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A woman in her late thirties sought treatment because of uncontrollable, compulsive shopping sprees. She was deeply in debt. Due to her prestigious and well-paying career, however, she was able to keep an endless line of credit going, "borrowing from Peter to pay Paul." She offered no objection to my fee and paid her bills promptly.
In view of the extent of her debt, she seemed oddly unconcerned. She implied that the banks were at fault; they extended loans to her (albeit at high interest rates), and, furthermore, they solicited her to take additional loans. Therefore, she felt that not she, but the banks were to blame.
This brought to her mind that sometime prior to seeking treatment, she had read about the debate (Masson's work) over Freud's original seduction theory. Since she was a university graduate who read widely in science and psychology, she did not consider it unusual to discuss this issue with a female cousin of her own age. This cousin, in response to the discussion about seduction, exclaimed, "Why do you talk about it as though it really could not happen? It happened to me!" The patient then learned that their maternal step-grandfather had repeatedly sexually stimulated this cousin over a considerable period of time; until now, she had never mentioned it to anyone. My patient, amazed at hearing this, confessed to her cousin with some relief that she had had the same experience when she was a little girl.
The patient, in her sessions, then recounted to me how her step-grandfather, shortly after his marriage to her maternal