This volume consists of a series of essays inspired by Freud's paper on Jensen's novel Gradiva - "she who steps along." In the story a young archaeologist, Norbert Hanold, suffers from delusions but is able to unravel the mysteries of his emotional life and mind with the aid of a woman who does not challenge these delusions, but rather "steps along" with Hanold, gradually helping him to disentangle truth from fantasy, through what Freud called "cure by love". Gradiva, originally felt to be the source of Hanold's malady, eventually becomes the agent of its resolution and of his return to...

An extraordinary depiction of one analyst's efforts to receive and respond to the vivid impressions of her patients raw and sometimes even unmentalized experiences as they are highlighted in the transference-countertransference connection. Mitrani attempts to feel, suffer, mentally transform, and, finally, verbally construct for and with the patient possible meanings for those immediate versions of lifes earliest experiences as they are re-enacted in the therapeutic relationship. She uses insights from this therapeutic work to contribute to the metapsychology of British and American object...