The Analyst’s Affect: The Way Back from Gridlock, Blindspots, and Loss of Vitality

Abstract

In this clinical account, my dream life and my patient’s highlight unformulated affects which contribute to therapeutic gridlock. Six years into our once captivating work, foggy deadness envelops us, rendering us confused about the loss of our passionate engagement. I grapple with my contribution to our stalemate and the ensuing collapse of reflective space by recognizing my discomfort with the patient’s seemingly frozen, deadened state. A potent dream arrives for the patient and, then, for me, which revitalizes self-reflection and dialogue. As part of our reparative process, I share my dream and we explore its intersubjective meanings, reestablishing mutuality and empathic understanding. Our reciprocal dream life becomes the site of renewed connection, mutual vulnerability, and vital witnessing.

Keywords:

• deadlock
• dreams
• mutual vulnerability
• stalemate
• trauma
• witnessing

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Heather Ferguson

Heather Ferguson, LCSW, is faculty and supervisor at the Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity, the Manhattan Institute, and the Institute for Expressive Analysis. She has chapters in Ghosts in the Consulting Room: Echoes of Trauma in Psychoanalysis, Editors, Harris, Kalb, and Klebanoff, Routledge, 2016, and Art, Creativity, and Psychoanalysis: Perspectives from Analyst-Artists, Editor, George Hagman, Routledge, 2017. She has a private practice in NYC.