ABSTRACT

This chapter deals with patients who require pharmacological treatment along with their psychoanalytic work. Pharmacological treatment is intended to make the psychoanalytic work more effective in some specific circumstances and clinical conditions, as shall be described the clinical material. The severity of symptoms massively impinging on the patient's life and on the capacity to use the analytic situation to its full potential. Economic, social, and/or cultural factors may diminish the capacity of the patient to work through internal conflicts in an exclusively analytic mode. Dealing analytically with severely disturbed patients requires a great deal of clinical experience. Young analytically oriented therapists should learn by seeing patients intensively, and should then treat patients less intensively if and when they become more expert. The choice of implementing pharmacological treatment can be inspired by a classical medical model which privileges—broadly speaking—symptom control and behaviour normalisation. The chapter shows the multiple levels of the transference, and how our solid therapeutic parenthood produced satisfactory results.