This article is part of an ongoing series exploring the role of psychotherapy in addressing deep emotional wounds, particularly those rooted in early abandonment. Each installment follows one segment of a single, real-life case study, offering an intimate look at the challenges and breakthroughs that emerge in the course of therapeutic work. Through the unfolding story of Patricia, we witness how past pain can resurface—and begin to heal—when held within a safe and reflective space.

---

The Orphancy Lens, Part 5.
In this session, a profound parallel process is seen: Patricia’s history with a “Ghost Mother”—a parent unable to provide a stable emotional container—is projected onto Liz, momentarily orphaning the analyst from her own clinical competence. Liz’s uncharacteristic irritation and hand-wringing are not personal failures, but somatic echoes of the client’s primal wound—the terror of a child whose caregiver cannot hold the load. By processing this “orphaned” affect within the vital container of her own analysis, Liz resists the urge to collapse into the ineffective mother role. To prevent the re-orphaning of the client, the analyst must refuse to become the ghost; holding the boundary that the original mother could not. Thus, the “wrong way” of habitual trauma is corrected by the “steady hand” of the conscious witness.

---

a pause in the process

Liz was recording her reflections on a just-completed session with a couple grieving the loss of their stillborn child when the phone rang, cutting through the quiet. She hurried to finish her thought and paused the tape recorder.

“Yes?” she answered.

“Dr. Campbell, Patricia Williams just called to reschedule tomorrow’s session for next week instead,” said the receptionist. “But next week, you’ll be at the conference, so I wasn’t sure if you’d be available.”

Liz felt a twinge of irritation. In the six weeks she’d been seeing Patricia—who was planning an adoptive placement for her unborn son—she’d already rearranged two appointments to accommodate her. Patricia was making progress with the immediate crises in her life and seemed ready to go deeper. But the work was demanding.

Liz hesitated. “No… no, I’m not available at all next week. I’ll be back Friday morning, but I wasn’t planning to come into the office that day. Let’s cancel tomorrow’s appointment and book her for the week after.”

She turned back to her notes but couldn’t concentrate. Two missed sessions in a row might derail Patricia’s fragile momentum. Should she call Patricia herself? Would that seem too intrusive—or just right?

Her mind looped.

What to do? What to do?

There is no crisis here, Liz reminded herself. So why this anxiety?
What’s the problem, here?

“What’s the problem, indeed,” she muttered. “Time to call Doctor Vee. Just what I need before heading to a conference.”

She picked up the phone and dialed her own analyst.
A reality check was in order.

stepping back into the frame

As part of her training to become a psychotherapist, Liz had undergone more than 500 hours of personal analysis—a standard requirement in many psychoanalytic schools. The idea was not that a therapist should be “cured” before practicing, but that one should be steeped in the lifelong process of exploring the unconscious. The commitment to ongoing analysis reflected a simple truth: no one is a perfect expert on their own psyche.

Her analyst, Miguel Vargas, was a Zurich-trained Jungian with an open mind and a pragmatic streak. Though steeped in Jung’s symbolic language, he admired pioneers from other schools—Freud, Adler, Klein, Rogers—and often said, “Different tools for different jobs. Whatever approach works for the client works for me.” Liz affectionately called him “Dr. Vee.”

She had been his analysand for nine years. What she felt for him was a grateful affection mixed with healthy respect. Now in his late seventies, Dr. Vee was still intellectually vibrant, with the same gentle intensity Liz imagined he’d had decades earlier. Seeing him always did her good.

In fact, she had already seen him once after her initial session with Patricia. That first consultation had led to a lively exchange sparked by Liz’s musings on possible symbolic connections between adoption and the base chakra. She’d left reassured: her lack of emotional reactivity suggested she wasn’t personally complexed—emotionally entangled—around the issue of adoption.

Since then, her work with Patricia had unfolded steadily. Liz felt good about the rapport they were building and the thoughtful pacing of the sessions. But now, a shift had occurred: a flicker of irritation. And she knew better than to ignore it.

Back in her training, Dr. Vee had once told her, “Irritation is often the enlightened person’s most faithful companion—it tells you where the complex lives.” The memory made her smile as she waited for him to answer the phone. Seeing Dr. Vee again didn’t feel like a disruption. It felt like returning to a vital container. Like visiting a wise grandparent who always made space for what mattered.

a necessary return

Four hours later, Liz sank into the buttery-soft leather sofa in Dr. Vargas’s office, kicking off her shoes with a sigh. “Aaaah,” she smiled, stretching her feet. “I’m so glad to be here, Vee. Bless you for seeing me on such short notice.”

Dr. Vargas peered over his glasses through bushy white eyebrows and returned the smile. “It’s not every day you call and say, ‘I’m aggravated and need to see you!’”

Liz chuckled. That was true. She usually presented as the polished professional with everything under control. No trace of neurosis here—nothing to see, folks. But today was different.

“Tell me what’s gone on,” Dr. Vargas said, settling deeper into his chair and folding his hands over his Santa-like belly.

Liz lay down on the couch and closed her eyes, walking herself back through the moment that had triggered her irritation. But as she began recounting the story, doubt crept in. The scene suddenly felt petty. Why had she come in over something so trivial? Her voice faltered mid-sentence and trailed off.

“Go on,” Vee encouraged gently. “What happened next?”

She opened her eyes. Nothing. A blank. The ceiling above her stared back in silence, and her gaze followed the circle of light cast by the table lamp, hoping a thought would surface. Still nothing.
“God, I don’t know!” she burst out. “I’m drawing a total blank!”

Dr. Vargas leaned forward and took off his glasses, his voice soft but direct. “Where are you, Liz? What’s going on?”

Liz sat upright, her hands beginning to wring in her lap.
“I don’t know! I just—God—I feel like such a fool! I’m so damn frustrated with this client!”

The words began to tumble out. Her complaints about Patricia’s controlling tone, her scheduling demands, her resistance to boundaries—all of it came spilling forth.

“I’m afraid of losing her,” Liz confessed. “Because I know I can help her. But I’m not willing to give up my own needs to do it.”

A wave of helplessness overtook her, and her voice rose in protest:
“I don’t know what to do! I just want to give in—give her the Friday appointment, cut short the conference, skip the decompression weekend I’d planned—just let her have her way. But I can’t tell if that’s compassion or collapse!”

She exhaled sharply, then added:
“To be clear, I felt I needed the whole week off. But this client—she’s planning to give her child up for adoption, for heaven’s sake. She’s having a baby. And all I want is a pedicure! What if she terminates therapy? What if she thinks I don’t care?”

As her explanations unraveled into lament, Dr. Vargas’s eyebrows lifted slightly. The transformation was striking. Liz—usually so composed, so measured—now sat before him like a woman unmoored, her voice rising into the cadence of someone caught between urgency and guilt.

course correction

The look on Dr. Vargas’s face snapped Liz back to herself.
“I’m… I’m going the wrong way, aren’t I?” she said, sitting up.

Dr. Vargas chuckled. “Yes, Liz—you’re going the wrong way!”

They both laughed, recognizing the line from Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, a favorite between them. The memory came easily:

Steve Martin and John Candy’s characters are driving at night, unknowingly barreling the wrong way down a divided highway. A motorist in the opposite lane pulls alongside them, frantically trying to get their attention.

“You’re going the wrong way!” he yells through the window.

“What’s he saying?” Martin asks.

“Oh, I dunno,” Candy replies, glancing casually over. “He’s drunk. He says we’re going the wrong way.”

“The wrong way?” Martin frowns. “How the hell does he know where we’re going?”

“Yeah!” Candy agrees, laughing, and mocks the other driver with a fake bottle-tip. “He can’t possibly know where we’re going!”

Meanwhile, the couple in the other car grows more panicked—shouting, gesturing, nearly climbing out of their vehicle.
“YOU’RE GOING THE WRONG WAY! YOU’RE GOING THE WRONG DIRECTION!”

And then—headlights. A massive semi comes hurtling toward them. Only then do Martin and Candy realize the truth and erupt into screams.

irritation, the faithful companion

“Your irritation was the clue,” Vee said gently. “It brought you here. You noticed something uncharacteristic in yourself. That kind of vigilance is what makes you a safe harbor for your clients. It’s what makes you worthy of their trust.”

Liz began to settle. His words, steady and warm, always seemed to find their mark. And he was right. Being a good therapist meant taking responsibility for one’s own “stuff.” She had done that. She could be proud of her integrity. Already, she felt lighter.

“I hardly need to remind you,” Vee added, “of the work that irritation can do, do I?”

Liz smiled. “No—but I want to hear it from you anyway.”
Sessions with Vee often felt like story time around a fire more than formal analysis. But then, analysis was a form of story-telling—and myth, and mystery. She leaned back against the sofa as he leaned forward, and half-expected him to begin with Once upon a time…

“Irritation,” he said, “like sexual arousal, grief, excitement, rage—any intense affect—is a rupture in the conscious condition. Something unconscious demands expression. Jung once said that even angels can serve as personifications of such unconscious material.”

Liz nodded. She had said something like that to clients herself—but it always landed differently coming from Vee.

“Something in you was stirred,” he continued. “Up to now, your work with Patricia has been solid. You’ve built trust. She brought you a dream last week, which means her unconscious is ready to collaborate. And then—what? She wants to change her appointments. You feel irritated, and then helpless. Not your usual posture.”

He paused, studying her with a gaze as steady as it was kind.

“But here’s the key—you noticed. You came here. You spoke aloud what was happening. And under the eye of a faithful witness, something shifted. I watched an accomplished, experienced, emotionally intelligent woman dissolve into a helpless hand-wringer.”

He glanced at her lap, and Liz followed his eyes. Her hands were twisting. She hadn’t even realized.

“So,” he asked, “who is the hand-wringer in this picture?”

Liz didn’t know. No clear answer surfaced. She began to free-associate: images, memories, archetypes, snippets of the past two weeks. But nothing resonated—until it did.

Suddenly, she saw it.

There was a hand-wringer in the room.

But it wasn’t her.

the ghost mother pattern

“Oh my God,” Liz exclaimed. “It’s Patricia’s mother. She’s the hand-wringer.”

“Ah,” Dr. Vee intoned. “The ever-present Ghost Mother. You’ve found her.”

Liz nodded, a heaviness settling over her. “I walked right into it, didn’t I? The old transference–countertransference dance. I can’t believe I let it happen.”

“Tell me more,” Dr. Vargas prompted. “What do you see?”

“It’s just as you said,” Liz began. “We’d made real progress. And as soon as the unconscious starts to open—when trust deepens—complexes emerge. Of course they do. The client can’t help but bring them forward. And to manage the anxiety that comes with that, she reaches for defense mechanisms—projection, transference…”

She trailed off, shaking her head slightly.

“Patricia needs to test my reliability. Unconsciously, she’s trying to recreate the dynamic with her mother—someone who couldn’t hold the caregiving role. So she pushes me to fail. She forces me, subtly, into the position of the ineffective one, the one who drops the ball, so that she has to take control—just like before.”

“She was the child then, and she’s the client now. I’m supposed to be the adult—the therapist. But if I start to behave like her mother, if I abdicate that role, she can’t trust me. She’ll have to take over again. And then we’ve lost the container. We’ve lost the chance to do the real work.”

Liz looked up, her expression somber but lucid.

“If I collapse into helplessness, I become the very figure she needs to disprove. She needs someone to stay firm. To hold steady. To be what Klein would call ‘the good breast.’”

Dr. Vargas gave a slow nod, then arched one brow.
“So—what now, Dr. Campbell? Any missteps to mend? Any blunders to correct?”

Silence fell for a moment, broken only by the faint rush of traffic beyond the window.

Liz reflected. “I think I might have made a blunder—if I hadn’t known to come in.” She paused. “I had our receptionist return Patricia’s call instead of calling her myself. That’s not like me. I needed space, yes—but I also see now how easily that could have echoed her experience of being left to manage things alone.”

She sat up straighter, shoes already in hand.

“If I leave this to someone else, I am her mother—stepping back, letting others handle what I should hold. I can’t do that.”

Dr. Vargas raised his brows in encouragement.
“And?”

“And I’ll call her myself,” Liz said, already reaching for her phone.
“Of course I will.”

in session: tales of transformation

• Intro: An Introduction to Tales of Transformation
• In Session, Part 1: Considering Adoption
• In Session, Part 2: Client and Therapist Meet
• In Session, Part 3: Message in Blood
• In Session, Part 4: Dream Work
• In Session, Part 5: The Analyst is Analyzed
• In Session, Part 6: Deliverance
• In Session, Part 7: Disconnected
• In Session, Part 8: Termination

CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE
This case study is based on real-life therapy work and reflects the emotional and psychological truths of the process. To protect the privacy of those involved, all names and identifying details have been changed.

---