Prologue: Safety—The Patient, The Analyst, The Dyad

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Notes

¹ Development is uneven—we find some of the experiences we need but not others in our complex worlds of home, daycare, later school, camp, and activities. Nannies, babysitters, grandparents, relatives, and teachers, all can become self-object lifelines for children who are deprived of needed experiences of safety and vitality with their primary caregivers (although the deprivation always leaves small or large traces in us, sometimes profound limitations). Then there are our inborn talents and resources—we have our minds and our abilities. I lived in a world of books as a child—it was my refuge, as learning and fantasy were for so many of us. We found ways to go on … even to thrive, in some parts of our lives. Perhaps we forget to communicate our patients’ strengths when we write our papers (cf. Levin, 2015, for an account of how one of my patients flourished when I actively valued his strengths, rather than hammering him with his defects as he claimed his first analyst seemed to do).

² We often see inexperienced supervisees who hear concretely everything their patients say. Then they panic, unable to hold the complex storms unleashed in the therapeutic process, unable to step back so they can contextualize them. There is the ever-present risk of unconsciously (or consciously) provoking a difficult patient to flee treatment. One of my early supervisors wisely told me: “Carol, when you have more experience, your patients will stay longer.” Being able to hold on to a modicum of safety, to persevere and endure as the analysts in these articles do, can take so many years, so much hard work.