ABSTRACT
Suicidality in later life is relatively neglected in the literature as a whole and in psychoanalytic thinking in particular. The particular issues arising in working psychotherapeutically with older people have been insuf®ciently addressed. Suicidal people in later life ®nd it hard to access therapeutic help. In this chapter we discuss ®ndings from interviews with people aged over 60 years who were suicidal but who felt unable to talk about this in a professionally helping relationship. We aim, through addressing the transference and countertransference patterns in these interviews, to explore issues that contribute to dif®culties in achieving engagement in helpful therapeutic relationships, and thus to assess how therapists can approach this work more effectively.
