Analysis of a Patient with a 'Split Personality'

I would not have dared to accept Mary as a patient had I known that she suffered from a psychosis; but, having done so, I had no choice. As it was, I am grateful for the opportunity of a deeper understanding of the most primitive layers of the human mind, the content of which is apparently happily repressed in less disturbed individuals, in some probably for generations. I had carefully to analyse the countertransference since I more than once felt repelled, especially when Mary, apparently shamelessly, acted out her destructive against Stefan. I am indebted to Dr. Winnicott's papers which confirmed my feeling to continue Mary's analysis in spite of the many setbacks.

The negative aspect of the result I believe to be due mainly to the early seduction by the psychotic father which prevented her from reaching the height of the Oedipus situation, when a girl's aggressive wish for her father's penis is transformed into a loving desire for his child. This caused her pathological penis-envy and greatly increased her inability to produce a child. In Mary's case I would not rule out an inherited psychotic disposition nor an unconscious wish to spare her children her own suffering. As regards the cause of the split, I think I can best crystallize it by her own last remark after miscarriage. She said: 'I can only now feel that my destructive part wants to play the rôle of a woman, as nature intended.'