To Have and to Hold: Psychoanalytic Dialogues on the Desire to Own

This paper is an investigation into the psychodynamic and cross-culturally determined underpinnings of the desire to own and be owned as they manifest in our clinical work. We explore these issues in two voices: a female Israeli analyst and her male Israeli patients living far from their original homes, and also an American-born, Jewish male analyst with strong ties to, criticisms of, and longings for his ancestral homeland. Broadening our scope, we look beyond nationality and reflect on additional ways in which owning, very often related to gender and sexuality, serves as a means for processing personal, cultural, and mythological trauma, often the result of profound loss. Sharing the experience of co-writing this paper, we raise the question of how two people can create a “third” and still feel ownership both of their original ideas and the joint product. Can two parents equally own one baby? Can two nations equally own one land? We hope that an examination of these clinical, internal, and interpersonal struggles will help clarify patients' experiences in and out of treatment and clinicians' transference–countertransference responses around the desire to own and be owned.