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“What incident do you remember as pivotal in your own personal analysis?” was the question I put to a small circle of friends and colleagues who were lingering over a last cup of coffee at a late night meeting.
One woman who had been orphaned at birth replied, “It was when, at a particularly difficult time in my life, my therapist said to me, To the best of my ability I want to be the mother for you that you never had.”' Another, rather austere, self-contained woman said, “A turning point for me was when my analyst said with tears in her eyes, ‘I'l cry for you until you can cry for yourself.’” Surprisingly, a third colleague said that her analyst told her in a moment of frustration, “I find it very difficult to work with you sometimes…. Just when I think we have a secure bond, our connection imperceptibly slips away.” My colleague went on to explain that this spontaneous expression of exasperation was a turning point for her because in that moment she recognized that her analyst was personally affected by her and was not just “being nice.”
Pivotal experiences in analysis are frequently occasioned by the heartfelt expression of subjective experience on the part of the analyst. They comprise, in some way, a fulfillment of the hope for a new beginning: a symbolic enactment that powerfully communicates to the analysand that the analyst is fully engaged in the relationship and impacted by it. The patients in this discussion had been able to elicit from their analysts expressions of a genuine desire to co-create the kind of relational experience that the patients needed in order to grow.