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.
“Have got paint onto my sleeve.” He went on and on about this; he couldn't get it off; it might injure my “new couch”; complaints of noises.
Some of the session was explicable in terms of being right inside the mother and witnessing sexual intercourse from there; some in terms of a sexual relationship with me which was achieved by sexualizing a miserable relationship. He spoke of smoke coming from top-storey rooms – two rooms; a fire-engine going to a house where only a week before there had been a fire. These I interpreted as primal scene. But I felt it was more free association on my part to stimuli produced by him. The session had a certain coherence – as interpreted by me. It is extraordinary how little I can have any confidence in the work done; so much seems to be done by myself that any ‘result’ in the session is open to the objection that it is achieved by the analyst out of his own mind without any element of real contribution by the patient. Yet he criticizes as if any departure from an exactly correct interpretation is an inexcusable imprecision. It is far easier for me to recall an interpretation of mine than the material on which it was based. But nevertheless there were interpretations today which felt right. One touched on the fact that he behaved and felt like a baby – either D or the unborn one – so that the baby would not envy him as the parent. In this way the parent was not allowed to have anything the baby could not have.
The relationship with me is governed by the same watchfulness towards a murderously envious force which appears to be somewhere about. It is often as if material produced for inspection and interpretation is removed in the very act of interpretation. I showed him that a miserable relationship with me was made tolerable by being sexualized.