Must Every Analysis Be “Mutual?” (Ferenczi) and “Asymmetrical?” (Lewis Aron)

When Lew Aron knew he was approaching the end of his life, he took consolation in imagining a reunion in what would be his perfect heaven—a place to resume his ongoing study groups in collaboration with his favorite partners in thought. Of course, such images of his heaven after life were sweet and bitter, as he was firmly in medias res. Lew had much more love and work and life to enjoy. He was at the height of his powers when cancer struck. The work that he loved became, among other things, a race against the limited time that remained. I worked with him as an editor on his last paper for Psychoanalytic Dialogues, one he wrote with Amy Lieberman, when he was already ill, returning to Harold Searles groundbreaking contributions to psychoanalysis. Searles influenced us both greatly in his emphasis on the therapist’s use of his own unconscious experience as relational psychoanalysis was getting underway. Lew and I talked together about the limits of time imposed by our mortality; he encouraged me to get on with my own writing, before it was too late, to be sure to say what I wanted to say now—which served as “wake-up call” that I know impelled me forward with my two books, just coming out now, that had been awaiting completion for way too long. I will always be grateful to Lew for that reality check and encouragement.

Lew’s heaven was a place, like the deeply engaged life he lived on earth, to think together and to write. Thinking and writing, teaching and mentoring, alongside his deep personal and intellectual partnership with Galit Atlas, were Lew’s heaven on earth and so shaped his conception of the eternal heaven. He would reunite with Stephen Mitchell and Manny Ghent, and since souls know no time boundaries, Ferenczi himself could join the club. Now that Jonathan Lear, Irwin Hoffman and Philip Bromberg have become eligible for this heavenly society of thinkers, I happily imagine Lew organizing meeting times when the group could continue their study of Being and Ti