Abstract
Using as background the transformations of two fathers in recently published books, Jeffrey Euginides's Middlesex and Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, this article provides an account of the transformations by the therapist and a patient in the eyes of each other after they were able to share their parental concerns and anxieties. The treatment of the fragmented and disorganized female patient, who had developed intense depressive and paranoid anxieties in response to her children's emotional and learning difficulties, felt haphazard and disorganized until the therapist, moved by her parental agony, shared his own depressive anxieties as a parent. Just as with the two paternal figures in the books by Haddon and Euginides—fathers who became present and were transformed after they realized the inner lives and struggles of their children—the patient and the therapist were transformed in the presence of each other after sharing and listening to each other's subjective experiences and parental concerns.