ABSTRACT
In this chapter, Morgenthaler uses the case example of a 37-year-old musician, who had been subject to a negative-oedipal movement in the development of his libido, to explicate the structure and function of a reconstructive interpretation (first introduced in Chapter 7). Following the interpretation of the transference-resistance, which, in the case example, had allowed for the transformation of the analysand’s libidinal position from sado-anal to phallic-narcissistic, the transference is deepened and the analyst, according to Morgenthaler, must give a reconstructive interpretation to stabilize the qualitative change of libidinal experiences. Since the new libidinal position is experienced as ego-syntonic, the former experiential domain begins to seem ever more alien to the analysand, resulting in a feeling of disconcertment when the old symptoms are being recapitulated in the analysis. Crucially, as the chapter concludes, the contrast-experience, meaning the experience of a new libidinal position, interrupts the compulsion to repeat because the nonsensical nature of the repetition-compulsion can now, from the standpoint of the new experiential domain, be understood and resolved in a new constellation of cathexes.
