To Be Saved and Not Saved: The Ongoing Challenge of Working in the Depressive Position: Reply to Commentaries

Abstract

In this response to the generative commentaries by Stefanie Solow Glennon and Steven Cooper, I address issues taken up by the two discussants, including the analyst’s challenges to both work in and help her patient work in the depressive position, and to envision a sense of psychic future. I also explore questions related to Relational notions of therapeutic action, in the context of a recent panel in Psychoanalytic Dialogues that considers whether Relational psychoanalysis has gone too far in the direction of relationality and away from privacy, contemplation, and reverie.

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Notes on contributors

Lauren Levine

Lauren Levine, Ph.D., is on the Faculty of the Stephen A. Mitchell Center for Relational Studies and on the Editorial Board of Psychoanalytic Dialogues. She is a Supervisor in the Clinical Psychology Doctoral program at City University of New York and Visiting Faculty at the Tampa Bay Psychoanalytic Society. She has published articles on transformative aspects of the analyst’s personal analysis and their resonance in our work with patients, the impact of shame on the creative process, and the ways in which shame, recognition, and creativity are co-constructed in analytic realms, trauma and mutual vulnerability. Dr. Levine is a psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City.