Reply to Comment by K. Lambert

I Wish First to thank Kenneth Lambert for his kind critique. Moreover, it was very interesting to see his response to my article. I take no exception to his phantasy of the ‘mother-infant relationship’ to which the article gave stimulus. Although I did not imagine the vas bene clausum in such terms, we are always interacting with that vast network of imaginings which defines us as both distinct and similar, while at the same time, it allows a relationship with another to take place through that recognition. That is how it is and should be. In this spirit I would like to make two comments that Lambert's reply stimulated in me.

The central image of the article was the vas bene clausum, with its connotation of protection, containment and defining. Yet it would be misleading to assume that all such attributes need necessarily belong to the archetype of the mother. It must be understood that a sense of ‘holding’, objectification and caring are not exclusively maternal properties.

There can be no denying that there exists in the therapeutic relationship aspects of the mother-child world. Incontestable evidence of this is seen in those analysands who dream of their male analyst as a woman or a mother-figure. But obviously it would be incorrect to stop there. The father-child constellation appears also, and I have little doubt this is just as true for woman therapists. For not every therapy centres on the mother-child relationship, and ‘the fact that most analyses involve both a re-experiencing and re-assessment within the transference-countertransference of the patient's infancy and early childhood experience’, as Lambert suggests, is a countertransference phantasy that I or any other therapist might or might not agree with. Also not to be ignored are the many other major issues—personal, cultural, archetypal—that may be the central ones in any specific therapy. It is clear, then, that a great deal of analysis and therapy involves matters outside the ken of the great mother