Point well made and taken. Yes, he is deeply psychoanalytic, though not technically an analyst; he is also a psychiatrist, who does both intensive and long term therapy as well as treating people who are on the severe side and need medication as well as those who are barely functioning at the locked unit. Still I thought his take that was upbeat and still full of interest about such tough cases was really inspiring and interesting.

You are probably right that psychoanalytic therapists who are into this type of work do end up with more training and do deal with more complexity. And definitely they are trained and just do tolerate very difficult things that would try most people's patience or make them reactive in some way or other.

I apologize for not being clearer about his specific qualifications and experience, which do change the picture more than I guess I had realized. I am so used to psychoanalytic types and read so much of it, that I probably take things for granted that are not so.

I'm curious though. You cite Partless who makes a point about tighter boundaries. Do you think that this therapist had loose boundaries because he tolerated an angry outburst even when it started to make him wonder? Or do you think he had good boundaries because he was able to control his personal response and realize it was not him being attacked, but the patient's needs to be angry? One is about controlling the behavior in the environment. The other is more about controlling the effects of internal/interpersonal relating and especially countertransference.