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Four months after beginning my analytic training, I stumbled into my supervisor's office for our weekly appointment. Collapsing into his leather chair, I began to shake. I had just come from being with (or, in retrospect, I should say, struggling to be with) Sarah, a 31-year-old chronic schizophrenic, a tragic, tormented, hopeless, and bizarre woman. At the end of the session, after rambling in her characteristic style for 45-minutes about the injustices she suffered at the hands of doormen, the butcher, conductors on the subway, and mailmen, she looked toward me for the first time in our two months together, and said that she had a dream last night. With no apparent affect (also characteristic for her) she continued, “There was an enormous all-encompassing penis. And then, it loudly and violently exploded.”
Profoundly distressed, but saved by my watch, I informed Sarah that our time was up.
My first analytic supervisor, after hearing Sarah's dream (I'm sure aware of my discomfort), suggested an interpretation. He said that the patient was clearly telling me that she needed to borrow my power.
Although later in my training I became aware that the supervisor's interpretation reflected only a partial understanding of Sarah's dream (and the least intense piece, overlooking the dream representation of primitive rage and sexuality, fragmentation, confusion of self and object and of core gender identity, and her profound paranoid anxiety), I did stop shaking, went on to discuss the predream content of the session, and most significant