ABSTRACT
This chapter describes a form of ruthlessness that involves resistance to full engagement with the therapeutic space as it unfolds in time. Instead, whatever happens for the patient during the therapy is contemplated in private, and in this way is kept secret from the therapist. In such a therapy, swathes of the patient’s life might be unknown to the therapist, and certainly changes for the better are only grudgingly admitted, in case they are consumed, attacked or spoiled in the sharing. There might be a continual private dialogue with the therapist, arguing points, elaborating or fantasizing a comforting exchange; these engagements, of course, are under the patient’s control, and therefore protected from surprise or disappointment. I will be suggesting that turning away from what the therapeutic space has to offer, while engaging the therapist in a ritual of offering and being spurned, week after week, is a ruthless defence that fully performs disengaged engagement in the way Guntrip has described. My particular interest in this defence relates to two other phenomena: Winnicott’s description of the false self, and dissociative inability to connect in psychotherapy.
