ABSTRACT
What follows is another example of this character formation, and the stresses and strain the pathologic borderline puts on the therapist. I recall my experience with Ms. X, a 49-year-old woman who had been in treatment
two times weekly for the past nine years. Although she was playful in a kind of “cutesy” way, what she found “cutesy” I found obnoxious. I repeatedly asked myself why it was that she could not see nor observe her own process. Does she not see how her behavior turns o others, given her inappropriate waiting room behavior? Does she not see that the very closeness and intimacy she craves is that which she destroys? I remind myself that she lacks the observing ego, and therefore I have to become her observer. I remember cringing every time I enter the waiting room to invite her in. Instead of sitting quietly reading a magazine or just waiting patiently for her session, she would jump around the room, look around, and sing loudly (sometimes I could hear singing faintly through the walls of the consult room). “Oh, can I borrow this magazine? Is this plant new? What happened to the painting that used to be here?” With each agonizing step into the consultation room, I would gesture her to have a seat. Instead, she would walk around the oce and examine each artifact like an entomologist, as if she were seeing them for the rst time. “Oh, I think that picture is crooked! Do you mind if I straighten it?” For a while I gave her a free reign, and later explored with her how she comes into my oce like a child going into a kindergarten class (jumpy, happy, playful). Her association was surprisingly insightful and quite on the mark. She recalled a childhood as the eldest of four siblings, and having to be the caretaker for her mother as well as her younger siblings. Feeling her childhood was usurped, this was her time to play, be silly, have fun, and act out. In Winnicottian terms, we could refer to this as her transforming me into the role of the playful mommy, allowing her the transitional space to reenact her drama.
