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The treatment of Joanna Churchill was completed around 1992. During the course of her analysis, I participated in a peer consultation group to which members often presented clinical material in a raw form for discussion. To emphasize our attempt to avoid “dressing up” our clinical material as one is inclined to do in front of one's peers, we referred to our meetings as the “warts and all” seminar. The following clinical material, precirculated to the plenary session panel, was taken from notes prepared for this consultation group about one year after I had started to treat Joanna, and several months after we had begun to meet three times weekly. I took verbatim notes during the sessions reported and altered them only for clarity of verbal presentation and for brevity (I was restricted to 20 minutes, a limit rigorously and appropriately enforced by the panel chairman over the protests of my grandiose self). This required the summarizing of several sections of process and one complete session, in order to present the sequence of four sessions as they unfolded.
I will describe some sessions from the second year of the psychoanalysis of Joanna Churchill, a treatment completed some six years ago. She was a twice divorced woman who lived alone and worked as an account executive with a large financial institution. When we first met, I found her to be a tall, slender, attractive woman appearing much younger than her 37 years. She dressed formally and well yet at times conducted herself like a coquette. As she searched for words,