ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a case of early life trauma where Margaret was treated as a doll and a dog, inhumanely, as if inanimate. It considers unconscious fantasy derivatives in elements of the pain of her patient and in her own reactions, her emotions and feelings of helplessness. She complained of ongoing stomach pain that she had endured since early childhood. Margaret brings her constant efforts to please into all her relationships. The treatment relationship carries attempts and failures at making contact. Margaret was able to reach into the world beyond to free herself for her further development, educationally, professionally, and psychologically. Her move away brought the onset of a multitude of somatic symptoms: swollen hands, painful scalp, unbearable intestinal distress, the pain frequently traveling from place to place in her body. Recent process material focuses in on the body pain as an expression of unconscious fantasy in the psyche: clinical material from three consecutive hours, emails, and a last session.
