Uncanny Resonances: A Discussion of "Did You Say He Has a Hitler Mustache?: Analytic Vulnerability and Destabilization in the Face of Trauma".

Silverman's moving essay is replete with vulnerability and uncanny resonances. I try to enter her experience and imagine its possible meaning and impact on Silverman and then on me, as discussant. Finally, I play with Silverman's clinical material and explore the potential consequences of other ways of moving in the therapeutic moment. When can we usefully engage our experience (in general) and of the uncanny (in particular) with our patient? What factors (theoretical and personal) might inform our choice to self-disclose or contain? Rather than privileging either way of working, I suggest that there's an upside and an underbelly to every clinical move—to holding, to self-disclosure, to the mutual analysis of enactments, and to neutral interpretation and imagine some of these clinical consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]