Ethics and Shame in the Countertransference

In the therapeutic process with patients that have suffered from man-made extreme situations, the psychoanalyst experiences extreme ethical dilemmas somehow similar to the ones the patient faces. The therapeutic task implies the elaboration and transformation of these dilemmas in internal conflicts of values and meanings that may reestablish the possibility of ethical choices. The therapist questions himself about the “how” and “what” of his interpretations, but most particularly, at an existential level, the “what for” and even the “why me.” The ethical risk for the therapist is to collude (without awareness) with the torturing system that has been incorporated by the patient and occupies his or her inner life and actually permeates or imprints the therapeutical situation. This “imprinting” or “occupation” has been obtained by the torturing system through the immersion of the victim in a world of fraud and perversion to which he has been obliged to adapt, or, in other words: to get “accustomed to.”

Thinking about countertransference, it is important to acknowledge the penetrability of the phenomena manipulated by man-made social terror, even far away (in time and space) from the traumatic situation. The dismantling of values and symbolic thought may insidiously manifest itself inside the protected therapeutic setting. The psychoanalyst can become inured to the