ABSTRACT
This was the first session after ten days’ interruption. Therapist and patient seem to be in a struggle in which patient, although admitting improvement, tries to minimize it by complaining about symptoms and therapist confronts patient with his complaining and demanding attitudes. Therapist urges patient to give up his dependent demands, and patient manipulates the situation in the hope of receiving from therapist what he wanted as a child from his parents. In the attempt to get sympathy from therapist, patient complains bitterly that parents favored the sister and brother in preference to himself. There is an intellectual interchange about the competitive feeling that patient has toward his brother and other men, which is concealed by his passive-submissive reactions. The session ends with patient’s admitting his increased independence and self-assertion.
