Sandy's Confrontation with Her three Selves

I have worked with Sandra, an actress now in her late twenties, for about five years. She began treatment when she was a struggling acting student. When we first met, she was barely able to function. As she walked down the street, she saw not people's faces, but human faces transformed to those of hungry foxes and wolves. Attending her acting classes was akin to entering a war zone.

The man with whom she was living at the time insisted that she enter therapy. He was willing to pay for it. He had had 10 years of therapy during his teens and twenties which he regarded as having saved his life. Now he was doing adequately well in his teaching profession.

For Sandy, living with him was a mixed experience. He was paternal, but, as she discovered, in a belittling and critical manner. In the course of analysis, she came to realize that he was a father substitute, the kind she didn't want. She also began to see him as having qualities of a vulnerable little boy who depended upon her for reassurance. His weaknesses, apparent to her as her vision broadened in her therapeutic journey, rendered him unattractive. In her eyes, he appeared to take on many characteristics of her despised self. He was needy, vulnerable, and unsure of himself. She left him after about two years of analysis.

The interim between boyfriends was an extraordinarily difficult time for Sandy. Her dependency needs became desperately obvious to her. She lost a great deal of weight and barely functioned professionally. She was acting in a play but isolated herself socially, and went from extremes of fasting to binging on peanuts.

She soon met and quickly moved in with a very talented man who works in the movie-making industry. Within a year of knowing him, she became pregnant, married, and had a child, in that order. Her husband is a very energetic, competent, patient, and generous man who is tolerant of Sandra's problems, though at times has pointed out her shortcomings. Recently he