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Yune is a married endocrinologist in her early fifties. I have treated her for 7 years, the last five of which have been in psychoanalysis. Short and slender, Yune speaks quickly and is quite articulate. At the time our work began, she was married and had two daughters, aged 12 and 13. The patient was referred to me for a consultation to aid her in understanding and handling her elder daughter. The referral came from the psychiatrist who had been treating the daughter for Attention Deficit Disorder. In the first meeting, Yune told me that when her daughter didn’t study hard enough or appeared distracted, Yune herself often felt angry and would shout and throw things at her daughter. She was later filled with regret at her punitive behaviour and loss of control. In the process of discussing her parenting problems, Yune also revealed her own chronic anxiety, her habit of binging and purging that had started in college, and her current alcohol abuse, which amounted to half a bottle of wine a day. She ended up requesting her own psychotherapy with me, to which I agreed. We began at a frequency of once per week, which increased to twice weekly after a year and a half. At the point of making the decision to come more often, Yune reported a dream in which she could not find her car in a parking lot, and so couldn’t come to my office. The following week she “inadvertently” took a sleeping pill while drinking, and ended up wandering outside at night in the cold, falling asleep alone there. She was found by a security guard, who helped her return home.
After five months of twice weekly treatment I ended up recommending her coming four times per week, to which Yune agreed.
In the early consultation sessions, it became clear that Yune was ashamed of her anger and impatience with her daughter. She sincerely wanted to understand the latter’s inability to concentrate on her studies and her overall psychological state. At the same time, she was highly defensive, jumping in at the end