ABSTRACT

I think Dr. Airman’s thoughtful and very generous response to my com-I ments is a very good parallel to what happens in the Project’s consultation groups. For a variety of reasons and in a variety of ways we are sometimes prevented from thinking about the exceedingly difficult issues that confront us when we sit in a therapy session with these young people. I don’t think it’s true that Dr. Altman doesn’t have an “internal map” for “locating the bad object,” only that something in the relationship with Geraldine made it temporarily unavailable to him. One of the functions of the consultation groups is to provide a collective memory—we can hold outside the hour what can/must be temporarily forgotten in the hour.