Clinical Material

(The clinical material has been carefully disguised to preserve the patient's anonymity)

Charlotte, a young woman, came with complaints that since losing her mother, she had stopped enjoying life, was no longer able to lead a ‘healthy’ lifestyle, and felt drained of energy. She was convinced that she would never meet someone who could understand her and help her.

From her story, it seemed that her parents had no life before or after her birth, and her childhood was filled with misfortune and loss—she was not breastfed, her father died young, and her mother never remarried, supposedly ‘for her daughter's sake’. Her father seemed idealized, while her mother was described as cruel, suicidal, anxious and indifferent. Charlotte's mental and physical space had previously been limited and cramped—until the end of school, she shared a room with her mother, who in turn lived with her parents in the same house. She felt lonely everywhere—she did well at school but was shy around her peers.

As soon as she finished college, she ‘shot out’ of home to study in another country. There, she felt freedom for the first time, but this was overshadowed by the deaths of her grandparents. On top of this, her mother, who had just started living independently, died tragically. Charlotte was convinced that she would pay dearly for any separation. She had difficulty forming close relationships for a long time—as soon as she became attached to someone new, they would disappear without

explanation. Moreover, she felt that if it became known that she was in great need, her independence would disappear without trace.

Initially, Charlotte's dreams centred around missed opportunities; these had been gradually replaced by recurring scenes of invasion, being taken over and powerlessness. Similarly, my countertransference changed– first hopeful of ‘reviving’ her, I first felt hopeless and bored, and then increasingly useless after she rejected various interpretations. I wondered in silence whether Char