Epilogue

I am Grateful to the Contributors to This Volume for Their willingness to struggle with the complicated, controversial, elusive, and enigmatic theme of analytic love. These rich and generative contributions offer multiple perspectives on the nature and the uses of the analyst's love. I would hope that our efforts to recognize and understand the meaning of the analyst's loving feelings will continue to be explored and questioned, because ultimately, there are as many kinds of analytic love as there are analysts.

At this point, then, what conclusions, if any, can be drawn? For one, we all agree that it is crucial that we do not allow loving feelings for patients to cause them harm. Yet even when no harm is done, it is not always clear that such feelings do them any special good. What does seem incontrovertible from these contributions is that analysts often experience loving feelings toward patients, and that these loving feelings often accompany productive therapeutic work.

Whether or not the patient benefits from our loving feelings, I know that, for myself, I take the awakening of these feelings in the course of my work as a perquisite, a gift that supports and encourages me to stay the course.

I am moved again and again in my work by the enormous efforts people will make, sometimes against all odds, to find love. With this in mind, some time ago I hung in my office a print of Albrecht Durer's “The Knight, Death and the Devil.” The knight on his horse is looking straight ahead, focused one-pointedly on his quest. Accompanying him to his right is Death, and following behind is the Devil, but the Knight's gaze is directed unflinchingly toward his goal. Often, and especially with those patients who have known considerable suffering, I think of analytic therapy as akin to this kind of quest. We have only so much time; and more than likely, a good deal of darkness to contend with. In the course of our work, will the patient come to feel that they have been able to reach lo