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Chair: Gertraud Schlesinger-Kipp (Germany)
Presenters: Joshua Durbin (Israel) and Ester Palerm (Spain)
Discussant: Alexandra Billinghurst (Sweden)
Reporter: Marilyn B. Meyers
This panel was presented by the Committee on Women and Psychoanalysis (COWAP).
The two papers presented at this panel were focused on issues of failures in containment in the early developmental years. The cases elucidated the conflict surrounding issues of longing for merger and terror of separation. These conflicts were evident in the transference/countertransference enactments. Both papers demonstrated the analyst's capacity to withstand and contain the anxieties and projections that they faced with the patient. Thus, the analyst's capacity to contain intense affect was challenged but metabolized.
Dr Durban, in his paper ‘Intimate Violence, Violent Intimacy’, spoke about his work with a male patient in analysis who “suffered from a confusion between intimacy and violence”. This confusion was based on an intense archaic wish for and anxiety regarding fusion with the mother. The mother was experienced by the patient (Simon) as an “impenetrable, unreal object”. Simon was described as a successful surgeon who sought analysis for difficulties in forming long-lasting relationships with women, sleep disturbances and anxiety attacks. Dr Durban described his initial countertransference feelings of a closeness and tenderness that were unsettling. The patient was charming, but also capable of ruthlessness in intimate relationships. There was a seductive but false sense of intimacy in the sessions. “He managed to talk a lot but say nothing.” This countertransference feeling soon turned into a coldness and distance. Dr Durban found a way to put some of this into words by describing the interaction: “If there's real contact between us, between two real people who need to think and use words in order to understand one another, you are warning me it might get sticky, with no differentiation between us …”. Sim