ABSTRACT
When patients terminate, the analyst will experience certain resulting depressive or paranoid counter-transference feelings and phantasies. Depending on the nature of the patient's projective identification efforts in the transference, this can mean the difference between the sense of being discarded or abandoned as useless and a sense of sadness and understanding while still feeling frustrated and wishing it did not happen. With more difficult and primitive patients, the new ways of being are introduced into a mindset wanting more ideal visions of self and other in which independence, superiority, and never having to lose are often the more familiar realm of experience. Chaotic moments with two patients are examined to provide an insight into the potential benefits of using counter-transference as part of working with such turbulent patients. The entire enterprise of analytic treatment is really the constant introduction of depressive tasks and hardships such as separation, difference, loss, accountability, give and take, and mourning to both parties.
