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Patient X: “Eva?”

I hear them ask during our session, more insistent than before.

Me: “It’s nothing,” I hear myself stammer. “I admit this is new to me, this feeling of shared grief. I wish I could make it better for you, with everything that happened to you and your younger sister—”

Patient X leans forward, offers me a box of tissues. “I didn’t want to upset you.”

Me: “You haven’t at all. You expressed yourself and I was simply responding. It’s so moving to witness someone’s resilience, reliving such a traumatic memory... For a moment I felt as if I shared your pain, which is truly something I never thought I’d be able to do.”

Patient X: “You’re the first person I’ve told these things to. I wanted to say how much happier I’ve been feeling over the last few weeks, how different it is really talking to someone. You have no idea. I hope I haven’t made you uncomfortable?”

Me: “No. No, I was wondering if you felt it too.”

Patient X: “You know I do.”

I pause for a long moment. “You’ve heard of Freud’s work on transference. Love, yearning, anger, contempt. All these can come up in the safety of the consulting room, projected onto the therapist. Then, of course, there’s countertransference when the therapist has to work through difficult feelings too.”

Patient X: “So?”

Me: “Well, I worry what we’re feeling here is a form of emotional transference, which can be utterly destructive for both patient and therapist. There is no good outcome. I need to explain that. You have to know.”

Patient X isn’t really listening, their gray eyes fixed on mine. “Stop reciting from the textbooks. You know this is different, right?”

I try my best not to smile. Everything I’ve explained is erased, meaningless. Nothing else matters except being right here, our little theater of projections, safe from the outside world.