ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author presents clinical data of four years’ therapeutic encounter with a patient Farina, who had made satisfactory progress. She provides details of the technical treatment of a resilient patient, whose psychopathology led her to alternate between relatively stable defences and a tendency for masochistic aggression. Data gathered in the process focuses on measuring her social function, her capacity to relate, and her object relationship in transference. Central to the psychoanalytic approach is the exploration of interpersonal processes, with attention paid to underlying unconscious activity. The author assesses the importance of Farina’s experience of external trauma, its intensity, her age at its occurrence, her level of resilience. She hypothesizes that healthy dissociation is a conscious act to prevent suffering and turning away from it consciously and temporarily, thus helping the person to carry on without collapsing psychologically, but there always exists an unconscious connotation that is beyond one’s conscious choices.
