On ‘The analyst at work’

Dear Sirs,

I want to congratulate the Journal for publication of ‘The Analyst at Work’. In my opinion it is the best thing a journal of psychoanalysis can offer.

Regarding the case presented by da Rocha Barros and discussed by Scarfone and Bonaminio, I agree with them about the lack of maternal care felt by the patient and the patient's flight towards an identification with the father figure, represented also by the analyst. In her dream about the blue vase, the case of the blue dress, the blue vases and the blue ceiling of the consulting room, we can clearly see her urge for a mother-environment.

The fact that in the patient's dream the other people are entranced by the vase in an almost religious way (a search for the idealised maternal object) could be, in my view, the fragmentation of a projective identification of her own craving for a maternal object to be adored. With this she felt empty and, as a result, created a pseudo-self, as Bonaminio put it, paraphrasing Winnicott.

I think her dilemma was between living ‘too inside’ (come back to the uterus, so to speak) or ‘too outside’, performing important deeds as identified with her father. This is a dilemma common to all human beings, well studied by Mauricio Abadi, an Argentinean psychoanalyst. Ana, the patient of da Rocha Barros, has it to a greater degree than most.