Wishing You the Worst: Addressing Collegial Enactments and Disavowal in the Psychoanalytic Community

*This paper examines how professional referral networks in psychotherapy function within the context of class dynamics and political tensions. Through a combination of autoethnographic analysis and theoretical exploration, the author investigates an incident of referral rejection based on perceived political views regarding the Israel–Gaza conflict. Drawing on Dimen’s concept of “special-purpose money,” Ehrenreich’s analysis of the professional-managerial class, and Bion’s theory of “attacks on linking,” the study demonstrates how referral networks serve as both containers and expressions of class anxiety among therapists. The analysis reveals how political upheavals can disrupt these class containers, leading to unconscious processes of projective identification and disavowal that weaponize referral networks to maintain existing power structures. Through a clinical vignette and personal narrative, the paper illustrates how class-based anxieties intersect with political tensions to create professional ruptures that resist meaningful dialogue. The findings suggest that acknowledging class privilege and its containment function is crucial for therapists to engage meaningfully with political differences and work toward dismantling systemic inequalities within the field.