ABSTRACT
To the patient, Mrs. Robinson and Anne Sullivan were the personifications of incompatible and contradictory ways of relating to the world. To compromise her Anne Sullivan ideals would mean to lose a valued and familiar sense of herself. To renounce her attempts to acquire aspects of Mrs. Robinson would stifle her emerging ambitions. Furthermore, relinquishing her commitment to her Anne Sullivan ideals carried the meaning of turning into a Mrs. Robinson. Ultimately, this would constitute a humiliatingly experienced capitulation to her father and a deeply felt betrayal of herself and her mother. The patient's Mrs. Robinsonlike pursuit of goals meant a compliance with her father's devalued view of her "artistic" talents, which to her father were impractical but which were idealized by her mother.
