Transference in the Afternoon

In 2023, Michael Pollack, a millionaire hedge fund manager, sued Heidi Kling, his former therapist, following the end of a decade-long sexual relationship, during which Pollack continued to pay Kling. Pollack alleges the affair is the result of mismanaged transference, “the powerful emotional current that can flow between patient and therapist.” Kling says the pair’s relationship as therapist and client ended the moment their sexual relationship began. For years, Jesse Barron followed the ongoing case, reaching out to all parties (including Kling’s supervisor, an analyst with “provocative stances”) and sifting through more than 6,000 pages of emails between Pollack and Kling, trying to access the black box of an extraordinarily complex relationship.

In the year that followed the end of the relationship, Pollack fully revised his understanding of the prior decade. The cash, which had once seemed like a gift, now looked to him like payment for a service. The habit of meeting in the office, once a thrilling subterfuge, now looked like a patient walking into a session – sometimes passing another patient in the waiting room as he left. As for Newirth, Pollack came to see him less as a therapist than as a voyeur and ‘puppeteer’. He saw both Newirth and Kling as co-conspirators in a decade of abuse.