Do you get me?
December 25, 2005

Recently, I had the good fortune to see more clearly how the human self is established in a more cohesive way and the importance of relation in self-fragmentation and annihilation anxiety. I was having a back-to-back session with a woman who has a history of repeated “mental breakdowns” (This particular individual feels longer sessions are more helpful in getting into her issues. I agree with her and believe that longer sessions are generally better for most people). At two points in our session, I offered interpretations which rang very true to her and she thanked me for helping her articulate that which she was not able to in the past. (This is also her way of being a therapist to me). I said something about when she is with other persons it’s all about them -- she loses touch with her own experience and self-feeling, that she feels constituted by others and gives to others what she feels is demanded of her – that her mind is fully focused on pleasing the other and in the process, sacrificing herself.

She then offered historical and current material substantiating these observations. I offered another interpretation later on (all based on my emotional experience of her way of relating to me in the here and now of the relationship), which she felt was insightful. Despite this, she continued throughout the session angrily expressing that I was not “getting her.” Although this signified to me a need of hers to not be fused with me, cognitive insight fell short of what this young woman needed to feel real in the mind of the other-to feel that she has substantiality to her sense of self.

It dawned on me later in the session that what she was referring to in her repeated expression, “Do you get me?,” was whether I was emotionally responding to her, taking her in, was she having a positive impact on me. She revealed her terror of driving others “mad.” She puts on a false self and then pushes people away in fear of killing or being killed by others. She lamented that since she can not articulate her experiences, she has to make the other person feel the painful feelings (a good description of the Kleinian theory of projective identification) which she feels are doing her in (thus her wish/fear of driving others mad). As Herbert Rosenfeld articulated, to interpret these hostile projections as an attack on the mind of the therapist, is a significant mistake. More to the point, the patient is suffering these feelings all alone and needs to be able to have the therapist, or other persons, feel consubstantiality (Leon Grinberg’s apt phrase) with these persecutory feelings. In addition, “do you get me” has the implied request to affect the other in a way which will help create a greater sense of self agency and autonomy in the person who needs to experience her or himself as real in the mind of the other, not an imagined and needed reflection of the narcissistic other.

Brian Koehler PhD
New York University
80 East 11th Street #339
New York NY 10003
212.533.5687
brian_koehler@psychoanalysis.net