ABSTRACT

In each analytic dyad, the analyst and the patient can differ in numerous ways. Even when they belong to similar racial, ethnic, or religious groups, significant differences can exist that sometimes never get talked about. To understand the meaning these dissimilarities have for a patient and how he or she uses them, starting with the most superficial and accessible and moving toward the deepest underpinnings, is one of the tasks of an analysis. This chapter discusses sadistic transferences expressed toward author by three male patients. These transferences were superficially linked to author ethnicity, their feelings about it, and the difference it created between us. In each analysis, however, the deeper and more personal meanings of this sadism were revealed over time. The chapter focuses both on how author's analytic functioning changed and deepened in the aftermath of “9/11” and how the material patients brought into their analyses with him was profoundly affected and altered by the events of 9/11.