ABSTRACT
In this chapter I will describe a patient whose personality was structured around a primitive phantasy that he had murdered his little brother.His psychic life was dominated by this phantasy which was suffused with such hatred toward his sibling and held with such omnipotence that it had led to an unconscious belief that he had actually murdered him.As a consequence the patient unconsciously felt persecuted and paranoid since he believed himself to be accused of murder. This internal configuration terrorised him and had resulted in a narcissistic organisation which dealt with primitive destructive impulses by neutralising them; all liveliness was believed to be enmeshed with destructive impulses and since there was no differentiation between aggression and destruction, so no aliveness or vitality could be tolerated. Furthermore the organisation also defended the patient against awareness of guilt which was believed to be unbearable and synonymous with condemnation (Steiner 1990). In the analysis, as in his life, a deadening process had to be maintained to defend him from awareness of murderousness on the one hand and persecution and guilt on the other. I hope to show how any movement led to a particular kind of repetition which, in turn, resulted in a situation where patient and analyst became blocked, immobilised and repetitive and where for long periods the analytic process appeared to be stultified.Very gradually a shift occurred which led to the emergence of cruelty and the projection of guilt. I will consider the nature and force of the various role enactments that the analyst was drawn into and the problems that arose in the countertransference.
