Saving the treatment. Affect intolerance in a boy, his parents, the mental health community, and his analyst

Psychoanalytic thinkers have been writing about children's struggles with affect for many years (E. Furman, 1956; Katan, 1973; Chused, 1999; Gilmore, 2005). They have reported on mothers' inability to provide containment and fathers' use of physical punishment, attesting to their own affect intolerance and only making matters worse (Axelman, 2009; Bierman, Silverstein, Finesinger, 1958; Coen, 1998). So, what is different about this article? I'm certainly not the first to insist that we live in an affect-intolerant society, with many parents seeking psychotropic assistance rather than attempting to understand their children's feelings. Nor am I the only one who wags her finger at mental health professionals who freely prescribe. But there you have it. I am willing to report on my own countertransference--the villains who threatened to undermine my treatment with a boy named Joey.