Everything is Just Fine?

In the quiet of my office, Dorit’s arrival follows a familiar routine. She enquires about my well-being as she settles on the couch directly across from me. “I’m okay. Everything is just fine,” she declares, her eyes locking onto mine with an intensity that binds and suffocates. Her stare, like a muted scream, speaks of desperation; it feels intolerable to hold and impossible to release. We teeter on the edge of an agony that cannot yet be named.

“Everything is just fine” echoes the hollow contentment of Dorit’s life. She is financially secure, with ample leisure, and in a stable relationship. Yet something is missing; her life is just fine but not much more. Devoid of strong desires or motivations, Dorit wonders, is there more to life? Occasionally, Dorit’s emotional monotony is shattered by waves of all-consuming anxiety. Triggered by interpersonal conflicts, her dreadful fear surfaces, leaving her terrified that small rifts she cannot mend will abruptly end relationships.

The “breakdown [that] has already happened,” but has yet to be experienced (Winnicott, 1974, p. 105) resonates as I remember Dorit’s childhood on a Kibbutz where children lived in a special children’s house. They were raised in small groups and cared for by designated caretakers. Beyond the nursing period, children typically saw their parents once a day for an afternoon visit.

Our sessions follow a familiar rhythm. There is an animating crisis, some foray into the exploration of rich and generative material, but then the conversation ebbs, returning us to the painful place of nothingness, marked by Dorit’s penetrating stare.

My reverie takes me to another kind of stare: to my son, nursing him before bedtime, his gaze unfocused, peaceful. Is this what Winnicott (1962) meant by “unintegration,” I wonder? The state wherein the parent’s “ego-supportive function being taken for granted” allows the child to relax and be free of the need to integrate? (p. 61). Ogden (2014) underscores that for Winnicott th