Discussion of Peter L. Giovacchini's Article, Regressed States, Timelessness, and Ego Synthesis

I found Dr. Giovacchini's article an important contribution to the description and explanation of the role of the regressed state during psychoanalytic treatment, its clinical manifestations (timelessness, alternately pleasant and frightening), its outcome substituting pathological defenses for what Giovacchini terms “developed adapitve mechanisms,” realistic and object-directed.

I shall present a clinical example of therapeutic regression taken from a case history which I have published (Liberman, 1957).

The patient was worried about a polio epidemic in those prevaccine days. Her anxiety about the danger of the virus had brought to the fore an old traumatic situation, that of rolling down the stairs, unable to protect herself against the thumping blows. She experienced fear of death in the session, which corresponded

to a correlative chill she had felt the night before, followed by a pleasure state with levitation which had the meaning of being taken up into her mother's arms. These two successive states confronted her with a stumbling block she had always tried to dodge: she could not bring herself to speak about feelings. In my opinion, this corresponded to a painful struggle for the acquisition of identity as a mother's daughter and as a daughter's mother. The following is some of the clinical material:

Now that I came in. … I don't know if you noticed, it is full of wreaths downstairs … I remembered a woman died, the janitor's daughter … about 26. Poor child, her son, he is two years old … he will stay with his grandparents who don't treat him too well, the poor thing. She was such a young girl … it's a sin, who knows how she was assisted. I'm sorry, not so much for her as for the child. All these days I have been telling things about death here. … I don't know … I told you that girl died … then that boy who was run over by the subway … so many gruesome things. … I also dreamt of gruesome things … so [she lowers the tone of her voice] that probably contributes