ABSTRACT
This chapter is an attempt to think about a particular kind of rigidity in a post-autistic patient who lives simultaneously in a psychotic private world and in the world of relationships and shared meanings. I worked with her for nine years and shall discuss the material of a session some months prior to the end of her therapy. In considering the meaning of our interchange I wish to distinguish between the changes that have been achieved and the ongoing obsessional ruminative power of the psychotic process. I shall try to consider these from two perspectives: the patient’s continuing partial addiction to delusional defensive structures, which she experiences as protective, and the analyst’s countertransference difficulties in facing the limitations of the work. Both of us needed to struggle with anxieties about facing reality; the reality of the approaching end of the treatment brought these into clearer focus.
