A Sadomasochistic Transference - Beth J. Seelig, MD

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,
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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
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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