Beyond Kohut: From Empathy to Affection

The therapeutic relationship and retirement: A complex and challenging journey.

“…But more importantly, erotic love is only one kind of love, and in our attempts to avoid the shameful feelings attached to erotic love, we have blinded ourselves to the other sorts of love we feel for our patients. “(T)he analyst’s affection is often alluded to but is not clearly articulated, a continuation of the psychoanalytic legacy of difficulty in acknowledging affection clearly.” (Perlitz, 2016, p. 258) In my earlier article, I beat around the bush, and I could not bring myself to utter “the L word.” In describing one of the things I most missed, I wrote about “a unique way of being, a unique attitude toward other people” (Langer, 2019, p. 12) What I might have said was that I missed loving my clients.…”

“…Brenda Solomon, in her article on her retirement from practice, writes: “Analytic love is different from the love between life partners and also different from transference love.” (Solomon, 2021, p. 182) She writes of “…a love marked by a unique intimacy, that is different from the transferences, especially after many years.” (Solomon, 2021, p. 182) I do not particularly like the term “analytic love” because this type of love is not limited to analytic practice. I prefer the term used by Daniel Perlitz: “affectionate understanding.” (Perlitz, 2016, p. 248) Rogers also observed that it is difficult to understand “unless you in some sense care.” (Rogers, 1975, p. 6) He continues: “It is, I believe, the therapist’s caring … which has permitted … (the) … client to experience a high regard, even a love, for himself.” (Rogers, 1975, p. 6)…”