ABSTRACT
During the course of a professional lifetime, we change, hopefully grow, through personal and professional experiences. When a patient who we have analyzed earlier in our professional work returns, we have an opportunity to discover changes in both our patient and ourselves. Both my patient and myself were much better able to tolerate and work with aggression in this later treatment. Disconnection for her was a defense against fury and the grief underlying it. In her return for treatment, we were able to better understand her characterological adaption. Our work in her return enabled her greater capacity for intimacy and enabled me to better appreciate limitations in our earlier work and my own changed tolerance for aggression in myself and others.
