Repetitive Trauma and Restorative Illusion: The Elusive Nature of the Selfobject Transference in the Case of Mary

This article presents the case of Mary because the nature of the selfobject transference is both so evident and so elusive. An exceptionally bright woman, Mary suffered severe abuse beginning shortly after her birth. To survive, she created a selfobject experience with an imagined mother and learned to manage her own mother by provoking, and thus controlling, the attacks. Both of these experiences have had a profound effect on the therapeutic relationship. Mary unfortunately often experiences the therapeutic framework, as flexible it has come to be between us, as an assault and fights the very nature of it. The reality of me as her therapist disrupts her idealized, archaic transference—one configured based on an illusion created in childhood to help her survive. When disrupted, she experiences intense despair and loses her connection to me. What remains illusive, yet now seems possible, is maintaining the selfobject tie in a way that allows internalization to occur, rather than traumatic repetition and restorative illusion. Notes of 9 sessions are provided to allow the process as it is unfolding, in its current form, to be explored and commented on by the panelists.