Spectral Houses, the Analyst’s Drawings: Postscript to the Dying Patient in Psychotherapy

Abstract

This article is written in response to a timely request from the editors of ATOL to write for the 10^thAnniversary edition. It was a very encouraging request inviting thoughts about the past 10 years and it came at a time when I was just completing the new edition of my bookThe Dying Patient in Psychotherapy.  In 2002 I published an account of my work in analysis with a dying man and now, in 2020, a new edition of this book is to be published by Routledge. Whilst planning the second edition I remembered that I had made some drawings during the process of the work with this patient. I searched them out and wrote a chapter based on them, with a view to publishing it in the book.  However my own pictures just did not seem to fit anywhere within the context of the book and so I discarded the chapter. At the point that I was thinking the chapter was redundant the request from the editors of ATOL came. So this article is based on that chapter. It is presented here as both, a postscript to the new edition of the book, and as a stand-alone article in celebration of ATOL.