ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on symptom itself as a complex phenomenon. It addresses the concept of character. Symptom and character seem quite differentiated from each other. The chapter presents a woman whose vision was compromised in the subtlest manner. Sigmund Freud’s conception of a symptom as a compromise of conflicting dynamic psychic forces was the initial basic insight that would eventually lead to the deconstruction of many other psychic phenomena such as dreams, parapraxes, jokes, and character traits. In the symptom being focused on, a concept was being disavowed or repressed by being displaced onto an acutely sensitive perception of light. At times, the transference of the past into the present seemed to disrupt the process rather than enhance its unfolding. The chapter examines clash between the past as reality and the past as transference that seemed to ignite the moment of insight.
