ABSTRACT
Stephen Mitchell (2005) emphasised that if the patient does not get “under the analyst’s skin” (pp. 5–6), then the therapeutic process is limited in scope. Relational psychoanalysis, in its emphasis on mutuality and affect, also brings us closer to the edge of rupture, since both parties are involved, vibrating and vital. Perhaps the potentiating therapeutic position is also at risk of fragmenting and dissociating, that although we need ruptures for repairs and reorganisations to take place, not all affects are survivable by the client, the therapist, and the therapeutic dyad.
