‘Tis Better to Give Than to Receive: A Patient's Transformational Use of Gifts in an Analytic Therapy

Abstract

The author discusses William Lubart's paper “Hans and Me: Transformation of Revulsion in the Countertransference within an Analytic Therapy.” In the treatment, Hans gives gifts to the therapist, both material and affective, and the therapist's intentional and unintentional responses to these gifts are a critical factor in facilitating their work through impasse in the treatment. After examining the possible meanings and impacts of the various explicit gifts in the treatment, the author considers how, through the process of projective identification, the patient “gives the gift” of his shame to the therapist and how this forces the therapist to attend to it in a manner which helps both the patient and the therapist to grow.

KEYWORDS:

• gift
• psychoanalytic psychotherapy
• gift in therapy
• projective identification
• boundary violation
• frame violation
• psychoanalytic discussion