The Institute for Psychoanalytic Studies, Inc. Event 

Conversation: When a Patient Wants to Give the Therapist a Gift

Gift-giving represents the idea of an exchange between  a patient’s internal and external worlds. Both unconscious and conscious motives with layers of meaning—some distractive and some healthy—are at play when a patient wants to give their therapist a gift.

 As psychoanalysts, how do we approach this phenomenon? In this Conversation, we are going to explore the complex feelings within the therapeutic dyad  that often accompany the presentation of a gift, as well as some technical implications of the matter.