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Following five years of productive analysis during which a married male patient of thirty had extensively worked through his passive-feminine conflicts and his deep-rooted, unresolved ambivalence toward his mother and father, there was a marked recrudescence of all symptoms at the time that the patient himself had elected to terminate treatment. The dynamics of the unresolved transference that emerged at this point involved his struggle against his passive-dependent yearnings which revived his Oedipal conflict and unconscious parricidal wishes.
The patient was the youngest of three children reared in a small university town. His father was a botanist, withdrawn, egocentric, and apparently incompatible with the patient's mother from the very beginning of their marriage. Most of the time the father travelled abroad to escape his wife's violent emotional diatribes and demands for attention. During the brief interludes when he was at home, he behaved in a controlled, passive, unemotional way, hiding in his books or research. The patient always yearned to be close to his father who, he felt, favored his older brother and sister. With respect to his mother, he vividly recalled entering her bed every night well into latency, complaining of leg pains, and being caressed and massaged. He had the need to appease and placate his devouring mother in order to avoid her screaming and sobbing entreaties.
In latency he enjoyed sports with other boys but often felt left out by his older brother. On several occasions he observed and participated in mutual masturbation with these boys. However, from puberty on there was a distinct shift toward girls, and he developed several 'crushes' in high school.