On Jack Drescher's “Handle with Care”

Abstract

This discussion of Jack Drescher's case, “Handle with Care” is in three parts: a reflection on case study writing and its psychiatric and psychoanalytic methods; a portrait of the patient in the case and his gay partner as two perfectionistic obsessional characters, making particular demands on therapists as such; and a series of questions about “learning to accept limits” as a goal of treatment.

KEYWORDS:

• psychoanalytic case writing
• character
• obsessional character
• homosexual partnerships
• therapeutic action
• counter-transference

Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, PhD, is the author of many books, including a biography of Anna Freud and The Anatomy of Prejudices.