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Chair: Paula L. Ellman
Presenter: Danielle Knafo
Discussants: Cristina Saottini, Cecile Bassen, Patricia Alkolombre
Dr Paula Ellman introduced the panel theme and the speaker and discussants. She recognized the centrality of objectification of the female throughout the world and the importance of hearing from the international panel speakers from Argentina, Italy and the USA.
Dr Danielle Knafo described the psychoanalytic treatment of a woman who initially presented as a two-dimensional, Barbie doll-like pleaser. The clinical material covered a five-year treatment and showed the way Barbara developed from a perverse version of feminine identity to a woman with feelings and a full identity involving mature relationships and professional competence. Dr Knafo titled her paper “Out of the dollhouse,” capturing the immersion of Barbara in the Barbie metaphor, which included her obsession with beauty and appearances. Barbara’s analysis resulted in the discovery of her own liberated feelings of anger, envy, competitiveness, and sexuality.
The first encounter of client and therapist resembled a theatre piece – a major enactment – setting up the central themes in Barbara's mind that immediately turned up in the pre-transference. Barbara had gone to the bathroom leaving her beautiful, stunning friend in the waiting room. Dr Knafo had the impression that this gorgeous woman was her patient only to discover the “real” Barbara. The tensions about who is the most beautiful ran high throughout much of the treatment, infiltrating the transference and the countertransference.
Barbara was her mother's admirer as she assumed the position of gazing at her while she put on make-up and accepted her inferior place with regard to her and other beautiful women in her life. Father's attention felt good to Barbara but often involved negative remarks about his daughter's body. Consequently, Barbara created a false self, playing with her Barbie dolls and becoming a woman lacking de