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… he who remains passive when overwhelmed with grief loses his best chance of recovering elasticity of mind.
CHARLES DARWIN, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals
In considering the theoretical implications of Geraldine's case, a main feature to be noted is the strong contrast between the apparently composed and self-assured Geraldine of the first couple of years of therapy, a girl who expressed little emotion and gave little away, and the Geraldine of the later years who, after breaking down emotionally, described tearfully all the painful feeling she had experienced at the time of her mother's death and after it, her intense loneliness and how, more than anything else, she now wanted someone to hold her tight and ‘really mean it’. Thereafter, instead of remaining aloof, she became intensely attached to her therapist, sought her love and company and was angry whenever she was away.
Of the many ways in which Geraldine's original condition might be conceptualized the one closest to the data, I believe, is to regard her as being like Mr G (Chapter 12), namely possessed of two ‘selves’, or Principal Systems as I am terming them. During the first two years of therapy the governing system and the one having free access to consciousness was a system from which almost every element of attachment behaviour was excluded. Not only were all forms of the behaviour itself missing but missing too were all desire and longing for love and care, all memory of her bond to her mother, and all the disappointment, the misery and the anger that any ordinary human being feels when such desires go for long unrequited. Yet there is ample evidence that, coexistent with this governing Principal System, there was another Principal System, segregated from it and unconscious, in which belonged all the missing elements, including all her personal, autobiographical, memories.1