Commentary by a Kleinian Psychoanalyst

When in the session described above the patient reports that he does not feel ‘plugged in’ and in persecuted ‘for being slow’, he explains how he immediately transforms this particular persecutory anxiety into ‘quite a good experience’, as if he were telling his therapist that he found the tolerance of persecution beyond his capabilities. We also read that the therapist's second question (‘Do you think I am all here’) diverts the patient from another type of anxiety: that of not being emotionally able to get himself to this particular session. Although it is true that the patient may be afraid of letting himself be affected by the therapist, there is little evidence of this at the time the therapist suggests it. There is however evidence that the patient ‘thinks’(?) there is something like a relationship going on, with the therapist ‘maybe’ present and with himself about to arrive. His response to this ambiguous state of affairs is to ‘go blank’, feel ‘weird’, ‘feel nothing’. But both therapist and patient know that he did have an experience when arriving at his session and that something is forcing him to acknowledge an encounter with the therapist - outside and inside.

This experience is rather beautifully described in the dream. In it the idealisation of the persecutory breasts (the beautiful witches) into whom he has projected his ‘twirling’ self and his wistfulness is followed by the experience of feeling ‘drawn in’ (or being drawn into a feeding situation) in a rather seductive, enticing way. The infant in the patient has the experience of being pulled into the session with questions and other gratifications in order to help him establish a feeding relation to the analytic breast. But this does not happen. Instead it becomes eroticised through the manic exhilaration in the dream and the reference to the patient's ‘sexuality’ in the session. It is my impression that it is not ‘homosexuality’ or adult sexuality that is the issue, but infantile sexuality at an ora