A historical example of negativising transference: the “young Russian” known as “the Wolf Man”

S. Freud’s magisterial account of the psychoanalysis reads as the paradigmatic account of the obstacles to be overcome in analysis of so-called “borderline” or “non-neurotic” mental organisations, lying somewhere “between madness and psychosis”. When Sergei Konstantinovitch Pankejeff consulted Freud, the “young Russian, a man spoilt by wealth had come to Vienna in a state of complete helplessness, accompanied by a private doctor and an attendant”. This condition had lasted for the previous five years, having begun after a gonorrhoeal infection had precipitated a nervous breakdown. The famous psychiatrists he consulted over the next few years diagnosed his illness as manicdepressive insanity. Even though what followed clearly enabled Freud to lift the “veil” on many factors which threw light on his patient’s infantile psychoneurosis, this did not provide Sergei with an opportunity to work through his transference psychoneurosis.