When the Analyst's Protected Space is Breached: Commentary on Paper by Stephanie R. Brody

This discussion explores the realm of the analyst's “forced disclosures,” that is, self revelations that, while deliberate, are not so much chosen as required. In focusing on self disclosures regarding the analyst's health and embodied vulnerability, I investigate the psychic challenges we are up against when our human vulnerability becomes evident to our patients. I implicate the legacy of historical analytic ideals that can threaten analytic identity when this occurs. While relational psychoanalysis is founded on a philosophical appreciation for the existential dimension of human experience as the inexorable meeting ground of the analytic encounter, this relational sensibility does not translate readily into a concrete holding environment for the dyad when the analyst becomes seriously ill. I suggest that relational theory and practice need to develop a more fully articulated and elaborated existential framework that can hold the analyst and patient securely when the analyst inhabits the position of a suffering subject with the patient. I describe how manifestations of the analyst's vulnerability may jar existing transference phenomena, creating the opportunity for the dyad to engage the existential dimension of experience as it interacts with the patient's history and dynamics. This discussion concludes with a consideration of problematic social and psychic forces that are often at play when knowledge of the analyst's vulnerability filters through psychoanalytic communities.