Affect Intolerance in Patient and Analyst

Book excerpt: Coen (training and supervising analyst, Columbia U. Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research) offers advice to psychoanalysts working with extremely difficult patients. His central premise is that both patients and therapists have difficulty tolerating intense affects (such as loving and hating) and that the clinician needs to "feel with and for his patient, over a prolonged time, what she finds so terrifying" (emphasis in original). Also stressed is the need for clinicians to confront their own fears and doubts about treatment. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR