What makes a thought or feeling unbearable and how might psychoanalytic psychotherapy help us understand how our patients are able to bear (or avoid bearing) unbearable states of mind? In this group of clinically-driven essays, the Chilean psychoanalyst, Riesenberg-Malcolm examines how we think about what is unbearable and what it means for the therapist to bear what the patient had previously been unable to do on their own. Her thoughtful and incisive group of essays captures the diversity of ways in which patients communicate intolerably painful states of mind, laying the groundwork for meaningful analytic work when we are faced with these seemingly insoluble dilemmas. The author’s extensive clinical details and sensitive writing style bring to life some of the more abstract Kleinian concepts and lend shape, depth, and dimensionality to this particular
perspective on the process of analytic work.