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In ‘The analyst's “bad analyst” feelings: a counterpart to the process of resolving implosive defenses’, Epstein examines the analyst's countertransferential responses to patients who suffer the ravages of self-directed aggression. As a result of their ‘not- good-enough’ parenting, these analysands experience pervasive depression, exhibit self- defeating behaviours, and display negative therapeutic reactions. Epstein has adopted the term ‘implosive defense’ to emphasize how aggressive affects are directed towards self-representations, in an effort to preserve external object relations.
The article raises important issues with respect to the therapeutic goals of analysis; however, it lacks theoretical novelty. Epstein acknowledges the work of Winnicott, Spotnitz, Klein and others, but he does not refer to the pioneering object-relations theory of W. R. D. Fairbairn. As early as 1943, Fairbairn (1943) suggested that the child's need for relatedness led naturally to the introjection and splitting of objects. Representations of parents experienced as emotionally distant, intrusive, or chaotic were split off, in an effort to preserve a ‘good’ internal object. Fairbairn opined that for the young child there is no representation of a ‘bad parent’; there is only a ‘bad me’. Consequently, parental sadism, depression and disorganization naturally permeate the repertoire of self. In Fairbairn's motivational system of endopsychic maturation object relations are experientially based; they are not the target of Freudian ‘drives’ nor are they embossed upon pre-existent templates of Kleinian phantasy or Jungian archetypes.
Epstein does effectively address the challenge of treating such patients. The paper includes a detailed clinical presentation of a middle-aged female analysand who is ‘artistically and intellectually gifted’ but chronically depressed and suicidal. When she assumes responsibility for a previous therapeutic failure, Epstein boldly responds, ‘The failure of your last