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Reading the material for the first time, a number of associations and affective responses well up in me: Maud—what a quaint, old-fashioned name, I think. It sounds antiquated and it brings to mind the image of a stereotypical spinster. The latter thought and the concomitant associations to (lack of) sexual intercourse and marriage are enriched by two pieces of information: the process revolved around questions of Maud's ‘engagement’ with it, with her analyst; and a striking discrepancy between her apparent ‘wish to make herself available’ in the pretreatment questionnaire and her withdrawn attitude in the actual treatment.
I feel the ambivalence between her wanting to engage, longing for intercourse and staying a safe, but lifeless distance in her analyst's story about the beginning of treatment. I learn that she tried to kill herself and sense my own curiosity rising, wanting to know more—what did she do? I imagine an attack on her own body with a knife, cutting herself open. I seem to remember an eminent psychoanalyst who made a point of using the German word ‘Selbstmord’ in conversation with patients, marking the violence against the self in a much clearer and more direct way than the technical ‘Suizid’. Both German words translate to the English ‘suicide’, but ‘Selbstmord’ combines the words ‘Selbst’ (self) and ‘Mord’ (murder) to the effect of more aggressive associations. I wonder what is omitted in the abstract description of Maud's suicide attempt. The question ‘Why not call a spade a spade?’ comes to mind. Maud appears to be both aggressive and violent so, there is frustration welling up in me now, and a forceful curiosity: I become impatient to know what she did to herself.
From the description, Maud seems to stumble into psychoanalytic treatment without being able to formulate a hope or wish for such an intensive and demanding process. It feels like she is passive in being sent to psychotherapy and consequently does not seem to care much about keeping to the