Transference, Countertransference and Mourning the Death of a Parent

Abstract The decline and death of an adult patient’s parent impacts treatment in ways that are often out of the awareness of analyst and patient. Internal and external family constellations, dynamics, and defenses become unsettled. A patient may unconsciously revert to earlier ways of being as they try to adapt to the changing nature of the parent/child relationship. In this adaptation, behaving and feeling as one did at an earlier time symbolically turns the present into the past. Thus, time is symbolically reversed. This rekindling of childhood fantasies—often emanating from envy, jealousy, and competition—can affect the transference and countertransference as well as the nature of the mourning process itself. Enactments, resistances, and returns to historic ways of relating become a greater part of the analytic experience. Modifications in understanding the mourning process and how it impacts transference, countertransference, and termination are illustrated with clinical examples.