Presentation of Clinical Material on Sexuality: Chaired by Guillermo Ferschtut, Buenos Aires

Guillermo Ferschtut opened the panel with some brief but warm remarks about Horacio Etchegoyen, who then read his paper. The paper dealt with a patient in her forties who was about to finish her treatment after several years. He gave the account of five sessions given in a week before vacation time. The first session on Monday began with a dream in which there were elements that related to the patient's fantasies about dangers that could threaten her body (sexual organs) and the loss of beloved members of her family, as well as her functioning as a differentiated sexual person. The analysis of this dream was the subject of all five sessions of the week. Although a full account of the clinical material will not be possible, I will try to emphasise the technique and the way in which transference and countertransference developments were handled by Etchegoyen.

The dream and clinical material was full of omnipotent fantasies, as well as fantasies related to her body and feelings of a damaged organism and doubts about her integrity as a sexual valuable person. A relevant aspect of the material was the patient's envy, expressed by projective identification into the analyst through attempts to devalue his functioning as an able and valuable analyst. He chose to interpret this material by giving emphasis to the early mother-child relationship, the early pre-oedipal phase, the female phase and Klein's theory of primary envy. Etchegoyen underlined how easy it would have been for a female analyst to follow this path, but how difficult it was for him (a male analyst) to account for his countertransference feelings. At this moment, the patient acted out by threatening to leave for one week just before the summer vacation. This situation aroused very strong countertransference feelings. Etchegoyen showed how he carefully evaluated his feelings, and waited until he understood the material before interpreting the patient's unconscious fantasies, after which she reversed h