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From Despair to Poignancy
- American Imago
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 72, Number 3, Fall 2015
- pp. 285-293
- 10.1353/aim.2015.0015
- Article
- Additional Information
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Beginning with an autobiographical reflection, this essay explores the notion of poignancy in psychoanalytic thought and therapy. It is difficult to find adequate translations in different languages for the term “poignancy.” It is an affect closely related to transience and goes hand-in-hand with a diminution of narcissism that characterizes the termination process of psychoanalytic treatment.