ABSTRACT
For example, a married woman is depressed. She reveals during evaluation that her husband travels away from home at least 6 months a year, and she does not seem to have any inuence in trying to get him to cut this down. Her unpleasurable sensation may be combined with any of several thoughts about things that have already happened and cannot be xed, to wit:
1. Her husband does not love her (lost object’s love-oral/anal phase). 2. Her husband does not value her sexually (adolescent and adult genital phases, but
complicated by number 1). 3. She cannot retain positive feelings or an image of him during his absence (separa-
tion-individuation phase). 4. She feels she has lost a competition to his work, which has become his “mistress”
(rst genital phase but complicated by intense number 3). 5. She has been punished (latency phase, and complicated by number 6). 6. She is lonely due to his absence (adult phase, reality testing).
