ABSTRACT
Cathy came into therapy because she wanted to understand what she saw as a self-destructive need to “act a role” rather than really being herself. She had also been taking antidepressants at intervals over the last twenty years. Although on the surface happily married, she was concerned that people easily got bored with her and relationships often faltered or ended prematurely. She had been in therapy before but stopped just as she was on the threshold of doing “deeper” work. Therapeutic work in this period was largely life counselling, centring on a better understanding of her relationships, at first within her family of origin, with her four children and latterly with her husband. Since then nearly every weekly session has in some way addressed the split between Cathy’s wish to go on with the work as planned and at the same time her fear or ambivalence about actually making a containing contract with the author.
