ABSTRACT
The masochistic’s hidden excitement and the seemingly irresistible pull towards despair makes for difficult treatments and rocky countertransference. Joseph (1982) goes on to say: a powerful masochism is at work and these patients will try to create despair in the analyst and then get him to collude with the despair or become actively involved by being harsh, critical or in some way or another verbally sadistic to the patient. If they succeed in getting themselves hurt or in creating despair, they triumph, since the analyst has lost his analytic balance or his capacity to understand and help and then both patient and analyst go down into failure. Segal is describing patients functioning in the paranoid–schizoid position. This is the type of repetitive, compulsive distortion of relationships that Robert was in at the beginning of treatment. As we worked through his acting out of these rigid internal outlooks, he experienced life from more of a depressive mode.
