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This sounds a valuable treatment and Greta is fortunate to have the opportunity for intensive psychotherapy. It is difficult to comment on any snapshot of a case being conducted by a colleague, and I prefer not to propose interpretations of the patient’s material, as I am sure that the therapist, and the patient, are best placed to build these narratives together. Instead I will focus my comments on therapeutic technique with adolescents, in particular, the use of ‘transference interpretation’ with adolescents, drawing on what the therapist herself presents about her style of work, at least in this session.
It is noticeable that the therapist is quick to highlight the importance of the therapy, especially at the beginning and then subsequently at various times through the course of the session. For example, at the beginning of the second paragraph, after the patient has said that the clock in the room is ticking loudly: ‘I say that today is one of those days when time feels loud and heavy and she dreads it. I say that this is the last week before Christmas and the last one of intensive work …’ This seems quite a leap. Perhaps there is a history of this kind of exchange that gives the therapist reason to be more certain than we can be as reader-observers but as it stands the therapist does not allow time for exploration and questioning but rather speaks in a way that gives the impression that she can read the patient’s mind. She delivers her interpretation about the Christmas break/reduction in therapy in a way that could, to my mind at least, be
heard as unduly certain without leaving room to gather the associations and potential meanings of this particular expression. Why is the young woman saying this particular thing, in this particular way, at this particular time? It is as if the therapist had made up her mind that the patient is speaking about the break and the reduction in therapy intensity. Even if that might come to be the case in the course of conversati