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The successful analysis of markedly narcissistic personalities is still sufficiently infrequent to justify the reporting of facts and factors pertaining to any positive results obtained. In general, the obstacle encountered in analysing a narcissistic individual is the problem of obtaining a relationship in which the transference is sufficiently positive to make some form of interpersonal relationship possible. One encounters usually either a marked overt hostility or a detachment. The case for consideration in this paper is one in which detachment was the presenting attitude. To avoid any confusion let us first define detachment. The term is used here to describe a situation in which the patient is apparently unaware of any personal emotional contact with other human beings. He is an onlooker at life. When it is necessary for him to have a relationship with another human being, he either conducts this relationship as coldly as if it were an unimportant business transaction, or he goes through the motions of social graciousness or friendliness without having the slightest feelings corresponding to the behaviour or, if the detachment is extreme, as in some schizophrenic states, even these efforts at communication may be given up.
It is the purpose of this paper to present a study of a five-year analysis of a detached personality of the cold impersonal type who only occasionally was able to go through the motions of social graciousness. The analysis will be studied chiefly as it found expression in the transference. Beginning with apparently total absence of transference the evolution of an awareness of its existence as subjectively experienced by the patient will be traced.
Although this may seem at first thought to be a very one-sided view of a case, it will be seen on further consideration to be a direct attack upon the presenting symptom, detachment. Since his chief difficulty lay in his efforts to make contact with other people, it seems reasonable to exp