[July 1994] Francis

This patient was 42 years old at the time of consultation three years ago. He had been addicted to alcohol and to cocaine and had been in treatment for three years in a drying-out centre, where he was advised to go on “analytic treatment”. He started that one year before he came to me and stopped it abruptly after six months because he had started to have an emotional relationship with his analyst. During the course of that treatment he suffered periods of confusion and of persecution and, at one stage, symptoms that he describes as depersonalization to the point that “both the analyst and myself were paranoid”. The analyst who referred him to me advised therapy twice a week in order to avoid the kind of unwanted regression and disorganization that he had suffered in the previous treatment. At the present moment there are difficulties in his relationship with his partner due to her jealousy about the money he assigns to his daughters and his wife -whom he is in the process of divorcing—as well as the fact that she dedicates her time to her children and they don’t see each other during the week. They are not living together yet.