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As psychoanalysts, we are all familiar with those moments when the gradual unfurling of the analytic process is interrupted or ruptured, whether momentarily or in a protracted way, by an unexpected event. Sometimes, intrusion from an external source is the culprit; at other times, something shadowy and menacing stirs from the depths of the unconscious. And still at other times, the analytic work collides with the life of the analyst unfolding outside of the consulting room. Indeed, a few months ago, I experienced such a moment. As my 8:00 a.m. patient shut the door behind him, I glanced at my phone before getting up to greet the next patient in the waiting room. The text that popped up stopped me short. “Your mother is not doing well, you should come over as soon as you can.” I sat there for a moment, trying to think. I knew I had to go out and tell my patient that I had just received a text summoning me to attend to a family emergency. I would offer my apologies, and cancel my other patients from the car. But when I went out to meet him, he took one look at my face and half-stood, alarm washing across his features. I invited him to step into the office, but I remained standing as he moved toward his usual chair. I started to say my prepared words. “I’m sorry,” I faltered, quickly realizing that this was so completely out of the ordinary, I couldn’t continue the way I had begun. Unbeknownst to me, my sorrow had opened up an invisible “trapdoor” and my patient and I fell through. We had entered Night Country.
Brody’s marvelous book, Entering Night Country: Psychoanalytic Reflections on Loss and Resilience, with its poetic writing, its breadth of knowledge, and depth of feeling, addresses the analyst’s experience of coming face to face with the “awareness of life’s limitations”—of vulnerability, alienation, los
s, and death. Her recognition of meaningful parallels between the psychoanalytic world that was her “daily habitat” and the “questions and motifs” explored in