Thoughts on the Study by Judy Kantrowitz: The Older Analyst Aging Well

To discuss some of the findings of Judy Kantrowitz’s study on the aging analyst, the concept of grandma transference is introduced and illustrated with vignettes from the ongoing MODE Study. Although the author is convinced that parts of the grandma-transference appear in all long psychoanalyses and can be worked on analytically, she postulates, based on the concept of embodied memories, that old age of an analyst is suitable that the grandma-transference develops relatively early in psychoanalyses. Some advantages, but also disadvantages of such transference phenomena are critically reflected upon. For example, the experience of no longer being able to cope well enough with intense, negative transference phenomena because of age and the diminishing of one’s containing capacities may be a motive for some analysts to end their beloved analytic practice with patients. The last part of the paper illustrates that Erikson’s description of old age as a polarity between integrity and despair must be supplemented by further polarities in view of today’s precarious societal situation, which motivates young people today to characterize themselves as the last generation. In contemporary psychoanalysis, specific developmental tasks of old age are seen more in terms of how to deal with old-age depression, the psychic integration of one’s own idiosyncratic (traumatic) life history and a transgenerative perspective on one’s own life.