Paranoid and Depressive Positions in Marital Relations

I cannot conceive of an emotional disturbance that does not contain a poblem in relationship, since my definition of normality entails creativity in forming relationships. If one cannot do that, then one cannot have a marriage. So the way to treat mantal disturbances is to treat the individual psychopathology. Part of normahty is the capacity of two people to get together.

I would treat a disturbance in a relationship in the same way that I would treat any other emotional disturbance. In other words, I would always deal with the indivdual transference neurosis. Instincts are object-seeking. Patients come and the analyst is the object and therefore they seek to form a relationship with he analyst. It may be oral, it may be anal, or it may be genita depending on what the particular psychopathology is, but they will form a relationship. Now, of course, according to psychoanalytic theory the relationship they form will replicate the relationship they formed with their primary objects. We are driven to repeat by unconscious forces. A patient's relationship to me is going to be somewhat different from his relationship to his mate, to his parents, or to his butcher, but it will still be driven by similar unconscious forces, so on the whole it will be a repetition of the problem.

This is why I believe that there is not very much to be gained by listening to a patient talk about what her husband does. “He kicks me or he doesn't have enough intercourse with me or doesn't give