A Voice Lost, A Voice Found: After the Death of the Analyst

Abstract

What is the fate of the analytic life created by the analysand and the analyst when only half the dyad remains? This essay explores the author's experience in the wake of her analyst's sudden death. After experiencing the sudden loss of her analyst, the author loses contact with that part of herself that had come to access thoughts and feelings and share them with a particular other. She describes a process of alteration in her relationship with the person, transferential and real, of her analyst, focusing on a series of dreams after her analyst's death that illustrates how retaining and cementing her relationship with her deceased analyst, through internalization, facilitated the return of her analysand voice. The author explores the confounding variable of entering another analytic relationship within the context of a traumatic ending to her previous analysis.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I appreciate the thoughtful comments about this essay generously given by Sharon Bass, Jane Burka, J. Samuel Chase, Barbara Cohen, Dianne Elise, Adrienne Harris, Jeanne Harasemovitch, Cornelia St. John, Patricia Marra, and Milton Schaefer. I thank Abby Wolfson for her encouragement and help. Versions of this paper were presented at the 46th International Psychoanalytical Association and the 20th International Psychoanalytical Studies Organization Congress, July 2009, Chicago, IL and at the International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, February 2010, San Francisco, CA.

My deep gratitude to Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer, Ph.D.

Notes

Robin A. Deutsch, Ph.D., is Member and Faculty, San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis; Teaching and Supervising Faculty, Access Institute for Psychological Services, San Francisco; and Teaching and Supervising Faculty, California Pacific Medical Center, San Francisco. She has a private practice in Oakland, California.