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This is the second issue devoted to the case of ann and judy, a study of the treatment of a sexually and physically abused woman.1 In the first issue, Judith Pickles described the case in some detail. Then followed five discussions of the case, organized by five different psychoanalytic perspectives and written by Margaret Black, Frank Lachmann, Jeremy Nahum, Gianni Nebbiosi, and Marian Tolpin. This issue will reprint the same case material and five different discussions exploring this material written by Howard Bacal, William Coburn, Harold Sampson, Doris Silverman, and Jeffrey Trop. In total, then, we will have incorporated into these two volumes 10 presentations, each written by an analyst drawing on a different theoretical framework. One of our motivations for compiling these two issues is our wish to illustrate the pluralistic nature of the field while considering how such plurality enlarges and enriches our understanding of the patient–analyst relationship.
Our discussants centered their attention on the traumas this patient had suffered, the lifelong consequences for her of these events, and, most significantly, how these experiences organized her sense of self and her sense of self in connection with others. As a group, the discussants clarified the intersection of three major, ongoing traumas in Ann's life. The first was, in Gianni Nebbiosi's terms, Ann's birth to a dead mother. Several discussants (most specifically, Nebbiosi and Sampson) connected the impact of this first trauma to Ann's attempts to organize for herself and to understand her second trauma, her father's repeated tortures, his relentless physical, sexual, and verbal abuse. That is, Ann's sense of responsibility for her mother's death—her survivor guilt—served to explain for her, her father's