Refusal

For a long time the patient refrained from opening himself up to someone else about the pain lodged in his soul. Yet everything seemed to be going well for him: he had achieved brilliant studies, enjoyed rude health, and acquired material comfort acquired early on in his life, and above all he had a loving companion with whom a good future seemed to be taking shape, albeit darkened by this painful breach. When, finally, he had made a decision to do so, after a few sessions he accepted without frowning the framework and the method: free association and the payment of all sessions. A window onto his internal world, this silent presence that the analyst faced him with and imposed on himself, exposed the patient to his perplexity when faced with the expectations of the other: the other in himself, but also its echo or its extensions in the analyst. In the course of the sessions, he talked about his phobia of marriage and even more his phobia of becoming a father. With the same restraint, he evoked the tensions and dissensions between him and his colleagues, his friends, his parents or his companion, with whom he was now reluctant to speak, as he no longer accepted her way of revealing allusively his sadness and his depression. Quite clearly, this complaint was addressed to the analyst and was the hallmark of his transference neurosis. And yet the analyst refused to respond to this illusory demand: it would be premature to want to name or silence the tormenting pain that he was complaining about.

After a few months, somewhat embarrassed, the patient handed the analyst a letter from his father. Although he had often mentioned his admiration for his parents, their qualities, their vital force, and how they had overcome during his adolescence the death of a younger sister, the analyst now discovered that the father was a medical professional. At the next session, the analyst learnt that he had kept this letter for several weeks in his back pocket, unable to decide whether to