When the analyst falls ill Implications for the treatment relationship

Abstract

This paper describes how the temporary illness of the analyst affects the analytic work when it breaks the habitual analytic setting and exposes the analyst to countertransference reactions. The illness stimulates different meanings and reactions in the analysand. The paper describes how the fostering of the habitual analytic work helps the analysand to make use of the event, i.e., to integrate it into the transference. In the light of the patient cases, it would seem that corporeality is the key: the crucial question is what it means not only to the analyst him/herself but also to the analysand, that the analyst's body remains unchanged, secure, living and stable and does not require any particular attention.