REGRET IN PSYCHOANALYTIC WORK: CLINICAL MANIFESTATIONS, COUNTERTRANSFERENCE, AND SPECIFICS OF PSYCHOTHERAPY

Abstract

The paper discusses the clinical manifestations of regret, as well as psychoanalytic concepts and therapeutic findings important for working with it. Particular attention is paid to the transference-countertransference line in working with patients whose psyche is dominated by regret. The author theoretically generalizes that regret is characterized by repeated experiences of sadness and lost opportunities. The constant experience of regret causes a sense of irreversibility and an ominous assessment of lost opportunities as those that have ruined life. The author reviews the research that confirms that regret affects cognitive processes, creating thoughts of hopelessness and helplessness, and emotional processes, creating a sense of fatigue and joylessness. The particular difficulty of the phenomenon of regret for human life and for the clinical practice of working with it is that this experience, due to the pain it causes, forms active, aggressive, often impulsive defenses. Therefore, regret interferes with the ability to formulate ways out of problematic situations and to realistically assess life events. There is always a feeling that it could have been better, and this is experienced over and over again and prevents one from thinking constructively and realistically. Regret, as a developed component of the psyche, is inherent in people who have had traumatic experiences in childhood. The article also discusses the extreme manifestations of regret characteristic of dysthymia and melancholy. Based on the data of modern neuroscience and her own psychoanalytic practice, the author, using two of her own clinical illustrations, highlights the obstacles and opportunities of psychotherapeutic work with patients who are overwhelmed by regret. In particular, she describes and illustrates the characteristic processes of devaluing real life and idealizing imaginary life by such patients. Finally, the author emphasizes the risks of developing regret in a situation of war, especially in terms of transgenerational transmission of this feeling.