«High and Dry»

Anna is a paediatrician in her early thirties, quite short but very good-looking. She has been in analysis at three sessions a week for four years; for some time now, the predominant theme has been her relationship with her mother and her jealousy at her mother's preferential relationship with her two sons. The analysis has demonstrated to the patient that she has an unconscious tendency to occupy the position of a «third» party vis-à-vis her mother, replacing the father, the aim being to avoid the sense of exclusion. This unconscious ambition, which was also reinforced by rivalry with the father, has also given rise to a period of intense ambivalence towards the analyst.

I present below a broad outline of the analysis of some dreams that proved particularly helpful in elucidating the patient's difficulty in managing her body and its desires under the pressure of the castration anxiety experienced in the primary relationship with her mother.

I am with a girl I fancy. We approach each other and start undressing. We still have our knickers on. I go up to the girl and she takes my breast in her hands. I do the same with her. We decide to make love and we undress. We go to bed and start fondling each other. Then I discover that the girl has a penis, like a very big clitoris; it is hook-shaped and it puts me off. The scene changes. I'm at a house by the seaside that belongs to my family. With his own hands, my father has built an incredibly high retaining wall which completely blocks off the view. But the retaining wall doesn't face the sea: it's on the landward side behind the house.

She offers no associations. I confine myself to drawing attention to her fear of being «hooked», as prey, by her mother in connection with their erotic relationship and the absence of a father who can appropriately hold back («retain») the mother's invasiveness. I add that the high wall in the dream also stands for the wall that divides us inside the analysis - the impossibility of