Grief and Rejuvenation: A Mutual Journey

Abstract

Because we value the analytic relationship as a vehicle for change, we enter into authentic, intimate relationships with our patients. Although we hope to use ourselves emotionally to help our patients, sometimes our own feelings inadvertently intrude and negatively affect the treatment. This article is a clinical illustration of how the analyst’s own emotional vulnerability interacted unconsciously with a particular patient, such that a loss of relational vitality resulted. The analyst needed to access her own emotional state and reconnect with parts of herself in order to both be more fully engaged with the patient and make room for parts of the patient that she was previously unable to reach.

Keywords:

• analyst’s affect
• analyst’s vulnerability
• countertransference
• deadlock
• enactment
• stalemate

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Maria L. Slowiaczek

Maria Slowiaczek, Ph.D., is on the faculty of the Michigan Council for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy and is a founding faculty member of the Relational Psychoanalytic Group of Ann Arbor. She is in private practice in Ann Arbor, Michigan.