There are many difficulties involved in commenting on a short written clinical account. Many questions must remain unanswered and one is obliged to contain one's speculations.

For myself I view the transference as a re-enactment of the patient's internalised relationships between the subject and objects and therefore the nature of the actual transference - who is the therapist representing and, indeed, who is the patient representing - is a question that I keep very much in mind at all times. The countertransference, too, is an invaluable guide in orientating oneself in the expressed internalised relationships.

In the case of this young man his relationships are described as scourging. It seems to me that it is the patient's objects that are felt by him to possess everything, but which are ungiving and dismissive and that he can only acquire anything tot himself by a process of reflection from them. He is left hungry, angry, deprived and unsatisfied by the departure of the other - the therapist has told us