The Priest and the Rabbi Meet in a Bar: The Dialectic between Merger and Recoil in Psychoanalysis

The tension between union and separation is a leitmotif in all social relations and cuts a swath across psychoanalytic theories. I am proposing that the interplay, between merger and recoil is an oscillating and enduring rhythm throughout the life cycle and characterizes an ongoing pattern in relatedness. Awareness of this repetitive cadence in the transference/countertransference as a reflection of the human drama can alert the analyst to a pattern that prompts clinical interventions and expands the potential of deepening the dyadic relationship and its mutative effects.