ABSTRACT
The issue of regression in the clinical situation features prominently in most of the analytic researches on technique and therapy in recent years. This chapter focuses on the clinical management of what Balint calls ‘malignant forms of regression’. Accepting Balint’s differentiation between benign and malignant forms of regression, one can say that a great deal of research has now been published on the management of the benign forms of regression and today it is not unusual for many analysts to meet the needs of such regressive states in the patient within the classical analytic situation. This chapter shows the symbiotic omnipotence as a way of evading and disavowing the rage, sadism and violence that the non-articulation of aggression at the phase-adequate levels generates through the developmental process. It presents a brief case-history on patient’s treatment from another angle: namely, on the dread of being one’s true self.
