Dangerous Liaisons: The Time Is Out of Joint

ABSTRACT

Anne is an older woman, with a history of severe, complex trauma, including abandonment and multiple rounds of sexual abuse, which started in her early childhood and was followed by sexual exploitation in a previous experience of therapy. In this article I discuss her treatment with me in the context of the #MeToo movement and the rest of the current troubling sociopolitical constellation. I argue that when tanks crash into our bedrooms and transform them into battlefields, seismic psychic change occurs: catastrophic or healing or both. I also contemplate the nature of the psychoanalytic contract between patient and therapist, as well as the limits of the psychoanalytic endeavor in the face of massive social and historical trauma, “when the time is out of joint” (Shakespeare, “Hamlet”).

Acknowledgments

I thank Adrienne Harris, Ph.D., and the various people in her study group and in my peer group (Naomi Curtner, L.C.S.W., Vanessa Jackson, L.C.S.W., Ona Lindquist, L.C.S.W., Alain Verscheure, L.C.S.W.) for their invaluable contributions to developing this article.

Notes

¹ There is a seeming contradiction between the Bionian (1967a) ideal of approaching each session without memory or desire, and the concept of transformation in O (Civitarese, 2019), and between engaging in spontaneous or, especially, premeditated self-disclosure. Yet in my mind I can reconcile the two concepts. I am no purist. Yes, as much as I wish to be immersed in the emerging encounter of the moment, there are times when the patient’s vulnerability and anxiety or my own calls for an offering on my part. There is dialectical tension between these modes of functioning, but they are not mutually exclusive.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Veronica Csillag

Veronica Csillag, L.C.S.W., is Co-Director, Faculty, Training and Supervising Analyst, Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis; and former faculty member, NYU School of Social Work. She is the author of several psychoanalytic papers, which were published in a variety of journals, The American Journal of Psychoanalysis, Psychoanalytic Dialogues, and The Psychoanalytic Quarterly among them. She is in private practice in New York City.