Lost and Found, and Letting Go

Abstract

This essay is an individual reflection on the analyst’s personal history of loss and trauma, as well as part of a theoretical exploration of the unconscious forces always at play in analytic work. Working through the patient’s experience of loss allows for the exploration of key transference and countertransference dynamics and the recognition of the analyst’s own identification with the experience of being “torn between remembering and forgetting. ”

Keywords:

• development
• loss
• memory
• mourning
• trauma.

Acknowledgments

The patient has read and consented to the publication of this essay.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michael J. Feldman

Michael J. Feldman, MD, is a psychoanalyst and both an adult and child psychiatrist. He writes about gender and sexuality, loss and resilience, family trauma, and ghosts. Dr. Feldman is on the faculty of the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and is in private practice working with adults and children in New York City.