients and also on our lapses and blind spots.
I will come back to my impression of the differences between patient and analyst which from my point of view had most impact on the arduous work with Mr F, which Aisha here generously shares with us, her colleagues, in a spirit of great honesty.
In terms of the title, I would also say that every analysis is always a ‘dangerous conversation’. If it were not, it would not be an analysis; it would lack that element of risk which is synonymous with the mobilization of the transference. This is a mobilization which is not limited