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The author discusses the emergence of the personal myth in treatment insofar as it focuses the countercathexes of the patient as well as those of the analyst. Her interpretation of the personal myth differs from that of Kris, who thought that the representations repressed by the personal myth could be recovered in the course of an analysis and that the history of the patient, in a sense the patient's autobiography, could be reconstructed. Potamianou feels that there is no such "truth" to reveal, for the imagination of the individual never ceases to infiltrate the reality of events. The notion of an objective reality to recover is nothing but an ideal fiction and cannot be the aim of analysis. The aim is rather recognition and acceptance of the constant oscillation of psychic movement between the manifestations of desire and the defenses against them. Analysis itself is an experience par excellence of this process. The analysis is a mytho-historical event and cannot become history in the strict sense. There is a historical element to analysis, but there is also the re-experiencing of the past in another specific historical moment, that of the analysis.
Some analysts feel that the personal myth should be taken apart and the repression lifted in order to reconstruct the history of the patient, while others believe that the goal is to discover the mythology of the patient, to find the symbolic value of the patient's fantasy life. Potamianou thinks that analyst and analysand should learn that there is never total control over primary process, and that secondary process is always subject to the incursions of desire.
What role can we permit personal myths to play in our psychic economy? The personal myth is the central kernel in all material the analysand brings to analysis. It consists of a representational constellation that links and unites three primary fantasies—the primal scene, seduction, and castration. The economic purpose of the personal myth is certainl