ABSTRACT
Rosa, a young woman of twenty-eight, comes to therapy for what she defines as a depressive crisis, after a bullying episode she suffered at work. The episode as such was certainly unpleasant, but did not seem severe enough to justify all her desperation. I discover that work—and success in it—are for her essential; she has a strong and, at the same time, ambivalent tie to her father, a man who devoted his whole life to his job, and who had passionately wanted a successful son. This is why, apparently, Rosa is proud to be a perfect and painstaking worker; and this is why, I feel, she suffers so much anger about her present jobless state, after what she judges as her failure—to which her father, as far as she is concerned, never fails to refer, albeit covertly, as her inadequacy.
