The Skinless Analyst

ABSTRACT

The author explores the intimate work of doing psychoanalysis during and after the death of her husband. Unconsciously she needed her patients as she recovered from losing the protection of her husband. She explores the benefits and wonders of self-disclosure in the consulting room. Through Plato’s Gorgias myth about the last judgment, the author explores her soul in relation to her patients’ reactions to their skinless analyst. She quotes modern relational psychoanalysts as she questions her work as an exposed and vulnerable psychoanalyst.

KEY WORDS:

• Gorgias, husband’s death
• intimacy
• Jung
• relational psychoanalysis
• self-disclosure
• skin
• skinless analyst
• soul search

Note

References to The Collected Works of C. G. Jung are cited in the text as CW, volume number, and paragraph number. The Collected Works are published in English by Routledge (UK) and Princeton University Press (USA).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Betsy Cohen

BETSY COHEN, LCSW, PhD, is an analyst and teacher of relational psychoanalysis at the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco. She authored The Snow White Syndrome: All about Envy (Macmillan, 1987) and published a chapter, “Tangled up in Blue: A Reappraisal of Complex Theory,” in How and Why We Still Read Jung (Routledge, 2013). She has also published several articles in Jung Journal: Culture & Psyche, The Intimate Self-Disclosure” (2005), “Emmanuel Levinas and Depth Psychotherapy” (2008), “Jung’s Answer to Jews” (2013), “Dr. Jung and his Patients” (2015), and “The Flexible Frame: Holding the Patient in Mind” (2017). Her abiding work is on the connection between the ancient wisdom of Plato, the Song of Songs, and relational psychotherapy. Correspondence: [email protected].