ABSTRACT

Psychotherapists do exploratory treatment, which inevitably revives conflict-laden feelings from the past that begin to centre on the therapist: “transference” in analytic jargon, as a new edition of the parent of early childhood. Positive experiences as well as losses start to be experienced in relation to the new healer figure, who has evoked, and begins to become, a needed godlike parent from the beginnings of mental life. Psychic beginnings include an onset of narcissistic grandiose centrality that initially features a contradictory pairing of the promise of heavenly bliss alongside the terror of complete abandonment to misery and pain. Later comes some realisation of being separate from mother’s body: the seed of the subsequent dreadful but necessary humanising awareness of mortality and death. Painful emotions can appear before as well as after the promise of the gift exchanges of birthdays and of holidays, especially of Christmas, Valentine’s Day, and New Year’s Eve.