ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how idealising the loved person is essential in the love relationship. Ethel Person has emphasised how this process can be much more protracted than is commonly believed. Idealising the loved person, or the relationship with the loved person, may alter over time but it will not necessarily expire. Joseph Sandler advanced another psychoanalytic explanation that complements the first. The concept of internal object, or internal representation of parts of the self, is very useful in these situations. The psycho-sensorial basis that asserts itself in the countertransference in the presence of unrepresentable traumatic areas is reactivated in the significant interactions between patient and analyst. It is interesting to point out in Alessandra's condition the aspect of the stalemate, or eternal checkmate; this continuous sensation of eternity without movement, hovering over a dangerous and terrifying emptiness. The chapter concludes by quoting a last comment from Alessandra and comparing it to a final comment written by Harold Boris, in 1984.
