From Dead to Alive: Desire, Dissociation and Passion in the Analytic Dyad

Abstract

When patients present in a deadened state, the analyst may feel a sense of futility and shame in his efforts to have impact. This may cause him to withdraw and contribute to an enactment in which both participants purge themselves of wanting anything from the other, sapping the treatment of purpose and aliveness. The author presents a model in which the analyst can reawaken his desire for recognition and connection and utilize it to introduce the patient to his or her own dissociated longings. This involves fortitude on the therapist’s part, since he must withstand the rejection that had caused him to withdraw in the first place, and also be sensitive to the patient’s fear of retraumatization. But if the analyst can do this, he can not only break through the impasse, but enliven the patient and infuse the treatment with a sense of purpose and hope.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I thank Philip Bromberg, Jessica Benjamin, Thomas Johnson, Joyce Selter, and Michael Keren for their comments on earlier versions of this paper.

Notes

1. ¹ For the sake of simplicity, throughout this paper I use the pronoun “he” to refer to both the analyst and the patient.

2. ² A much earlier version of this clinical example appears in Sherman (2005).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Eric Sherman

Eric Sherman, LCSW, is a Faculty Member and Supervisor at the National Institute for the Psychotherapies and the Center for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis of New Jersey, where he is also Associate Director of Training. He is in private practice in New York City and Montclair, New Jersey.