ABSTRACT
This case presentation is about transformation, regrowth, possibility, and yes, metamorphosis. It is the story of a man who has been badly treated by life, and whose memories of abuse have been difficult for both of us to bear. Peter’s initial presentation was not dissimilar to that of Kafka’s Gregor Artsa, who awakens one morning in shock and horror to find himself transformed into a giant insect. Peter has always felt that the story of his early life transformed him into something grotesque and has assumed that anyone who really gets to know him will react with shock and repulsion – reactions familiar to him from his early family experiences. Yet, throughout the course of treatment, Peter and I have used the language of shared experience, be it popular culture, politics, music, or NPR, to find a way in which he could feel less repellent, more like others, more human, sometimes using a joke to make the work more bearable, or sometimes just bearable for one additional moment at a time. His second transformation, the one achieved in interpersonal psychoanalysis, has been of a very different kind.
