This paper describes a special transference which involves a patient in being a "perfect" self-analyzing analysand. The patient's molding to preconceived fantasies of the analyst's "demands" reflects the kind of ego dissociation described by Winnicott in the split between "false" and "true" selves. Attempting to avoid value judgments and to strengthen the notion of the patient's activity in the creation of these states, I suggest instead the favored self and the repudiated self. The case illustration explores the transference elements of the favored self, which led the patient to appear for a while as a "perfect" analysand. This was a defense against the traumatic memories, dependency conflicts, and primitive agonies of her repudiated self.

Although this neurotic condition includes elements of narcissism gone awry in the service of defense, it does not require the assumption of narcissism as a separate line of development, nor does it imply changes in technique.