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My purpose in this paper is to both define hopelessness in psychoanalytic treatment, and to provide a clinical illustration and theoretical explanation for its handling. In so doing, I will review the relevant literature, use a briefcase history, and explore treatment in terms of the false self, emptiness, fear of neediness, self-envy, self-representation, the archaic superego, transference, the working alliance, and inner imprisonment. Finally, I will attempt to identify the etiology of hopelessness, and discuss the role of the analyst.
Freud once pointed out that “by words, one person can make another blissfully happy or drive him to despair” (1915-1917, p. 19). He probably would have agreed that a person can affect himself as drastically through thought, feeling and impulse.
By despair, or hopelessness, I mean a pervasively felt inability to control life or alter destiny. No affect is more terribly debilitating. Thus the terror of Dante's inscription, “Abandon all hope ye who enter here.” Harshness and finality merge in the one trump of judgment.
Boris (1976) notes that little has been written about hope and even less about hopelessness. He distinguishes between desire and hope. Desire aims toward gratification and is thus a phenomenon of the moment. Hope is more time-bound. It is potential. According to Boris, hope flourishes in change and uncertainty, yet he also asserts that people in despair consciously tend to change everything around them that is not