Correspondence

In response to Dr. Carere-Comes, let me begin by expressing thanks. Actually, I think the difference between those in Dante's hell and those in purgatory is that the former are filled with rage and feel quite justified in it, whereas the latter feel remorse and regret for the abuses they have inflicted. I think the secret of Dante' Inferno is that the inmates create their own hell, like our borderline patients, by their unmitigated rage, self-absorption, and inner turmoil, the intensity of which increases as we go deeper and deeper into hell. With that one needs no external devils to torture one. I agree with Dr. Carere-Comes that impatience is characteristic of those in hell, as we find, for example, in the impulsive and self-defeating impatience of borderline patients.

The issue of one-person or two-person psychologies, in my opinion, remains unresolved and will remain so until there is some better understanding of Freud's psychoanalysis. The cornerstone of it is the formation of a transference to a relatively neutral and relatively objective analyst, who has been trained both by education and by personal analysis to keep his or her needs and problems out of the consulting room. No doubt this cannot be entirely accomplished and the transference sequence forms on the basis of the personality of the analyst, but the one-person psychology insists that the motor driving the transference comes from the repressed unconscious of the patient.

Dante presents Paolo and Francesca in such a way as to engender our sympathy, but Virgil, his supervisor, chastises him and insists that God is always just and they are being punished for what Dr. Carere-Comes calls a“boundary crossing” but what medievalists would call a “sin.” Dante's empathic and sympathetic presentation represents, in my opinion, his countertransference. Their need to come to him and tell their story in such a woeful and beautiful manner is their transference wish for maternal rescue by Dante, t