Intimate Contact in the Landscape of Mortality: Commentary on Papers by Rachel Kozlowski and Kirsten Lentz

ABSTRACT

The following is a discussion of papers by Kozlowski and Lentz that explore the presence of mortality in the analytic relationship. The author reflects on challenges to the dyad, the vulnerability of the analyst, and how the individual and analytic pair may confront their existential reality separately or together. The author includes the idea of “death origin stories” to emphasize that mortality has a presence throughout the life of the individual; she suggests how psychoanalytic theory and technique may be enhanced by including an explanation of the earliest penetration of death into consciousness and whether this lens may enhance our sensitivity to mortality and our ability to manage loss and endings.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ I would like to acknowledge my gratitude to my Existential Maturity Research Group (Denia Barrett, Linda Emanuel, Rob Galatzer-Levy, Phil Lebovitz, Joe Schwartz and Molly Witten), for our challenging and stimulating clinical, research and personal discussions regarding the topic of mortality in our professional work. These conversations have been cruicial to understanding of mortality.

² My book, Entering Night Country: Psychoanalytic Reflections on Loss and Resilience (Brody, 2016) focuses on the existential condition, and the discussion of the core human experiences of personal loss, mortality, aging and illness. The book addresses the avoidance and integration of this awareness, and the many ways “night country” penetrates the clinical dyad. The title of my book was inspired by Loren Eiseley’s The Night Country and a moment when he is faced with terror and writes: “If you cannot bear the silence and the darkness, do not go there; if you dislike black night and yawning chasms, never make them your profession” (Eiseley, 1971, p. 14). Of course, this is exactly the profession of psychoanalysis.

³ This topic is taken up extensively in my book Entering Night Country: Psychoanalytic Reflections on Loss and Resilience (Brody, 2016). In Chapter 9, Omnipotent Illusion, I discuss the challenges associated with forming the “analytic identity,” the “rules,” and how changes in technique and theory play a part in privacy, self-disclosure, omnipotence, conflict and illusion in the psychoanalytic profession.

⁴ I would like to acknowledge my gratitude to the Existential Maturity Research Group and its members: Denia Barrett, Linda Emanuel, Rob Galatzer-Levy, Phil Lebovitz, Joe Schwartz and Molly Witten. Our challenging and stimulating clinical, research and personal discussions regarding the topic of mortality in our professional work has, over the past 3 years, contributed to my evolving understanding of the existential question in work and in life. Our conversations have approached this topic with profound respect, vitality, humor and meaning, for which I am deeply grateful.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Stephanie R. Brody

Stephanie R. Brody, Psy.D., is a Supervising and Training Analyst at Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute and Lecturer in Psychology, Department of Psychiatry (part-time) Harvard Medical School, and a Clinical Associate in Psychology and Attending Psychologist, McLean Hospital. She is the author of Entering Night Country: Psychoanalytic Reflections on Loss and Resilience (Routledge, 2016) and Editor (with Frances Arnold, Ph.D) of Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Women and Their Experience of Desire, Ambition and Leadership (Routledge, 2019). Dr. Brody maintains a private practice in Lexington, MA.