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Scharff's Account of a Nine-Session Sequence in the middle phase of a four times a week analysis demonstrates the suffering of the maternal void in the transference-countertransference. Neither patient nor analyst is turned on or excited by these analytic sessions. Scharff honestly and courageously describes her Internal processes and responses to the patient. She reports feeling abusive, abandoning, useless, intrusive, penetrative. There is agreement on the part of patient and analyst that the sessions feel unproductive, unrewarding, that little work is getting done. Each partner in the analytic dyad complains of the other's passivity. Scharff experiences the patient as waiting for the analyst to give her a jump start. The patient acknowledges this and waits. The analyst recognizes that much of the analytic work is being done by her internally and that she is frustrated by the patient's resistance to working analytically. She imagines the patient's wringing her heart so that she can feel the patient's heartbreak and feel responsible for her suffering.
Scharff and Scharff (1992) have distinguished containing and holding. Containing refers to the clinician's Internal processes in dealing with the patient's projected overwhelming and intolerable psychic states. Holding refers to the analyst's actions in supporting