Discussion of Heather MacIntosh’s Paper

Not only do I feel honored to be invited to discuss this extraordinary paper, but I find it a great pleasure to be able to return to this conference, my psychoanalytic home since the late 1980’s, and to see so many dear friends, and meet potential new ones. My first ever plenary presentation, terrifying for me, took place here in Washington DC in 1996, while the Clintons—president and first lady—attended another event downstairs in the same hotel. Needless to say, the security exceeded what we are used to at our conferences. When I finished, Marion Tolpin rose to the microphone to tell me at length how I should have better handled my clinical situation. I had not yet met her in person, but recognized her distinctive voice, and completely overwhelmed by her presence and comments, I told her I had always hoped she would be my supervisor. That got such a big laugh from the audience that I never had to address her critique!

Trying to think how to respond now to this fine contribution from my dear old friend Heather MacIntosh, the memory of my dear Katze floated back to me. Adopted during a particularly painful period of my life in the late 1990s, Katze lived with me, slept with me, destroyed the handlebar tape on my resident bicycle, and loved to lick people while sitting in their laps. Probably I got so much licking because I was a salty sweating cyclist. In any case, when I moved to a very small apartment on the Upper West Side in 2002, she came along and became my clinical cat. She was not allowed into my consulting room, but easily found her way through the curtains to the waiting area, where she quickly discerned which waiting patients liked her, and jumped right into their laps. Soon a pattern developed where those patients came early for their sessions, so that they could have their cat time before the departure of the previous patient, who sometimes stopped to pet the cat before leaving. Starting the session meant giving the cat up to deal with me, and with the d