Practical Psychoanalysis for Therapists and Patients by Owen Renik

Author:Owen Renik [Renik, Owen]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Other Press
Published: 2010-07-22T16:00:00+00:00

ALAN

Alan came to see me when he was in his late twenties. For years, he had been terribly hemmed in by a host of obsessions, compulsive rituals, and intrusive nonsense thoughts. “Carrara Ferrari, let’s take a safari!” he would shout suddenly. Before sitting down, he had to touch each arm of the chair an equal number of times. He had tics and twitches of all kinds. Alan had been diagnosed with Tourette’s syndrome and tried on large doses of the medications used to control that condition, but to little effect.

I had the impression that some sort of desperation underlay Alan’s frantic preoccupations. They seemed to me to be motivated, rather than being arbitrary neurological outbursts. I explained to Alan that I thought he was terrified of certain thoughts that were coming to his mind and that he was trying to avoid them at all costs by directing his attention toward anything else that occurred to him. I encouraged him to face the threatening thoughts because that was the only way he could get better. I promised him that I would help him deal with whatever came up.

Gradually, Alan began to be aware of violently sadistic fantasies that would come to his mind unbidden and terrify him. In Alan’s fantasies, his victims were always women. This outwardly timid and inhibited man was boiling with rage inside. The terrifying fantasies were often prompted by apparently trivial events. A female coworker would close a window that Alan had opened and he would imagine throwing her to the floor and grinding his heel into her face.

As he became able to tolerate these threatening thoughts, Alan’s tics, twitches, obsessions, and compulsions went away. It was a miracle cure that thrilled us both. But now we had a new problem to deal with that interfered with Alan’s life almost as much as his original symptoms had. Alan couldn’t stop ruminating about doing terrible things to women.

The question we needed to answer was: Why was Alan so prone to fury at women? And here we were stuck. Alan had some grievances toward his mother, which we looked into, but none of them seemed very significant. He had a dream in which he was swimming around in a pond, urinating. His urine killed some young corn that was growing on the bottom of the pond. The dream made quite an impression on Alan. He interpreted it as portraying hostility toward a younger sibling in utero. Alan ransacked his mind with characteristic obsessive thoroughness, exploring his feelings toward his six-year-younger sister, trying to dredge up memories of how he felt about her birth, of his reactions to his mother’s pregnancy. It all yielded very little.

Alan had trouble sleeping and from time to time he made use of a mild sedative that he got from his internist. When Alan first reported that he was taking the pills, I commented that it would be useful if we could understand the anxiety that was causing his insomnia. Alan decided that it would

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