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Hanna, a Figure of Masochism
She was 30 years old but looked like a little girl, awkward, hampered by a body with no curves, wrapped in loose and colourless clothing. She saw herself as futureless, her professional life was in a rut, her marriage was petering out in the violence of words and blows. She was overrun by pernicious and obsessive anxiety which she drowned in alcohol—the fear of being a “bad mother.”
As the eldest daughter, she thought she had failed to satisfy her mother who was ostensibly delighted about the birth of three boys, robust little fellows who took up all the space because of the vitality of their will and the brilliance of their success. Lost in this manly crowd, Hanna hung on to an absent and exciting father, jealously guarded by his seductive and sensual wife. However, whenever Hanna felt desperate or threatened, he was always there: if anyone was to save her, it was him!
Hanna used her sessions like irremovable landmarks, like a space of infinite grievances colonised by relentless self-incrimination. She seemed very attached to her daily misery and even her dreams revealed themselves consistent with the destitute reality of her life—dark, sticky, muddy: the expression, if not the ostentatious display, of a pervasive form of masochism made up the leading thread of the transference.
Beyond that murky world, she would let out, as if by accident, small glimmers that she put out very quickly but which led me to think that, hiding within her, were a few more gems whose sparkle she persisted in obscuring: she would furtively mention the brilliant life of her family because of her father’s high-level post, the sumptuous places where she spent her childhood, a few loving and ephemeral childminders. An unknown or masked princess, she reminded me of a dreamless Cinderella. But she had no use for a fairy godmother: no magic in language, no impact of my words, my constructions or my interpretations. I had to remain still, silent, so that she may carry on