Nameless Revenge

I had an interesting experience during a recent diagnostic interview. I found it unusual enough to recount to several colleagues and this provided me with a further interesting experience in that my story provoked very diverse reactions and interpretations from the listeners. So, here is a written account where I shall try to describe the events as they unfolded. Clearly, this is not the full interview but only the details that I consider relevant to convey both the patient's story and my own involvement.

Miss Brown is in her early forties. An attractive and intelligent woman, she is a highly competent professional who had considerable insight into her feelings and those of others. She decided to have psychotherapy because she felt she had never managed to bring her pursuits to a full, proper conclusion. From a working-class background, Miss Brown had made her way to university where she achieved considerable success and was encouraged to join the teaching staff. After a time she realised she was not happy and moved on to another activity: again, her repeated promotions were accompanied by a feeling of unhappiness and an incapacity to get her writings ready for publication. A new career was started and further successes followed and Miss Brown came to see me at the point where the culmination of her efforts appeared, again, to be thwarted.

In her personal life the pattern was not much different. She was able to form long and meaningful relationships but the men she chose ‘only seem to want to use me’. She had always wanted to have a child but here she was at an age where further pain appeared, in view of the realisation that she might have left it too late.

Right at the beginning of the interview, Miss Brown voiced her intense resentment against her mother. Now in her late seventies and severely demented this mother was blamed for having always tried to subject Miss Brown into total conformity. An older son from a previous marriage was ‘written oft’ because she did not