Helplessness and the Analyst’s War Against Feeling It

Abstract

In our view helplessness is a primal, often intolerable feeling. It underlies and intensifies other feelings that are also hard to bear. Both analyst and patients face helplessness, and both resort to defenses, often intensely, in order to avoid it. The intensity of this battle can merit calling it a war. The analyst's war is conducted using distancing, anger, blaming and disparaging as well as by intellectualizing the patient's struggles. Patients then find themselves abandoned and helplessly alone. We analysts, of course, want not to fall into the trap of war, and we try to free ourselves from waging it. A major way we accomplish this is through continuously working, often with the help of analysis and self-analysis, to increase our capacity to maintain our emotional stability in the face of these intensities. We learn to find new forms of awareness, beyond words and ideas. It requires a new understanding of what is threatening to us, which fosters a deeper capacity to empathize with the patient. This helps us to find the psychic, physical and emotional space within ourselves in which to hold our helplessness and other profound affective experiences. In this way we become an increasingly steady resource for our patients as well as for ourselves.

Communication about the desire to die: Development and evaluation of a first needs-oriented training concept — A pilot study

“…Reflecting on one's own concerns regarding DHD is crucial to find adequate reactions toward patients (Favre et al, 2007) and ways for better coping (Henoch et al, 2013). As helplessness continuously decreases, one can hypothesize that enhanced self-confidence can ease the feeling of helplessness by having a greater repertoire of responses or becoming calmer in challenging situations (Hoffer and Buie, 2016).…”

Through a Glass Darkly: a clinical journey

“…I, like David, could protect her from death and eventually be able to “bring her back to life.” I was the good mother who could magically cure her, and she frequently told me that she loved me. Interestingly, she was able to maintain this idealization despite plaintively begging me over and over to “make me well, fix me” and the obvious limits of my ability to fully do so (see Hoffer & Buie, 2016 ).…”

7th ERAZ Conference Proceedings (part of ERAZ conference collection)

“…Helplessness is one of the commonalities in life, starting from infancy and up to our indispensable awareness which is death, and it is the most unbearable one among all emotions that people experience (Hoffer & Buie, 2016). Up to now, there is no consensus on helplessness, which is defined as feeling, emotion, state of mind, situation and syndrome as a sign of behavioral disorder and a certain personal trait, in terms of psychological conceptualization (Nosenko & Sokur, 2016).…”