ABSTRACT
The author aims to deepen and clarify the theoretical formulations presented in the previous chapters with two case histories. In the first case, the analytic reconstruction was arrived at as a result of a striking incident occurring in the analyst’s office; the roof began unexpectedly to leak. This incident evoked the analysand’s early psychic trauma, i.e. her mother’s death, the working through of which resulted in the integration of her ego-split, thus enabling a genuine work of mourning in the transference.
In the second case, a profound nonpsychotic regression with autoerotic fragmentation and psychosomatic manifestations was linked with the analysand’s experience of a fatal car accident in which her father died. Her fragmented state of mind was understood as a defence against the painful integration of her ambivalent love towards her father. A reconstruction of the radical psychic trauma in the transference was needed to attain this integration at the end of her analysis.
In concluding, the mother first brings a human image within reach of the infant’s rudimentary perception. Primary identification leads to the establishment of this image within the infant’s emerging mind forming a frame of reference for the psychic representation of elementary drive phenomena.
