The man who could not cry and the psychoanalyst who could: mutual healing in the maternal transference/countertransference.
This is a clinical/theoretical study of mutual healing in the maternal transference/countertransference. Therapist and patient began their work when each was in extreme mourning. I detail sensory, affective transactions between them that proved transformative. I deem these basic to the healing that was unusually rapid. It broke through the patient's dissociation, and the therapist's sorrow. I note that the treatment modalities were similar to those essential to mother/infant bonding. I connect the treatment's transformative effects with those discovered through infant research and studies with the functioning magnetic resonance imagery test (fMRI). All three of these modes of interpersonal study-psychotherapy, infant, and fMRI research-exhibit mind/body imprinting of the mother/infant deeply connected experience.
William Alanson White Institute, New York City, New York, USA. helenekafka@yahoo.com
Helene
H
Kafka
D003448:Crying; D006801:Humans; D009034:Mother-Child Relations; D011369:Professional-Patient Relations; D011573:Psychoanalytic Interpretation; D014167:Transference, Psychology