ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the concept of the gift, offered by therapist to the patient from the heart or from the hands. The child knows no money apart from what is given him—no money acquired and none inherited of his own. Since his faeces are his first gift, the child easily transfers his interest from that substance to the new one [money] which he comes across as the most valuable gift in life. Literature pertaining to the analytic approach to treatment is relatively silent about gifts from therapist to patient. The gift of being thought of, in ways that impress the patient as slightly different from what she has come to experience with the therapist, and in ways that seem to the patient to be different from what she has experienced in her past, can be a watershed moment in a patient’s therapy.
