ABSTRACT
This chapter expands on concepts introduced in the introduction, such as attunement, empathy and reciprocity. It describes two cases, an adolescent, and a young ‘autistic’ girl, and the struggle to make emotional contact with them. The importance of being able to bear one’s own feelings, in the countertransference, and to navigate a way of staying with challenging feeling states in the other is outlined. The importance of containment is highlighted, and of empathy, but also of awareness of how to pitch interventions at the right ‘developmental levels’. The chapter shows how at times pain and depressed feelings need to be underemphasised to allow healthy anger and aggression as positive forces.
