Correspondence: Helene Kafka, Ph.D., 350 Central Park West, New York, NY 10025. e-mail: helenekafka@yahoo.com

¹Helene Kafka, Ph.D. is Faculty, Supervisor and Co-Director of the Artist Program, William Alanson White Institute, also Faculty and is Psychoanalytic Supervisor at the National Institute for Psychotherapies. She practices in New York City.

Abstract

This is a clinical/theoretical study of mutual healing in the maternal transference/countertransference. Therapist and patient began their work when each was in extreme mourning. I detail sensory, affective transactions between them that proved transformative. I deem these basic to the healing that was unusually rapid. It broke through the patient's dissociation, and the therapist's sorrow. I note that the treatment modalities were similar to those essential to mother/infant bonding. I connect the treatment's transformative effects with those discovered through infant research and studies with the functioning magnetic resonance imagery test (fMRI). All three of these modes of interpersonal study—psychotherapy, infant, and fMRI research—exhibit mind/body imprinting of the mother/infant deeply connected experience.