You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
The background, early history, presentation, current life circumstances and the analytic session presented to us in this vignette, all in their entirety, seem very much to resonate with the themes of the conference today, ‘Continuity and Disruption.’
Mr R was shocked and traumatised by the experience of breakdown and loss in his relationships, both personal and professional. That was a significant and decisive moment in his life that motivated him to seek psychotherapeutic help. Usefully, he brought with him some rudimentary but an important awareness and understanding of his difficulties: A ‘deficit’ in his ability to maintain relationships; a combination of ‘vexation and conviction’ about his failures; an inner awareness of his ‘insufficient development’; a ‘compulsive search’ in various object-related experiences for answers to the questions about the painful difficulties in his emotional life which plagued him. However, the implicit and disguised demand for losses to be recovered and restored also suggested a severe lack of psychic resources to repair his damaged internal objects and his relationships with him. From his perspective, closeness and intimacy evaded him. Dependency posed danger and disappointment for him. Others exuded the kind of success he could only imitate. Freedom and spontaneity were qualities he could not own.
I think the summary of Mr R's experiences and events in his childhood and later development helps the therapist and us to contextualise and map out his inner world. It is clear that he found his objects were callous and cold towards him. An alcoholic father who punished him for disobedience, and a mother who was indifferent to suffering left him with bitterness, rage and helplessness. To overcome this inner plight and turmoil, he devised a life plan: Idealised objects in the form of a house, an expensive car and a beautiful wife. Yet, in life and in therapy, despite a façade of competence and an apparent capacity to cope with his difficul