Being, thinking, creating: When war attacks the setting and the transference counter‐attacks

Abstract

When trauma enters into the reality of the analyst and of the analysand, when it attacks the setting, what becomes of the analyst’s role? How can transformations be brought about? With reference to three clinical situations, the author attempts to explore how the articulation between transference and countertransference – the inter‐relation – structures the situation; the analyst must remain in his or her role as analyst through managing to create and to reflect upon the clinical aspects of that situation when faced with the unpredictability of what war brings in its wake. It then becomes possible to see how the work of the negative can be confined to the outer limits of the setting.

Key words:

• countertransference
• inter‐relation
• intersubjectivity
• setting
• trauma
• war
• work of the negative
• transference

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Erratum

Notes

1. In Green’s (2003) sense of the term in Idées directrices pour une psychanalyse contemporaine. Paris: PUF 2nd edition.

2. In A. Green and J.‐L. Donnet’s sense of the term.

3. Letter from Freud to Jung, 7 June 1909 (McGuire, 1974, p. 230).