ABSTRACT
A cutback's damage depends on a few things: how and in what way the two individuals were interdependent to begin with; the manner or tone with which the attenuation occurs; the intentionality or meaning behind the distancing; and the interpretive lens through which the action is viewed. A law student in her twenties, Sylvia described the therapeutic relationship in the maternal cutting back, conducted largely by text messaging, that she has with her parents who live in another state. Late adolescents lack the requisite skills to traverse the stage of separation-individuation in cutting back while still staying in touch with their parents. Cutting back has, of course, a specialized meaning in the psychoanalytic field, referring to the reduction of therapeutic contact over the course of the week. A 75-year-old, mild-mannered architect, Eric, came into therapy to talk about the difficulty dealing with his female life partner's worsening arthritic hips, which for various reasons were inoperable.
