Introduction

Tuesday, September 11, 2001, was a brilliantly sunny, late summer day. As I drove up the Palisades Parkway (about 15 miles northwest of Manhattan) to drop my daughter off at preschool, I smiled, reflecting on the summer just past as one of the best in recent memory.

So begins Mary Gail Frawley-O'Dea's article “When the Trauma Is Terrorism and the Therapist Is Traumatized Too: Working as an Analyst Since 9/11.” Her understanding of the impact of 9/11 on the therapist appeared in the inaugural issue of Psychoanalytic Perspectives in Nov/Dec 2003. For your convenience, it is reprinted in its entirety online at our website, psychperspectives.com. Alternatively, you can order a copy of the issue from N.I.P. T.I.1

In her article, Frawley-O'Dea discussed her efforts to work with patients in the immediate aftermath of the attack on the World Trade Center. She described her private reactions on that traumatic day, which dislodged her from her natural analytic posture in various treatment relationships. She discussed how, in part, her reactions to her patients were informed by her subjective experience, including unfamiliar and, at times, unsettling ways of relating in the treatment room, including self-disclosure and the way in which her politics uncharacteristically entered the analytic space. Frawley-O'Dea also reminded therapists of the importance of attending to their own needs in order to have the psychic resources available for their patients.

To further the dialogue on the important issues with which we continue to struggle in the aftermath of 9/11, we now present thoughtful and