ABSTRACT
Breaks in treatment for holidays, illness or professional commitments are always indicators of transference phenomena, that is, of where the transference sits for the patient at a particular time. As well, they can be indicators of counter-transference. As we know, breaks yield rich data on fantasies, hopes, disappointments and fears for the analyst and the patient. When I asked one of my analysands, with whom I was unsure about the quality of the therapeutic alliance, how she felt about my upcoming break, she replied, ‘I feel nothing. It is just like switching a switch off and on.’ Three years into our work together, this patient could finally feel angry at me for going away. I saw this as significant progress in her allowing herself to connect with me in a relational manner – not as someone doing something to her, but as someone doing something with her. She did not join me in taking pleasure in this advance. Her resistance to seeing herself as dependent on anyone had, of course, been played out in her relationships outside the analysis and was understood as a result of her development being arrested during her practicing sub-phase in response to events that occurred after the birth of a sibling when she was 18 months of age.
