Reply to Reid Anderson

I suppose I asked for this. Instead of following the rules at last summer's Sebasco Conference where this paper was first delivered, and limiting myself to one or two analytic moments, I presumed to present evocative ‘flash-pictures’ of a whole 4-year analysis, in order to illustrate my pet theory about archetypal defences. I suspect the resulting picture was both too little and too much for some readers and listeners. Having thus ‘sown with the wind’ as proscribed by the old prophet Hosea (8: 7) I now reap the ‘whirlwind’ of misunderstanding in the form of Reid Anderson's overwrought response, masquerading as a ‘hope for further dialogue’.

I am afraid that dialogue is unlikely in this instance because Dr Anderson's hypothetical ‘case’ is not the case of Sue, my analysand, as I have known her. Rather it is a constructed caricature of a woman whose life is ‘progressively falling apart’, finally ‘in shambles’, with dreams ‘permeated by deranged and murderous figures’, in analysis with someone who has - because of inattention to transference/countertransference issues and an obsession with his own theory - colluded with the patient's compliant self while unconsciously retraumatizing her through a ruthless, insensitive pursuit of her unbearable affects, thus perpetrating a violent ‘anal penetration’ equivalent to her mother's traumatizing childhood enemas!

In this characterization, the victim/perpetrator defensive complex which I had hoped to illustrate as part of the patient's self-traumatizing inner world, is split asunder with the ‘bad’ perpetrator now once again ejected from the patient's psyche, in the form of someone ‘outside’ to blame - in this case the analyst himself. One could ask for no better demonstration of how difficult it is in this work to retain a symbolic attitude - precisely the problem with which my patient Sue was struggling so courageously.

It is difficult to know how to respond to all this, except to reassure Dr Anderson, who is ‘troubled’ by what h