ABSTRACT
This patient would have been diagnosed according to the D.S.M.IV, as psychogenic amnesia. However, her analysis, which lasted for slightly more than four years, did not show anything that was signifi cantly different from what was traditionally encountered in cases of hysteria (in the psychodynamic tradition of diagnosis). The main psychic issue in this patient was amnesia (repression with an additional tendency to barring off unacceptable feelings by dismissing them from her attention). The Oedipus complex was the heart of her main confl icts. This does not mean that in the course of her analysis I did not encounter pregenital material, which was of clinical interest too. However, this material was dealt with within the dynamics of the genital phase, as it did not constitute points of fi xation that contributed to character formation and resistance, or were separate from the genital core of her neurosis.
