Keeping One's Ambivalences Apart

A patient reported this “strange experience”: He had gone, with a friend, to see a movie in which the lives of a “nice” woman and her child were endangered by a kidnapper, who was extorting money from her. After a good deal of painful suspense, both the woman and the child were rescued. During the performance, the patient's friend remarked that he had seen another picture featuring the actress who played the part of the “nice” woman; in this other movie, she had portrayed an aggressive though alluring seductress. The patient declared that his friend must be mistaken; it could not have been the same actress. He refused to accept the possibility that a wide range of talent would permit one person to represent two disparate roles with equal effectiveness, and became quite emotional in expressing his opinion. The friend let the subject drop.

The next day, the patient found himself still thinking of his friend's “obvious mistake.” He knew the name of the other picture and had seen it himself some time ago. With some difficulty, he discovered that the picture was playing in an obscure theater deep in Brooklyn. He got into his car and drove to the theater. This was unusual behavior on his part; he himself could not explain why he was wasting all this time (it was an hour's drive each way) in order to go to a boring movie he had already seen. He paid his way in, watched the first few scenes, and left. He had to admit that the friend had been correct; it was the same actress.

At this point he realized that the story was somehow suspicious and determined to ask for an explanation at his next analytic appointment.

The patient was married to a kind, loving, and devoted wife. He had only minor conflicts with her; he had entered treatment because of depressions that were set off by every-day disappointments. He misused these disappointments masochistically, misjudging their importance and making mountains out of mole-hills. His infantile history, as partly reconstructed and partly r