ABSTRACT
The capacity for perceiving oneself as a subject exists in the flow of time, with a precise direction, from the past to the future. This ability implies that one has reached an important stage in the maturing process of emotional life. In this chapter, the author presents a case study of Alice who comes to analysis for an anxiety and depersonalisation crisis. During the analysis, Alice had been able to re-live with the analyst the fundamental experience of sharing her phantasy world, repeating the projective illusion of having a child who listens to fairy tales told by a mother. Alice told that she was anxious because she was afraid she was going to lose her boyfriend, since she found it difficult to make a move and get involved in any sort of project. When this love story did finish, for almost two years the author was an impotent witness to her incessant and extremely painful despair at being abandoned.
