The Allergic Object-Relationship

A woman patient had been suffering from asthma since childhood, as her mother and grandmother had before her. On arriving for her sessions, she always asks how the analyst is (“Are you well?”). The analyst feels that the patient is scrutinizing every movement she makes and seems to be searching for her approbation and wanting to regulate her attitude in relation to that of her analyst. This dynamic of intense perceptual clinging makes evenly-suspended attention difficult.

In her daily life, she is unable to oppose anyone. She does not know how to say “no”; she invents exhausting stratagems to please everyone and hurt no one. Thus, she complains that she is unable to choose between two men. She lives with one of them without being able really to commit herself. He has a son from an earlier marriage and the relationship he has with his child is an insurmountable obstacle for her. She “cannot find her place there”. “No place? or no place for you?”, the analyst asked. Nor can she make up her mind to leave the man with whom she was living before. With regard to this man, she is in a situation of endless waiting: she would like him to be different, more attentive, more conciliatory, and capable of identifying with her needs. Everything, in other words, that her mother was not. Since her childhood, moreover, this patient has conformed scrupulously to her mother's wishes because she feared that, if she didn't, she would lose her love. We can see the manifestation of this in the transference when she adheres immediately to what the analyst suggests to her. It is a collage, a fascination, which evacuates any form of reflection and places her in a situation of absolute dependence.

One day, she had a dream: “I arrived at the time of my appointment, but it was another woman who opened the door and received me for the session. She was different from every point of view, but I did not pay attention to the difference, I acted as if it was you, I forgot that it wasn't you, except when