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Post Game
Sometimes people give in to compulsions because they’re not finished living their wounds. This is called a repetition compulsion. Only a determined few eventually learn healthier, more functional, behaviors.
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Patricia: Part 7
Patricia had never really wavered from her plan to give her baby up. Though at times she expressed typical motherly feelings toward her unborn son, more often she appeared indifferent. It was as if she was already carrying someone else’s child.
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Patricia: Part 6
Carl Jung said that those destined to fall into a pit ought to prepare themselves rather than falling into it backwards. Everyone goes into the pit of self-discovery, but few go voluntarily.
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Patricia: Part 5
Suddenly Patricia felt defeated. She was at the brink of seeing something important but she backed off from it, and now she couldn’t see it at all. She looked helplessly at her therapist.
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Patricia: Part 4
She saw herself crouched in the corner of the tiled room, convulsing over something dark and sinister. The dreamer observed herself with mounting horror.
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Patricia: Part 3
Irritation is like any other outburst of affect… anything that is emotive and disorients a person’s conscious condition. Thus another person or symbolic being can be a personified transmitter of unconscious contents that are seeking expression.
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Patricia: Part 2
Patricia was a 28-year-old single mother of two planning adoption for her unborn baby. After completing an intake interview with an adoption social worker, she was referred to an independent psychoanalyst for pre-placement counseling.
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Patricia: Part 1
Patricia’s plan was to give her unborn son a gift, not to abandon him, she explained. Her plans seemed entirely appropriate, given the circumstances.
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Case Studies
Along with many other psychotherapists, I regard people’s keenly-felt outwardly-manifesting difficulties as attempts to work out inner conflicts of mythic proportions. Psychotherapy and psychoanalysis are not for the faint of heart, for there be dragons.
