Countertransference enactments informed by cancer in an analyst's child

The author's son was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma in the spring of 1997. She traces the impact of this trauma on her practice, with specific emphasis on her experience as both analyst and mother, and on the related countertransference feelings and enactments. The paper discusses in detail the analyst's effort to determine for each patient whether or not to disclose the fact of her son's illness, the internal conflict she experienced over those decisions, and the effects of her decisions on her patients. An extensive case discussion focuses on a patient who appeared to intuit in a dramatic fashion the traumatic events in the analyst's private life.