Parallel Worlds

In what has become an increasingly liberated and violence-prone society, the clinician often finds himself in the position where he must deal with clients who are out of control rather than repressed. Attempts to work with this group of patients were described in the pioneering work of August Aichorn.1 More recently, Strean4 and Murray2 have described their work with this difficult patient population. In their book, Spotnitz and Meadow,3 describe the role that aggression plays in the development and maintenance of these conditions. All have emphasized the barrier that exists between patient and practitioner.

Just as Modern Psychoanalysis has drawn back the curtain that blocked the analysand and analyst from seeing each other, modern physics has brought us a tantalizing glimpse into a world that mirrors our own, but exists apart from it even though it is dependent upon it. Within our society, there are similar layers that parallel each other, depend on each other, and repel each other as matter and anti-matter. While numerous societal forces can account for these differences, they are rather difficult to study in that context. The individual therapy session, utilizing the case history method, has given us and will continue to give us a closer view of the factors operating to produce two mutually antagonistic systems. Many of the behaviors and values of John, with whom one of the authors had been working for several years, suggested that they lived in two different worlds. Because of the unfamiliarity of the terrain, it was difficult at times to understand just what motivated John, but through a systematic reconstruction of events, the meaning of his communications began to become clear.

The factors that contribute to the development of a socially alienated character structure are potentiated if they are delivered in the