Webinars are structured, listserv-based discussions which take place via email.

INTRODUCTION

How we build our theories and decide on our preferred clinical interventions is deeply rooted in our own childhood experiences.  Our early role as caretakers in our families of origin precociously organized our relational paradigm around being empathic and solicitous, always with the goal of restoring peace and contentment.  As children, we were not the facilitators of conflict and I believe this carries over into our persona as therapists.  Yet we also disavow the gratifications of analytic work, in accordance with the need to see ourselves as selfless. Why are both the notions of gratification and of conflict and negative feelings so controversial?

There seems to be little room for conceiving of the personal benefit for the therapist as normal, healthy and inevitable, even though we all experience it on a regular basis.  And there is arguably even less room to acknowledge that we routinely feel boredom, disinterest, alienation, schadenfreude, anger, and disgust. And have we embraced enactment as a way of side-stepping responsibility for facilitating the conflict that we avoid out of guilt and shame?

The author’s recent book, The Analyst’s Vulnerability: Impact on theory and practice aims to stir greater curiosity and acceptance of therapists’ inevitable negative feelings toward patients, as well as greater self-awareness regarding the origins of this reluctance. Constructively expressing negative countertransference is seen as key to freeing up both members of the analytic dyad.

Karen J. Maroda, Ph.D., ABBP, is Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Medical College of Wisconsin and in private practice in Milwaukee, WI. She is board certified in psychoanalysis by the American Board of Professional Psychology, and a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the American Academy of Psychoanalysis.  She is the author of four books, The Power of Countertransference, Seduction, Surrender and Transformation, Psychodynamic Techniques, and The Analyst’s Vulnerability, as well as numerous journal articles and book reviews.