The Unconscious Fantasy of Infanticide Manifested in Resistance

A woman whose basic character structure, driven by conscience, was typical of "those wrecked by success" came to analysis in a depression, suffering from compulsive indecision and doubt. It was possible to reconstruct that her illness was precipitated by the particular success that came with the purchase of a home, an unconscious symbolic reminder of fertility, past pregnancies, and past experiences with children, while it was also representative of financial and professional achievements far beyond even the dreams of her ambitious mother. Her successes had to be denied or destroyed because of their oedipal implications. The sequence of depression in women following the purchase of a home seems to be a psychiatric constellation which occurs more often than previously noted.

In the analysis the patient claimed stupidity, a lack of understanding, and an absence of involvement. She expressed sympathy and pity for the analyst as well as for herself while she attacked and condemned. Those attitudes expressed ambivalences and maintained isolations and undoings by which means she managed to destroy and rid from consciousness the work of the analysis. She nevertheless retained some therapeutic benefits from the unconscious aspects of the transference so long as they were isolated from the treatment. An unplanned pregnancy precipitated an