ABSTRACT
In the case of Mrs. M. (Chapter six) the patient revealed, in the very early sessions, the core issue of her analysis. The analysis worked on the derivatives of that core, and managed to let them unfold and interconnect further. Construction and reconstruction that were centralized around that core facilitated bringing the analysis to an acceptable termination. However, it was not common that patients revealed the core issues of their analyses as easily or that early. Most patients did not know that their symptoms were derivatives of a core issue. They lived with their symptoms as if they were isolated and unrelated psychical conditions. Thus, even the best history taking of symptoms or personal life did not always uncover the central issue that the analyst was supposed to be dealing with. In those cases it was important to consider the absence of a core issue as an issue in itself, that is, the core issue in those cases was the absence of something that should have been there, but did not seem to be. In other words, those cases had symptoms that were searching for a core, and the analysis would search for that central core to reconstruct the meaning of the symptoms. Termination, in those cases, happened when that core was reconstructed and “offered” as the phantasmic bond behind the symptoms.
