Janet Malcolm - Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession (1981)

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Analysts keep having to pick away at the scab that the patient tries to form between himself and the analyst to cover over his wound.... The analyst... keeps the surface raw, so that the wound will heal properly.

Janet Malcolm

All analyses end badly. Each 'termination' leaves the participants with the taste of ashes in their mouths; each is absurd; each is a small, pointless death. Psychoanalysis cannot tolerate happy endings; it casts them off the way the body's immunological system casts off transplanted organs.

Janet Malcolm