Clinical Material

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

Simon is a young man whose mechanical movements and lack of emotion, observed during our first session, made him appear almost robotic. He had not worked for 6 months and rarely left his home. Simon quickly recounted his background: he grew up with a tyrannical father who, while providing for the family, ruled through fear and rudeness. His mother, whom he described dismissively as a ‘dumb blonde’ and a ‘food processor’, had, according to Simon, secured his father's money through cunning and now lived in a world of illusions, free from the need to work. Both parents had children with severe addictions from previous marriages. Simon mentioned, almost in passing, that his father had never physically abused

him. On the contrary, his father often treated him with great attention. However, this did not matter because he lived in an atmosphere of violence, did not trust his father, felt unable to object and had to pretend to be successful and obedient.

Simon lived entirely under his father's care—he provided housing, a car, paid for Simon's prestigious university and supported him financially. Listening to Simon's story, I assumed he had managed to seize power over his parents, keeping them at a safe distance by making them fear that their child was mentally unstable. However, in return, Simon had to refuse the opportunity to live his own life fully. After I spoke, Simon experienced a five-minute episode of harsh breathing and twitching, vaguely reminiscent of an epileptic fit. This allowed me to sense the fear with which Simon controlled his parents. He has a very concrete representation of a fantasy about the relationship in the parental couple, where he was simultaneously the tyrannical father who kept control and all the attention of the family, and the mother who lived supported by his father, though being afraid of violence and taking away his power with her cunning. Simon had