Taking care of the other: an interrupted task to be pursued?

The author, a psychoanalyst expert in emergency psychology, wants to deepen the motivations underlying the care of victims in situations of disastrous events. The compulsion to repeat that evolves into "compulsion to care" becomes the possibility for the therapist to "take care of himself" through the helping relationship. Starting from this hypothesis, the author questions the risk of establishing a collusion that could re-traumatise the patient and block his development. The analyst's greater awareness of his or her own unconscious functions can allow him or her to build an interpersonal process with the victim/patient, characterized by sharing, but also by the distance needed to reflect on what is happening. In this way it becomes possible to "give voice": a new narrative that in its being shared becomes explicit and recognizable. This opportunity is an alternative to the repetition of the intrapsychic conflicts of the past, which reopens the process of evolutionary becoming and the pursuit of desire in its real-design dimension.