ABSTRACT
The hypothesis presented here, perhaps somewhat paradoxically, is that it is traumatic for some patients when the damaging past is not in the present. In other words therapy enactments may actually facilitate therapy and prevent trauma with some patients. Patients who are attached to `bad objects' are better able to make use of the therapy situation if the therapist behaves similarly to these objects. By behaving in a manner similar to the patient's `bad objects' the therapist becomes familiar and therefore a `good object' for the patient. These patients need their therapists to be similar to their original objects in order to feel safe in the therapeutic environment. Patients who are `attached to bad objects' are often unable to tolerate interpretation, and therefore traditional approaches to intervention are not effective. I will suggest that through what I term a `strategic/relational' approach to treatment to facilitate communication with patients who are attached to `bad objects', a therapist may use the deliberate/strategic enactment of countertransference responses in the beginning stages of therapy.
