ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the case of a patient named Abigail. Abigail was the youngest child of a large family. The core of Abbie’s problems was an extreme hypersensitivity or emotional fragility, which meant that ordinary everyday life, was experienced as one endless crisis. Her emotional defence system took the form of surrounding herself with a kind of force-field of melodrama to ward off the nameless terrors of ordinary, everyday life. Being a member of an analytical organisation has been referred to as “belonging to the most expensive club in the country” because the condition of taking on several, long-term, low-earning patients involves, in practice, the payment of thousands of pounds in subsidising their fees. Abbie was scarcely able to support herself, let alone pay any significant amount in the way of fees. With one possible exception, every member of Abigail’s family had massive unresolved social and psychological problems.
