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There is a lot of information that we don’t have here, in particular an early developmental history that may tell us something about her mother’s state of mind and the support mother may or not have had during Rebecca’s infancy. We do know that she was the third child, that father has mental health problems and that the parents are separated. My hypothesis from this session is that for whatever reasons, Rebecca’s experience is of a maternal figure who projects back to Rebecca any disturbance that she attempts to project into her mother, rather than being able to contain her disturbance. Rebecca experiences this as a hostile rejection of her disturbed states of mind and this repeated experience leaves her with only omnipotent defences to manage very primitive states of intense anxiety and rage. This internal state can be seen in the description of her relationship with her siblings, where she feels she cannot express her grievances for fear she will be scapegoated with the disturbance pushed back into her.
First, though, what a very odd, even perverse, gift for her father to buy his daughter – a set of antique razors! I think it is a significant communication that in the previous session she tells the therapist she cut herself with father’s present. I would be curious to learn more about this. Does her father know of her cutting? Does she feel cut up by her father’s leaving? Is she furious her father has left her alone to deal with mother’s state of mind?
She begins this session by saying it was her birthday the day before and towards the end of the session she says she feels she is “coming out of it” (the depression) now her birthday is over. It seems that her birthday was really traumatic and in a roundabout way I felt the session was primarily an attempt to communicate just how disturbing she found her birthday and its implications.
The next communication is a rather bizarre description of how she has acclimatised herself to drinking again so she can get drunk on her