However, it is also possible that the therapist’s own struggle to manage his or her transferences to the material in hand is equally important in the working relationship that develops between the therapist and the couple. Lemma (2013), for instance, reminds us that the transsexual confronts the analyst with a disturbing otherness. She says:
How that otherness is understood, that is, how the analyst ‘looks’ at the patient through her distinctive theoretical lens impacts, in turn, on the patient’s experience and what transpires between them (p.277).
Although Lemma is speaking about her work with an individual, her comments are relevant to our couple in question, since it is possible that the therapist, like Eleanor, struggles to fully accept Jamie’s otherness and Jamie is again left with an alien rather than an acceptable self that can be brought into his relationship with Eleanor and into the therapy. On the other hand, it is possible that the therapist is also in touch with strong countertransferential material regarding the split in which one identity is privileged over another. Can the therapist help the couple stay with the struggle to find a true meeting point where the phallus comes to represent the potential for development rather than the representation of the failure about which they are both anxious and from which they must retreat? For this couple the struggle proved too much, and Eleanor refused to continue attending therapy. Although Jamie did attend, this was to be the final session during which he spoke of his deep distress of Eleanor’s rejection of him and his own concern about completing the transition. The therapist was left wondering about the outcome and reflected on the fact that the couple had met during a retreat, perhaps suggesting a wish to get away from their particular challenges rather than a shared wish to face into them.