Citation

Borgogno F, Vigna-Taglianti M. Am. J. Psychoanal. 2008; 68(4): 313-324.

Affiliation

Psychology Faculty of Turin University, Torino 10123, Italy. borgogno@psych.unito.it

Copyright

(Copyright © 2008, Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis, Publisher Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1057/ajp.2008.31

PMID

19092936

Abstract

Within a clinical-theoretical framework focused on transference-countertransference dynamics, the authors reflect on role-reversal and on the reasons it has been neglected for a long time in literature. This primitive inter- and intra-psychic process, often at the forefront in our practice, will be discussed in its principal aspects (patient's unconscious identification with parents' psychic culture and concomitant dissociation of the infant part of the self), signaling how the enactment can be an inevitable element which, putting into play the past dissociated object relationships, becomes a source of mutative understanding.

Language: en