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In the treatment of borderline cases the problem of interpretation—its content, mode and timing—occupies a central position. All too frequently, strict adherence to classical interpretive techniques by the analyst leads to a stalemate wherein the patient understands his psychic patterns at the intellectual level but remains powerless to alter them significantly.
When this stalemate persists, the analytic situation degenerates into an arid repetition of the childhood situation in which the patient became deeply hostile toward his parents because they made him feel inadequate, helpless and exposed without being able to aid his growth. If the analyst similarly intensifies his awareness of inadequacy without being able to help him gain strength, the patient develops a self-protective resistance to treatment which reinforces the profound negativism of his borderline personality and renders cure extremely difficult.
It is generally accepted that borderline disturbances arise from the pre-oedipal life experiences and that the resistance patterns characteristically associated with these disturbances are stimulated by the introjection of unhealthy object imagos during this period.
This paper will attempt to demonstrate that resistances which have become a nuclear part of the ego through introjection of an unhealthy object imago cannot be resolved through objective, verbal interpretation alone, but that the unhealthy object imago must be felt again by the patient as an external object, or force, to enable him to develop a new response to the pathological ego nucleus.2
In presenting this material it seems advisable first to illustrate the patient's need in the context of a sample treatment hour and to analyze the interpretive procedure used. Broader clinical and theoretical implications of the approach will then be considered.
Case 1: The following session occurred during the treatment of a young unmarried woman with pronounced paranoid trends. Her five-year a