Clinical Material

S., a middle-aged man, contacted me following a professional recommendation several years ago. He did not understand his feelings towards people and saw only an attitude to events. The feeling of isolation and lack of contact to others had always been with him.

He was the only child in the family. His father served in the army and was involved in war conflicts. S. claims that his father never loved him. When he was 11, the father died after drunkenly falling from a balcony. S. was not at home at the time, but he is certain that the father ‘mistook the door for a window’ and hung for some time clinging to the edge of the balcony, but no one came to help. S. also believed that his father died because of his hatred that caused the death. He remembers his father as an intimidating and aggressive man who drank and scandalised at home but did not resort to violence.

S. described his mother to be extremely poorly but said they had a ‘normal’ relationship in which there was no intimacy of any kind. She seemed aloof, inaccessible, and always preoccupied with herself. When she was diagnosed with cancer a year ago, S. took part in her treatment with great difficulty. He would forget and try to avoid going to the doctors, or he would think that he himself had a terrible disease or that a catastrophe could happen to him. Thinking about her death, he felt galled that it would leave him indifferent.

Recalling the atmosphere of the house, he described it as follows: the father was in the living room, often drunk and discontented, the mother was in the kitchen, and S. was in his room. If they gathered at one place, there was a scandal, so he was afraid to leave his bedroom.

At the beginning of therapy, S. participated in role-playing games set in a post-apocalyptic world where he was assigned the role of a detective or a therapist. These games brought him pleasure and excitement because they were ‘e