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… to turn his hysterical misery into a current misfortune. S. FREUD 3
Psychoanalysis is a microsocial model of macrosocial contradictions and alienations. IGOR A. CARUSO 2
THERE IS AN INCREASING number of patients whose psychic conflicts have social implications. This can be ascribed to our times, marked as they are by swift changes, accompanied by the rejection of old habits and values. The central conflict with these patients seems to be a pronounced split between thought and feeling, between the past and the present. This is the historic-existential situation of the younger Brazilian generation today.
My remarks are based on my experience with a rather restricted group, mainly adults ranging in age from twenty to thirty years, students or graduates, unmarried. Broadly speaking, one may say that this psychoanalyst is a "petit bourgeois" who helps other "petit bourgeois" with their "petit-bourgeois" problems. The case discussed below is one that illustrates a certain facet of psychoanalytic practice which may not be so evident in other cases.
Virginia is a university student studying in the humanities. She sought therapy at the peak of an intense anxiety crisis, two days after having sexual intercourse with a classmate, "a kind of boy-friend."
Her father is a prosperous landowner; her mother devotes herself exclusively to household duties. The patient is derisive of the mother's submissiveness to her husband and her passive acceptance of the housewife role. The father is the object of great hostility on the part of the patient, who nevertheless concedes that she admires him greatly. A year ago she received permission from her father (with her mother's help) to come to