This poem touches on the immense holding capacity the analyst can form within, over the course of an analysis, for a patient they have come to know. The holding capacity changes with time and with the intimacy of the work, and is a place of refuge for a patient who may be in a great deal of pain. It's a part of the empathic, analytic stance that sets our work apart from the ever increasing myriad of behavioral therapies and is often a large part of why patients will stay for analytic work, when no other treatment can reach deeply enough.
When I am finished with everything, she told me,I won't have anything else to do.Nothing else on my mind,So you cannot ask me,What's on my mind.Startled, I wondered aloud,Would her knotted worries all be unraveled?Every thought breathed in,Every memory spoken out?Very precisely,She iced.So you cannot wait for meTo sharpen myself on you,Or think you know what I might have poked you with.I asked then, there will be no unspoken longing?No fragment of a dream forgotten?No mystery that I don't knowAnd you don't either?Do you really plan to end this wayOn my couch?Yes, she thought she might just do that.It might be a restful way to go.Just withhold her last thought,Wait one last moment for me to blinkAnd then drift off.Her eyes would close,Her breathing slow and stop,As I helplessly looked on.And while I waited to see if there was moreShe would silently slip away.With an inward smile I barely sawShe said wouldn't I have a difficult time then,At the end of the hour?When I shifted around and said my usual,Wouldn't I have a hard time then,Clearing her away?With her outward tearThat I couldn't miss,I said we would bothHold her within,As things are, not as things were.We would bothNever need to clear her away.
Sheri A. Butler, M.D., is an adult training and consulting analyst and a child consulting analyst in the child division at the Seattle Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. A published poet and member of TAP's editorial board, she welcomes readers' comments, suggestions, and poetry submissions at .