ABSTRACT
The eight chapter explores the clinical implications in a contemporary report of defensive regression (Haft, 2005). A hermeneutic methodology is advanced to suit the purpose. It aims not to disprove what cannot be disproven—namely, claims about the repressed infantile past—but to move beyond genetic reconstruction to a more complete lifespan conceptualization. The patient, then, who presents with severe obsessive-compulsive symptoms, is thought by the analyst to have regressed from Oedipal dangers to an anal fixation. The symptoms emerge, it is held, to manage anal erotic and sadistic impulses. I attempt to show that, regardless of potential anal influences, we require a lifespan conceptualization. The patient experiences his erotic-sadistic impulses through an ever-evolving identification with his father—one that proceeds through several life phase iterations. We can understand the image of the anal toddler not as a literal picture of the patient’s unconscious self, but as a character with meaning in the here-and-now field.
