ABSTRACT
The analysis of a complex character disturbance at first focused on the patient’s negativism, which was related primarily to conflict about having been his mother’s favorite child. The maternal transference emerged, at any rate, around the issue of accepting help. It was characterized by anally tinged struggles about commitments, regularity, and obligations. Acknowledgment of mother’s limitations as a caretaker was followed by moderation of the patient’s own ambitions in that area. In the genesis of the character pathology, it now became apparent, he had fallen back on a position of primitive grandiosity under the impact of this disruption of the relationship with mother. Acknowledgment of his pregenital dependency brought the negative maternal transference into focus, specifically his rage about the enforced separations of an analytic schedule. The foregoing formulations may serve as an optimal example of the power of a combination of the extant clinical theories of psychoanalysis to organize the observational data obtained in the analytic situation.
