ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the negative factor, stemming from the particular structure of the patient’s psycho-pathology, often combines in many cases with the analyst’s shortcomings in comprehension. While infantile traumas are important as agents of suffering in adulthood, pathological developments are subjectively highly variable. The presence of psychopathological constructions, a disinclination for analytic dependence, and distortions of the superego can be counted among the factors that contribute to making some therapies especially arduous. Some patients who have had emotionally less receptive parents, as in the case above, are undoubtedly complex but not particularly difficult in analysis because, on the basis of a relationship with a new object, it is possible to help them reactivate the elements of emotional development that have remained paralysed. A deficiency of emotional containing, combined with the impossibility of projecting oneself into the other, results in these patients suffering psychophysical pain, confusion, and chronic anxiety.
