Split Object Choice

A divorced woman in her early forties exhibited an interesting defense against the erotic transference arising from childhood Oedipal fantasies. She had entered analysis somewhat depressed after her most recent lover, A, had left her. There was a history of regularly involving herself with pairs of men: one, idealized, but to be discarded after giving her a real or fantasied child; the other, sexualized and irresistible to her, but degraded.

In one hour she spoke rather dryly of her childhood love for a book entitled The Secret Garden. Her description of it and her associations led to her favorite childhood myth, namely, that her father, who had died when she was four years old, would return some day. During her latency years, she would conjure up his image whenever she was about to do something forbidden (such as masturbate). She would imagine him instructing her in a kindly way to be a good girl. When she was six, her mother remarried. At first enthusiastic about the marriage and about her new 'father', the patient subsequently began to loathe him; apparently he was crude, exhibitionistic, and made some fumbling sexual advances toward her in the prepuberty period. Early in analysis she was not aware of having responded to these approaches with excitement.

Even as an adult, when she felt in contact with her dead father, she felt powerful; she believed with almost delusional intensity that her thoughts could control the appearance and disappearance of loved ones. At such times she had no need for real men or for their penises, and had fantasies of bisexual omnipotence. For example, she viewed her younger brother as the 'gift' left to her by her father who was watching over her; she was both mother and father to this brother. Despite these feelings, she viewed analysis as offering her the opportunity to rid herself of 'ghosts', especially of the painful recollections of A, whose desertion had left her in a state of grief.