ABSTRACT
All individuals who seek psychotherapy or psychoanalysis do so because they harbor the hope of sorting things out, improving their lives, and overcoming this or that problem. The extent, intensity, and tenor of the sentiment might vary but the fact that hope is what drives them to seek treatment remains certain. This hope can be realistic (e.g., of becoming able to mourn early losses and availing themselves of what current life does offer in the form of possibilities and gratifications), or pathological (e.g., of reversing time, growing up all over again, bringing dead people alive). And, this hope can be conscious (e.g., of actualizing one’s wishes) or unconscious (e.g., of finding development-facilitating objects). It is, therefore, of profound importance to empathize with, discern, uphold, and, at some point, interpretively handle (if necessary) the hope that has brought the patient to the therapist’s threshold. The same applies to the pallor or absence of hope. In other words, hope and hopelessness warrant comparable interest from the analyst: recognition, curiosity, exploration, validation, reconstruction, and interpretive resolution. Both poles of this spectrum— hope and hopelessness—are of pertinence to our work. Yet, outside of general psychiatric practice, these issues have received scant attention.
