From cold to hot: listening to silence and fury

Abstract

This paper reports the clinical treatment of a patient suffering from symptoms of emptiness and apathy. During his treatment, a negative transference came up in the form of anger and accesses of fury. Based on references from the field of psychoanalysis and the modalities of psychic illnesses, as well as by analyzing an occurred countertransference, the author proposes a reflection on how to clinically deal with such cases, on the encountered violence and on the alternation between states of silence and fury.

Transference; countertransference; listening; destructiveness