Desire and Dread in the Analyst: Reply to Glen Gabbard's Commentary on “Love in the Afternoon”*

In reading Dr. Gabbard's comments on my paper “Love in the Afternoon: A Relational Reconsideration of Desire and Dread in the Countertransference,” I found myself intrigued by the realization that two clinicians could begin with such fundamentally compatible views about the nature, purpose, structure, and goals of the psychoanalytic encounter, agree in large measure about the psychodynamics of a particular clinical case, yet end up advocating such diametrically opposite courses of therapeutic action. It is, I believe, the unique contribution of Psychoanalytic Dialogues to provide a forum wherein such distinctions can be noted, intellectually processed, and then argued persuasively by both participants before a group of interested colleagues.

In pursuing the sources of disagreement with Gabbard, it perhaps makes sense to begin with a brief description of what I believe to be our starting points of common ground. It would seem that he and I both begin with a firm belief in the coparticipation of patient and analyst in inevitable transference-countertransference reenactments, the experience, containment, and interpretation of which become one of the most powerful vehicles for psychoanalytic change. We would also agree, I believe, that the unconscious internalized self- and object representations of both patient and analyst, when brought together in a transitional arena of optimal freedom and safety, determine the