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No tree, it is said, can grow its leaves to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell. (Jung, 1951, p. 43)
In contemplating the evolution of the Christian god-image, Jung suggests that there is an archetypal basis in the human desire to be “good”, “perfect” or all-giving. He notes that this “heavenly” drive, while an inevitable part of our evolving consciousness, naturally constellates its darker aspect, the shadow.
This courageous vignette explores the terra incognita of what psychoanalyst Lawrence Hedges (1999) calls the “terrifying transferences”, i.e., those relationships where an analysand's tragic early trauma and relentless rage profoundly challenge the analyst's “goodness” and capacity for containment. Geraldine Godsil (2018), in her Michael Fordham prize-winning paper “Residues in the Analyst of the Patient's Symbiotic Connection at a Somatic Level: Unrepresented States in the Patient and Analyst”, reflects that, if the analyst is vulnerable due to their own trauma, and/or passion to help heal the other, the analyst's body may also register the trauma in the field.
The respondent analysts here share their personal reveries and provide substantive theoretical offerings regarding the question of how to hold, meet or relinquish the challenges of an interactive field where sado-masochism or a “negative coniunctio” has become a primary mode of relating.