Psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. She is a member of the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA) and the New York Insitute for Psychoanalytic Research and Training (IPTAR). She is currently a licensed psychoanalyst in New York and New Jersey, working with adults, children and adolescents and in IPTAR school programs. She is a trainer at the Metropolitan Institute for Training in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (MITPP) and a supervisor in the IPTAR Respecialization program.
Why are you so distant and silent?”
Eurydice’s plea to Orpheus “Why are you so distant and silent?” * is repeated in the process of the analytic relationship, sometimes with anger and threat. Eurydice responds to Orpheus’ refusal to speak to her by asking him to follow her, first by begging, then by becoming angry and resentful, and finally collapses. We can find many articles in the psychoanalytic literature on the paradox of Orpheus succumbing to the command of the gods, turning to look at his beloved wife and losing her forever. However, one aspect of the paradox is silence, and silence is as much a part of the command as the gaze. Speaking of paradox, Winnicott’s article “Communicating and Not Communicating Leading to the Studies of Certain Opposites”, which requires a careful reading, has been widely discussed by psychoanalysts, including Ogden, Caldwell, Goldberg. Communicating and not communicating are to some extent linked to the capacity to be on one’s own. Winnicott gives the example of each partner’s solitude and enjoyment of solitude after a satisfying sexual encounter. Being able to enjoy being on one’s own with another person, especially if the other person can also be on their own, is related to emotional maturity. I will try to convey the transformations of silence in the process through two clinical examples of people like Eurydice who, while experiencing the analyst as distant and silent, try to cope with pain, anger, depression and unbearable affect by using random sexuality as a transitional object. Although this use of love and sexuality allows the illusion of a magical and momentary return of the primary relationship, it needs to be repeated constantly. Orpheus, it is said, was doomed to meet and lose forever – until Eurydice erased him from her mind and returned to paradise. The analytic process takes place in a space where illusion gradually moves towards objectivity.
* C.W. Gluck, Orfeo ed Euridice Opera, 1762.