‘Serious Things to be Faced’1

To be invited to participate in the section ‘The Analyst at Work’ as a commentator presents one with a fascinating and engaging task. As such, it was not without a certain trepidation that I looked forward to the clinical report of Roberto Basile. Would I be able to meet the challenge in an alive and meaningful way? After having actually read through the case presentation with its colourful description of a 35 year-old patient, its detailed accounts of the internal and external interactions between patient and analyst, accompanied by the analyst's reflections, I was struck by a discrepancy: if in the initial meeting the patient had, so it seemed to me, authentically cast on to the wall a dramatic ‘fresco’ in which eruptions and clashes hung in the air, so, in the session presented from the tenth month of the analysis, a ‘feeling of peace’ seemed to prevail and serious dangers were apparently not being felt. What has happened?

Attempting to place myself in the situation and imagine how I would have under-stood the patient's communications is the exciting opportunity that the IJP offers to all its participants: to see how well we are able to communicate our work—what we share and how we differ—within the confines of this specialized format in which one has only the written report which has been noted by various contributors to this column, as well as the Editors. I have the impression that I share important theo-retical points with Basile. For example, the importance of the initial meeting/first session, as well as the conviction that an historical reconstruction as such is not helpful if working through in the here and now cannot take place. At the same time, my view of the material clearly differs. Is this due, perhaps, to the different value I place on the patient's phantasies as well as to a different understanding of the countertransference?

It seemed to me that the key to my task lay in the patient's reminder that ‘there are still serious things to be faced’, whic