You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
A boiler from which steam cannot escape is bound to explode, and many people who seek treatment for emotional problems certainly may be seen as dangerous containers of rage. They have reached the bursting point: the pressure is more than they can bear. They aim, without knowing it consciously, to reduce the pressure of the rage they carry to tolerable levels and they seem to know that one way of achieving this aim is to give it to their analyst.
Rage, as it occurs in the analytic situation, is a communicable disease, and it is unlikely that any analyst, however experienced, well-trained and analyzed, is immune to it. Unless the analyst is equipped to deal with his counter feelings of rage, feelings that may reach intolerable levels, the outlook for favorable results in working with seriously disturbed patients is bleak. One common result of such a predicament is premature termination of treatment, often instigated by the analyst, sometimes unwittingly.
The time-honored prescription for an analyst having difficulty dealing with his countertransference feelings is to discuss these feelings with an analyst. This prescription was followed in the case presented here, but it did not provide the help needed to keep in treatment a rageful, narcissistic patient who attempted to destroy the treatment by attacking, abusing, and torturing me to a point where I could no longer tolerate the feelings he induced and I would have no choice but to get rid of him.
I could and did talk about the feelings involved—rage, hatred, murderous impulses—but the talk was intellectual, without the force and feel of strong emotions that were mine. In the light of