ABSTRACT
The patient, whom I shall call Cecilia L., is 33 years of age and works in the administration department of a firm. She belongs to a traditional middle-class family from the south of Catalonia. Her father, aged 72, has a violent and domineering character but is extremely hardworking and reliable. The mother, aged 69, is a housewife. She also is aggressive but more of the passive type. This is the description the patient draws of her family, in which moral and religious principles ruled over demonstrations of affection. Her only brother, approximately three years her junior, had serious psychological problems of a depressive type during adolescence.
