You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
A detailed case history is given centering around a reconstruction made during the third year of an analysis. The reconstruction which had been made once before in the first year, only to be denied, was offered by the analyst casually and without emphasis. Its importance was not appreciated until after it had produced results. The patient reacted by investigating the construction that she had been taken to a hospital when a small girl and left in the care of strangers. Although her father denied that she had had such an experience, the patient was able to confirm from hospital records and from notes of her mother that she had indeed been hospitalized for a month at the age of three. This information confirmed the construction, but more important, the patient's dreams and reactions in the transference situation provided an extensive elaboration and reliving of the early experience. The patient developed greater independence and a greater awareness of tolerance for aggressive and homosexual impulses. Her guilt feelings diminished, and her relationships with men friends became less masochistic and more selective.