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IN THE COURSE of the last decade I have had forced on me the experience of several adult patients who made a regression in the transference in the course of analysis.
I wish to communicate an incident in the analysis of a patient who did not actually become clinically regressed but whose regressions were localized in momentary withdrawal states which occurred in the analytic sessions. My management of these withdrawal states was greatly influenced by my experience with regressed patients.
(By withdrawal in this paper I mean momentary detachment from a waking relationship with external reality, this detachment being sometimes of the nature of brief sleep. By regression I mean regression to dependence and not specifically regression in terms of erotogenic zones.)
I am choosing to give a series of six significant episodes chosen out of all the material belonging to the analysis of a schizoid-depressive patient. The patient is a married man with a family. At the onset of the present illness he had a breakdown, in which he felt unreal and lost what little capacity he had had for spontaneity. He was unable to work until some months after the analysis started, and at first he came to me as a patient from a mental hospital. (This patient had had a short period of analysis with me during the war, as a result of which he had made a clinical recovery from an acute disturbance of adolescence, but without gaining insight.)
The main thing that keeps this patient consciously seeking analysis is his inability to be impulsive and to make original remarks, although he can join very intelligently in serious conversation originated by other people. He is