ABSTRACT
Her sense of what it is to be a loving sister, a dutiful daughter, her sense of herself as a person with desires, her basic sense that she is a decent human being – all this is challenged by one fleeting thought. That is why the thought causes so much anxiety, and that is why she represses it. Her challenge, then, is not simply to incorporate a hitherto forbidden thought into conscious awareness; it is to undergo a transformation of self-understanding such that this incorporation becomes possible. This would be one aim of analytic therapy.
