Case Response II: Lara Lagutina

I feel deeply moved by the eloquent and sensitive account of the intensely painful and emotionally engaged analytic process shared by Leah's analyst. I

have indeed a strong sense that this is an analysis where both parties are profoundly affected by the process as they struggle to survive it and, as a result, are both transformed. I am aware that my comments below reflect my own emotional resonance and associations (my own dreaming process) evoked in response. I do not know whether Leah's analyst is male or female and chose to use the pronoun ‘she’ throughout for the sake of simplicity.

In reading this account, I had a strong sense of how much emotional work has been happening inside the analyst - at times extremely challenging work of feeling not only emotionally affected, but also most likely infected, invaded, controlled and struggling to contain and make sense of her own powerful feelings (helplessness, rage, hate, despair?). I found myself wanting to know more about the analyst's internal process, perhaps not unlike Leah, who felt a strong need to know what her analyst was feeling and thinking, and how she was managing to survive the experiences Leah was powerfully subjecting her to.

Based on my own experience of working with early relational trauma, I know that as analysts we have to be open to our patients and take them in, both consciously and unconsciously. In other words, that for any deeper work to happen, an unconscious identity has to be established. Inevitably however, this means that our own wounds will be engaged in ways we cannot foresee … and this is where our faith in the process becomes essential in the face of the unknown. With these thoughts in mind, I now turn to the detail of this analytic account.

I had a powerful image emerge as a reverie that accompanied me throughout - that of a black hole that sucks in all life. Is this something Leah might have felt inside, something she desperately tried to avoid and to protect others from at all costs