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As I greeted Nina for the first time, she stood up from the chair in the waiting room and seemed to loom above me. Although she smiled, she was clearly as surprised by my short stature as I was by her height. She squared her shoulders, walking past me and into the office, and it felt to me that she was owning the space with her stride and bearing. She sat in one of my chairs with an exclamation: “This is so low! It's Lilliputian!” I laughed and replied that maybe we were already looking at the fit between us. Nina had told me on the phone that she questioned whether there was a good fit between her and her boyfriend, a man who withdrew from her sexually, just as her ex-husband had in a way that had led her to leave her marriage. She decided to seek analysis, and had talked with several analysts, but hadn't been happy with any of them given how they “just asked the same old questions.”
Nina settled in the chair, looking at me in a way that felt like a confrontation. She began, saying that rather than going over the same old stories of her life, she could play a dream she had that morning. “Play?” I wondered aloud. She held up her iPhone, telling me that she recorded her dreams on a regular basis. Like her “Lilliputian” comment, this felt both engaging and provoking, but I felt willing to let her “play,” and told her so, but suggested that she tell me something about herself to provide some context. She hesitated at first, but even though clearly disappointed, she told me something about her life.
She is the middle child of three, born to a boisterous Italian physician father and a taciturn but attentive stay at home mother. She said that as a child, she was more expressive and playful than her brother and sister, willing to engage her father in dinner table antics and arguments while her mother and siblings looked on. As Nina developed as a teenager, her father was expressive and intrusive in his affection, gazing, touching, patting, and making suggestive comments. Thi