A Sadomasochistic Transference - Beth J. Seelig, MD

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it, asking "Do you have any Kleenex?" The analysis continued to have stormy times, but they became briefer and could be subjected to analytic scrutiny. Some New Memories and Psychodynamic Formulations When Miss T said, "I don't think it'll be a good analysis, but there's no choice, so we'll stay in this battle for years and years," she was making a transference statement that appears to have been related to a failure in the rapprochement subphase of the separation-individuation process (as described by Mahler et al., 1975). Unable to fully separate, she was alternately rageful and repentant. This "battle" was the only mode of intimate relating she knew. The intense hostiledependent bond with the analyst and the repudiation of the possibility of triangulation had been presaged in the initial dream, in which she rejected the offer - 978 - "to make it up" made by the male analyst. The reedition in the transference of the hostile-dependent bond had to be analyzed before she could go on to deal with oedipal triadic issues. (It is worth noting that Miss T.'s negative oedipal transference contributed to the paranoid quality of her transference regression.) As interpretation and working through of this transference paradigm progressed, Miss T. began to recall previously repressed or ignored historical material and to question relatives about events in her early life. Her mother had reacted to evidence that Miss T. was left-handed, as was her next older sister, with the belief that her less than one-year-old baby daughter was showing precocious sibling rivalry. Mother felt that the baby's lefthandness was somehow a manifestation of her effort to "compete" with her sister! When Miss T. began to read at age four, this achievement was labeled as bad because it was "too early," another proof that the child was trying to outdo her sisters. This material was not mentioned until well into the analysis. She had not mentioned it as she had actually believed she had "made herself" left-handed in an effort to compete, and that her mother was probably right when she accused her of learning to read at "too early" an age. Not until the analyst expressed surprise when she mentioned these ideas did Miss T. first start to question them consciously. They had been presented by the mother as fact, and Miss T. had been unable to utilize any other viewpoint to help her discredit her mother's views. Retrospectively, it appears that Miss T.'s early development had been disrupted by a pathological bond with her mother, in which she felt the latter both torpedoed her initiative (sense of agency) and lacked interest in her inner life. Yet this was not a simple case in which a daughter felt rejected or criticized by her mother; she also felt her mother simultaneously bound her to her and tried
to distance her from her siblings and her father. Although, for a long time, the patient complained she had no special place in the family, she, - 979 - in fact, described how she was her mother's phobic partner. Miss T. felt her mother used her in order to quiet her own anxiety. She recollected that mother was frightened to go to the basement to do the laundry and needed her to go along. Miss T. related her adult hate of doing the laundry to the fear her mother had of the basement. She described being bewildered by mother's insistence that she stay with her in the basement, and angry at not being allowed to go and play. Initially, Miss T. experienced the analysis as claustrophobic and controlling, like doing laundry with her mother. When Miss T. was older, she had to make telephone calls for her mother, since talking on the telephone made mother too anxious. The mother-daughter roles appeared to be reversed, with the child being called upon to calm the neurotic anxieties of the mother. In some ways, then, despite her demands, Miss T. unconsciously felt like her mother's chosen child, so long as she denied her own autonomous wishes, and "read" her mother's needs without any real expectation that her own subjective life was of concern to her mother. Being chosen for the special position of phobic partner was not initially recognized as being a source of gratification; this pleasure could only be acknowledged unconsciously after the analysis was well underway. (Miss T. never fantasized or theorized as to why she was the child so chosen.) While predominantly compliant, Miss T. intermittently raged at her mother, creating the first of her intense sadomasochistic bonds. She recollected intense battles with her mother in which she attempted to "prove" to her mother that she had been totally unwanted, or that she was "supposed to" be a boy. Mother battled with her over these issues, always insisting that she loved all of her children equally, though Miss T. remained unconvinced. The question naturally arises as to why Miss T. was unable to extricate herself from the tie to her mother, which she regarded as so damaging to herself. A child is often able to mobilize an in-depth bond to a third party as a way out of a "pathological" dyad. We believe several mechanisms acted to - 980 - perpetuate Miss T.'s hostile-dependent bond with her mother. From the child's point of view, as Fairbairn (1952) astutely remarked: "it is better to be a sinner in a world ruled by God than to live in a world ruled by the Devil" (pp. 66–67). Miss T., who regarded herself as a bad little girl, conceived the hope that her mother (and later the analyst) would turn out to be benevolent if only she could reform
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A Sadomasochistic Transference - Beth J. Seelig, MD

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