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It is seventeen years since I reported my experience of conflict in working with a patient who attempted to seduce me with money (Rothstein 1986). First, he informed me that he had left me $250,000 in a recently written will; then he suggested creating a foundation that I would administer. Finally, he offered me a retainer of $20,000 per year after the termination of his analysis to ensure my subsequent availability. Treating all these seductions as fantasies, rather than collaborating with him in their enactment, proved beneficial in our analytic work.
Ten years after terminating his analysis, Mr. X developed a terminal illness to which he subsequently succumbed. After being diagnosed, he returned to treatment to work on his experience of dying. In our last session, shortly before his death, he hugged me, told me how grateful he was, and that he loved me. After his death, I found myself having a recurrent daydream: a lawyer called to inform me that Mr. X had, in fact, left me $250,000 in his will. This daydream emphasizes the ubiquity of interminable conflict and analysts' susceptibility to the seduction of money.
In the past decade, the movement to establish psychoanalytic foundations has gained momentum. Recently, I became aware that a patient currently in analytic treatment had become significantly involved with the psychoanalytic foundation of the institute with which her analyst was affiliated. This experience reminded me of the seductive offer of Mr. X to administer a foundation named the X-Rothstein Foundation. In 1986, I noted that