ABSTRACT

David has been in treatment for about 5 years. For 3 years, there was an ordinary rhythm to his analysis. He was regular in his appointments, and in his payments. In the last 2 years, we are engaged in analysis interruptus-we meet, we stop meeting for several months, and then we meet again for a series of sessions. We are in our fourth cycle of this pattern. We stop, we resume, we stop. Each time, we talk about attachment and separation, about the limits, and the possibilities, of our relationship. He talks about extra-analytic contact, and postanalytic contact, and the peculiarities of the analytic situation. He came to psychoanalysis because he wanted to be able to love “full out.” But in psychoanalysis, loss is imminent to love. Desire is awakened, and then, it is frustrated. Bonding is ful‰lled, and then, it is severed. In all of its iterations, analytic love implicates grief. Every opening of the heart is shadowed by termination.*

The celebration of intimacy, the imminence of loss: This is the paradoxical core of psychoanalysis. David has been confounded by this paradox since the beginning of his treatment. Analytic boundaries liberate and secure him. They free him to explore his feelings in the transference. What he feels is not pretty. But if he can do this with me, he might be able to love “full out.” Wife, children, and friends, perhaps he could really be present with them. Perhaps he can really be present, inside himself. Moving through his world, David exudes warmth, humor, enthusiasm, and generosity. But his interior is remote. He can never fully feel others’ affection for him, and he can never really give his full affection to others. For David, analysis is hope.