ABSTRACT

In many psychoanalyses, the metaphorical experience of victimization is and should be relevant. No matter how respectful of the patient’s psychic reality, any perspective outside that of the patient’s urges the patient into challenging and potentially scary new ways of feeling or seeing things. The analyst, like the Greek messenger, is delivering elements of an unwelcome message and participating in the dismantling of an earlier adaptation that the patient recognizes as a familiar form of selfhood. This external imposition of otherness occurs even when the patient feels met and understood in new and partly welcome ways. New moments of meaning bring new challenges.