Disorganizing Paralysis of the Clinician’s Mind as a Property of a System of Treatment

This paper addresses the phenomenon of “psychic numbing” in the clinician, which interfered with the clinician’s capacity
to understand and respond to the patient’s highly turbulent reaction to a personal crisis of the clinician. Through gaining
an understanding of the meanings of the retraumatizations for both the patient and the clinician, the clinician became able
to recapture the functioning of her mind, respond differently to the patient, and thus facilitate the calming of the turbulence
of the treatment. The clinician’s understanding included her recognition of her own thwarted twinship longings with the patient.