“Becoming Able to Feel Hate: The Treatment of a Psychotic, Somatizing Patient,”Modern Psychoanalysis, 15:63–78, 1990.
A study of the successful treatment of a severely disturbed homicidal and suicidal woman. All psychoanalysts sooner or later must deal with patients whose intense, unacknowledged suicidal and homicidal wishes lead them to commit self-destructive or object-destructive acts.
The transference resistance of such patients inevitably generates murderous or suicidal countertransference feelings.
My resistances to feeling suicidal and homicidal feelings were reflected in my treatment of Mrs. A. These countertransference resistances were progressively resolved. This paper chronicles that evolution.