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Z came for a consultation for unclear reasons. He was an appealing, 24-year-old man, who was in an unhappy marriage in which he was distant, and he was doing a perfunctory job. He complained of no overt symptoms. Z appeared as a narcissistic, infantile and intellectualizing person. He had an obsessive inability to conclude things, which was illustrated by his unclarity about his situation and the vagueness of what he wanted. Further exploratory evaluation was suggested, but the patient said that he would call when he wanted something. He called six months later to arrange treatment on a once-a-week basis.
At this time he gave a plenitude of disjointed factual information. His father was to soon retire from a routine job in which he had refused offers to take on more responsibility within the business organization. The father's work necessitated that he leave the house about 4 A.M. every morning, and he returned home mid-afternoon to sleep. He awakened for dinner and retired early every evening. The mother, who throughout treatment remained amorphous, had worked for a while when the patient was in about the sixth grade. The brother, four years older than the patient, was married and had a family. The patient reported a history of the brother's sadism towards him in which the patient saw himself as an abused innocent bystander.
The patient had remained in the parental bedroom until he was about seven or eight. His earliest memory referred to a time when he was two years old and crawling around under his parents' bed and saw an electric outlet. He also remembers being in a crib, with the radio blasting, and being in utter panic because no one would pay any attention to his fears about the radio. He said that he was a colicky baby who slept all day and cried all night.