A Comment on Pekka Kiviranta "Disbelief and Trust in Psychoanalysis - A Case Study"

On listening to the other analyst's voice: "In fact we were fellow language students, although she did not know this". We read Pekka Kiviranta's paper a while ago, but it was only in March 2002, when we met in Pécs (Hungary), that we had the time and were in the appropriate mood to talk about it. The seminar in the Autobiographical Dialogue we had given for two and a half days at the University of Pécs was over. We had an early lunch at Afium, a casual place with a university atmosphere. I (Gersh) took my wine and coffee to another table, as Judy was talking with Kata (a PhD student who participated in the seminar), discussing her paper on trauma. While re-reading Kiviranta's paper and browsing in our previous notes, I glanced from time to time at the mother-daughter scene at the table I had just left, touching in my mind the parallel father/therapist-patient/daughter situation in Pekka's case and in my own life and work. I was still feeling the power of the life-stories that came out in the seminar-dialogues - as part of the seminar we had asked students to write and talk about their personal life-connection with psychoanalysis, to talk about the nature and history of their voice in both conversation and writing - so it was in that context that Pekka and Silja were with me for a while, and it was from there that I rejoined Judy's table, as Kata was taking her leave and we moved back to this discussion.