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Miss K., 25 years old, was referred for analysis by a psychiatrist with whom she had been in psychotherapy in college in another location. She showed sexual and social inhibitions, masochistic tendencies, and chronic, neurotic depression. Throughout her childhood and adolescence, she indicated, she had been unhappy, restricted in her self-expression, and a homebody who clung to her family. She had always felt unappreciated and mistreated, both at home and outside of it. The details which she presented amounted to a litany of complaints and grudges over injuries and slights she could neither forget nor forgive. Her parents had gone away together on frequent business trips each year during her childhood, including her birthday, which still infuriated her. Her father and older brother always had had a special, intellectual relationship with one another, centering largely on word games and word play, from which she had been excluded, since she was too young to keep up with them. She had always considered herself “dumb,” even though she had been an excellent student in elementary school.
Her father was an emotionally restrained man with a quiet but quick temper. He had a way of explaining things unclearly but was impatient with her and intolerant when she failed to understand him. She had developed a kind of pseudostupidity with him so that she found herself incapable of answering even his simplest questions