Case Response III: Brian Feldman

Who is Leah? Let's start with the choice of name which the analyst gives to her analysand, which may orient us toward understanding the intersubjective space that was created within the analytical temenos. In the biblical tradition Leah is the unloved first wife of Jacob, one of the patriarchs of Israel. Jacob was the grandson of Abraham and Sarah, thus making him a direct descendent of the founder of the Abrahamic religions. Leah's younger sister Rachel was favoured by Jacob, and she later married him. Leah was unloved, rejected and lonely and suffered greatly through the trauma of emotional abandonment. Despite her being unloved by Jacob she gave birth to Levi and Judah, both founders of ancient Israel. Perhaps both analyst and analysand were co-creating a powerful archetypal narrative related to love, loss, rejection, separation, abandonment and redemption. I would imagine that this archetypal configuration speaks to both the unbearable pain of disconnection from a significant attachment figure, and the reparative and transformational process that analysis could represent for Leah and her analyst. This seems to me to be the archetypal scheme that runs through the entire analysis.

One of the core concepts in Jungian analysis is the concept of intersubjectivity. Jung recognized its fundamental importance when he comments on the alchemical nature of the analytical relationship in ‘The psychology of the transference’. It is like the mixing of two different chemical substances, and if there is any combination of these chemical substances both analyst and analysand are transformed. Jung goes on to note that in any effective analytical treatment there is a reciprocal influence of each upon the other, the analyst cannot influence the analysand unless the analyst is susceptible to influence (Jung 1946). The case of Leah is an all too brief but moving account of an analysand who struggles with birth trauma, and perhaps trauma in utero, as well as significant childhood/adole