I Will Remember You: Discussion of Papers by Kirsten Lentz and Rachel Kozlowski

ABSTRACT

Rachel Kozlowitz and Kirsten Lentz have challenged psychoanalysis to consider more deeply the impact on analysands when the therapist becomes mortally ill and/or dies, and to make the necessary personal exploration (Kozlowski) and structural and theoretical adjustments in the field (Lentz) required to accommodate this possibility. In this discussion, Blaustein contextualizes their thoughtful arguments in our culture’s general aversion to talking about death. Drawing on the work of Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP), Blaustein also builds upon the authors’ shared recognition that when serious illness or mortality enter the treatment room, the analytic frame must be reimagined and expanded to make room for the positive and loving aspects of the analytic relationship – which may have been latent and unexplored to date – to become manifest and shared consciously between the dyad as a way to help offset the profound feelings of isolation, self-doubt and betrayal often reported by patients whose analysts have died without preparation or warning.

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

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Jeannie Blaustein

Jeannie Blaustein, Ph.D., D. Ministry, is a licensed clinical psychologist, and has a doctorate in pastoral care and counseling, with additional training and experience in hospital chaplaincy and hospice. She is the founding board chair of Reimagine End of Life (2017), a national non-profit dedicated to transforming our experiences of mortality, loss and adversity so that we may all live fully until the end.