ABSTRACT
In this supervision, Herbert Rosenfeld highlights how the past can mould the present, how it may be deformed by memory or, on the contrary, how it may manifest itself in order to be understood. Infantile traumatic experiences may in reality be used victimistically as a defence against insight, or they may be communicated and relived in the analytic relationship in order to be transformed. The analyst's taking of the patient's past, when it is manifestly traumatic, helps to configure the developmental blockage, the distortion of development, and the patient's difficulties, which will certainly make the analytic relationship difficult and distressful. The reappearance of the traumatic situation in the current analytic relationship clearly emerges at the weekend breaks. Rosenfeld analyses the transference in terms of a total situation that, though drawing on the past, contains new elements of the relationship, including the analyst’s lack of receptivity and understanding of the level of suffering experienced during separation.
