“And in that Dream, I Have Another Dream”

ABSTRACT

My discussion of Roitman’s paper focuses on the patient’s refusal of the work of mourning, producing, instead, an idealizing, hermetic narrative which attacks any link with loss. This hermetic narrative leaves her trapped in a hollow territory in which language evacuates grief, or gets between her and her grief, rather than allowing contact with it. This also affects the therapeutic process, in which no vital link between therapist and patient, either, is allowed. The only way out of this grip is the therapist’s willingness to give up symbolic/metaphoric interpretations for the sake of working on the level of metonymic interventions, or even surrendering to the psychotic level of pure enactment.

This article refers to:

Soldering Abyss: The Intersubjective Roots of the Sense of the Void. Rereading Clinical Case Reported by Winnicott

View responses to this article:

“With a Changing Key”: Reply to Dana Amir

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Notes

¹ The choice of the name Rachel for Yaakov’s patient seems significant here: like her Biblical namesake, this Rachel too is Yaakov (Jacob’s) beloved and the object of his great yearning.

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Notes on contributors

Dana Amir

Dana Amir, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist, supervising and training analyst at the Israel psychoanalytic society, full professor, vice dean for research and head of the interdisciplinary doctoral program in psychoanalysis at Haifa University, editor in chief of Maarag – the Israel Annual of Psychoanalysis, poetess and literature researcher. She is the author of six poetry books, two memoirs in prose and four psychoanalytic nonfiction books: Cleft Tongue (Karnac, 2014), On the Lyricism of the Mind (Routledge, 2016), Bearing Witness to the Witness (Routledge, 2018) and Psychoanalysis on the Verge of Language: Clinical Cases on the Edge (Routledge, 2021). She was awarded many literary and academic prizes, including five international psychoanalytic awards.