Problems of Integration Between Various Levels of Self-Experience

Giovanni is a serious case of obsessional neurosis in his third year of analysis. When he came back from his holidays, he told me about an argument he had had with his mother. The cause of the quarrel was that some time before Giovanni had asked his parents' permission to build a house for his own family on their land, so that they could all be together without having to live under the same roof; in the course of the argument, Giovanni reproached his mother in a sad tone of voice for not having taken any interest in his idea. On the contrary he claimed she had bent over backwards to let his sister and her husband sell the same piece of land so that they could build a house on another piece of land that Giovanni's brother-in-law had inherited. His mother had denied all accusations of favouritism towards his sister and brother-in-law, had accused Giovanni of being selfish and envious, and had got so angry and annoyed with her son that she wanted to play a nasty trick on him: she had gone to see her son-in-law in order to ask him if he and his wife would be willing to take her in if she were ever to be widowed.

Giovanni had been so upset by this and had had such a strong fit of rage