Many aspects of A’s life were focused and discussed during our analytic
work, but the issue of our termination meant something special for both of us. As I communicated
to A that soon after our termination I would leave the country for good, we
could not think of the issue totally outside of the context of our destiny and transient
nature of and our own mortality. I was about to leave the place where I spent
for more than fifteen years. My going back to my home country without any plan
to come back practically means that I would never see A personally for the rest of my life. I
was considering this small city as my second hometown, and once I leave here, my
friends and colleagues would feel that I am gone forever, like a deceased person. I
felt that I was in a limbo situation between life and death, and that strange
sensation might have some impact on our analytic process.
A stated that through the analysis I gave him some reason to live, and it is strange that the termination seems to mean something of a grief process. As we talked on and off about our separation, it might mean that we have each other’s image in our mind and live together for the rest of our life, as it is easy for both us to put the other in a place that we once spent in the past, for me in the small town, and for him the American base near-by.
A stated that through the analysis I gave him some reason to live, and it is strange that the termination seems to mean something of a grief process. As we talked on and off about our separation, it might mean that we have each other’s image in our mind and live together for the rest of our life, as it is easy for both us to put the other in a place that we once spent in the past, for me in the small town, and for him the American base near-by.
After I returned to my home country, I received a mail from A. He
stated that he got exhausted of his relationship with C who grew more and more
emotionally clingy to him. He was very amazed that he found himself in a
position of saying good-by to his partner, something that he dreaded being done
to by his partner again. I felt that A’s saying goodbye to C meant also that he
has mostly done with his grief work from our relationship. I have never heard
of or about A ever since. I never gave him any communication. In my mind he is
both alive and dead and unmarried and married at the same time, like a Schlesinger’s
cat. I never know if he is still alive. He might have no idea if I am still
alive or not. In a sense we keep our “anonymity” to each other so we can enlarge
our transferencial fantasy after the fact (après-coup, Freud).
