ABSTRACT
Psychoanalysis is more than making the unconscious conscious. It helps unconscious processing reset itself so that it can do its work better. One might envision a complex psychosomatic complicity, in which an older body finds it more difficult to contain threats to self and self is more easily affected by physical frailties. In Ben’s case his partial physical breakdown was coupled with a broader threat to his psychic economy. The unconscious tends to speak truth in an exaggerated, reduced way: something is blown up; something else is left out. With therapeutic help, unconscious could interweave with unconscious to the benefit of both. A bit of growth of unconscious processing between Ben and Lucy can be seen in their dreams. Ben’s gains in personal living were always threatened by his narcissistic rage coupled with a misuse of truth to persecute him and dominate loved ones.
