Citation

Chiesa M. Br. J. Psychother. 2007; 23(3): 395-410.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2007, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/j.1752-0118.2007.00035.x

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

In this paper the author describes the features and clinical manifestations of specific states of mind, which functioned as psychic retreats in a male homosexual patient. Two main types of retreats emerged in the course of the analysis. The first took the shape of an inanimate object (a spaceship), within which little human contact was allowed to exist. In the second retreat some degree of relating was present, but that mental space was populated with threatening homosexual figures which kept a strong hold on the patient’s ego and attacked any meaningful contact established between patient and analyst. The presence of these structures enabled the patient to evade awareness of the injured, paralysed and damaged state in which his internal objects were kept, and to bypass depressive anxieties connected to painful early oedipal conflicts, which included a terrifying maternal introject. The attempt to recruit the analysis into the patient’s psychic retreat constituted a central transference manifestation.