The same caveat applies to the psychoanalytic literature, which is, alas, often parochial in its references. I certainly have no argument with the idea that therapy, much like any other interpersonal intimacy, requires a dialectic of making and breaking contact, of closeness and separation, of engagement and privacy, and that this alternation might without anxiety be experienced by both participants as normative. They impress me rather as despairing, as discordant with and disruptive of the therapist's expectations and, paradoxically, that may be where their therapeutic efficacy lies. I admire immensely what Poland does as a therapist, his obvious skill and concern, and his sophistication as a theorist. Where we might well disagree are the terms in which we would conceptualize what it is he does when he does what he obviously knows so well how to do.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
A Necessary Unity. Distance and relation. The Divine Comedy. The therapeutic despair. Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory.