Epilogue

We'd Like to End this Second Volume on the Case of ann and Judy with some words from Ann herself. Ann had read some of the discussions as well as listening to tapes of the three plenary panels from the 23rd Annual Conference on the Psychology of the Self, October, 2001. Ann had especially wanted to know what Judy Pickles had said in response to the case discussions: Would she, Ann, be shamed or betrayed? Would Judy stand up for both of them and their work together in the face of criticism? The panels as a whole served as a set of interpretations that became the source of explicit conversation between them over the next six to nine months. In general, the material was useful and generative for the therapy, with each participant feeling both strengthened and challenged in terms of their work together by what they came to understand as the discussants' meanings about their process.

In particular, Ann clearly felt more understood by some discussants and less so by others. What troubled her most was when the discussant seemed to her to be too abstract, too suspicious, or too removed from Ann's own experience. Again, Judith Pickles (2001) describes more particularly Ann's reactions, as well as her own, but for our purposes here, we want to emphasize the value of this entire experience to those most directly involved: patient and analyst.

We will conclude by emphasizing once more the importance from our perspective of having multiple viewpoints on specific clinical material. We hope our readers have benefited in therapeutic understanding and knowledge as much as we have from what our discussants had to say.