The Analyst's Pain6

Inspired and chaired by Theodore Jacobs, the IPA panel entitled ‘The Analyst's Pain’ aimed to investigate the analytic situation in which we are subject to periods of extremely intense ‘pain’ during the course of our day-to-day work as analysts. For this panel, the analyst's ‘pain’ referred to extremely powerful positive or negative affects, such as rage, terror, hatred, impotence, heart-wrenching sorrow and sexual arousal. Often these affects are evoked by a trying patient who acts out, for example, in manipulative, provocative, hostile and seductive ways within the transference.

Dr. Jacobs highlighted how our professional work necessarily involves us meeting up with such powerful forces within the transference-countertransference field. The literature abounds with publications on the subject of countertransference enactments and self-disclosure, commented Dr. Jacobs. In his view, however, the predominant nature of these experiences relates to relatively mild, manageable and controlled situations, which all too often culminate in uncomplicated, successful outcomes. More serious conundrums in the lives of analysts, he stated, typically fall in the realm of private consultations amongst colleagues, and are not subject to the public scrutiny of congresses and the print world.

This panel was therefore constructed to examine the kind of analytic situation that rarely finds its way into public fora, because the analyst feels too ashamed and unwilling to expose his errors. These presenters selected clinical examples requiring them to erect a mighty counterforce to protect the patient from the analyst's impulse to retaliate against the patient. They also discussed unconscious enactments that contaminated the analytic field in ways the analyst felt disappointed and surprised by, and ways that they worked with this material in the service of advancing the analytic project.

Panelists' Contributions

The panel assembled three analysts from three separate countries and a