"Fear of Breakdown"

Staying Close to the Terror

Abstract

In this paper the author proposes that a central task of psychotherapeutic work is to “stay close to the terror,” particularly when working with those patients whose inner world is populated by often dissociated states of traumatic horror. The paper explores a range of psychoanalytic, Jungian, and trauma theory that might assist in guiding psychotherapists regarding how we might engage with this central task, particularly given the often terrifying intrapsychic, interpsychic, and interpersonal disturbances such therapeutic work entails, for both patient and therapist.