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November 18, 1968. TRANSFERENCE, SOMATIZATION AND SYMBIOTIC NEED. Robert A. Savitt, M.D.
Dr. Savitt presented detailed clinical material covering a period of several months early in the analysis of a young man, during which there was reactivation of a duodenal ulcer. The patient, a twenty-eight-year-old married man, entered analysis to determine whether he should continue his marriage or end it and live as a homosexual; his sexual behavior was predominantly homosexual. For several years before analysis there had been no gastrointestinal complaints.
Intense erotized transference developed early in analysis. In the first session he reported a dream in which the analyst appeared undisguised and had anal intercourse with him. His homosexual activity was limited to having his partners perform fellatio on him; he considered himself the 'feeder' of weak men. However, in the manifest content of the dream the homosexual procedure was reversed: the analyst 'fed' him. It was some months before he could be convinced that the latent meaning of the dream was the concept of penis as breast, anus as mouth, and the bisexual representation of the analyst was of himself.
The patient's mother, who had resented pregnancy and wanted to abort him, was depressed and aloof during his childhood. His father was warm, played with and fondled him, and to the patient became a maternal figure. At six he became ill with pneumonia and his mother took him into her bed, which he felt was the first genuine interest she had shown in him. He recovered but she developed pneumonia and died. On the day of her funeral he felt 'very empty and gorged himself on candy' and for the first time experienced a sense of bodily swelling. During adolescence he occasionally slept with his father and would yearn for anal penetration by him. At these times he experienced sensations of body swelling.