The essay brings the narrative of an interview between a psychoanalysts, member of a multidisciplinary team indicated for the treatment of infectious diseases, STD's and AIDS, with an adolescent who has just been informed about his HIV-positive status. The youth's existential condition, living in a precarious social situation combined with poverty and victimization, puts the psychoanalyst in touch with intense countertransference feelings, which are reflected upon seeking theoretic articulation with a Winnicottian referential. The article shows a need to think about the experience of compassion in counter-transference, as a phenomenon which has a place in an extended and differentiated clinic that puts the psychoanalyst in touch with human dramas marked by intense suffering.
Winnicott psychoanalysis; HIV/AIDS; human suffering; compassion; countertransference