ABSTRACT
Every therapist's nightmare is the professional complaint. At the very least a complaint will inspire shame in the therapist. At worst it could mean the end of their professional career. In this chapter I will look at how my own history formed a `perfect' perverted match for my patient's archaic pattern of survival. This ultimately meant that the abandonment she so feared was repeated, rather than considered in the therapy, and together we enacted a sado-masochistic dance of attack and survival when she ®nally lodged a complaint against me. Enactment, as I will write here, is the unconscious playing out of archaic, unresolved con¯ict in the here and now as if it is in the past. In my view my patient's complaint against me was a symbolic act of revenge against those who perpetuated violence against her as a child. By this means she was still able to maintain the `love' link where sadism replaces or equals affection in the unconscious mind of a helpless child.
