A case of a survivor of a suicide bomb attack and Winnicott’s “survival of destruction”

Abstract

The author discusses Winnicott's concept of the use of an object, illustrating how it was used in the case of a woman who survived a suicide bomb attack that killed four people. The author as analyst extends Winnicott's and Ogden's ideas by demonstrating in his clinical work that the therapist must survive the patient's unconscious omnipotent belief that her love kills and must maintain his capacity for reverie. The therapist not only has to recover from the pain inflicted by the patient's demand for love, he must also change in response to the feeling of having been destroyed. In the case presented, in order for the process of survival to become real for the patient, the therapist had to discover about himself that he unconsciously shared a common reality with the patient-he, too, was experiencing features of a silenced survivor and experienced an identification with the oppressor.