The "sweet and sour" of being lonely and alone

This paper explores the question of why some lonely people seem to forget what goes on in their treatment when they are away from the analyst's presence. The authors look at loneliness from the perspective of a female patient using the transference to attempt to undo a childhood trauma of early abandonment and neglect. This woman appeared child-like and helpless while she resisted using insight. A dream highlights the unconscious wishes and fantasies that fueled her stance in treatment. The premise is that by not allowing herself to use her insights when out of the analyst's presence, she was maintaining herself as the lonely abandoned child that she had been. Using her treatment in this way seemed to assuage her pain while she waited for the father of her fantasy. The price she paid for waiting was loneliness, loss of self-esteem, and a life with few adult pleasures. Her fantasy of cure followed a sequence from a deficit model, to a model of internalization of bad objects, to a conflict model. The authors believe that sequencing the view of her troubles in this way had a therapeutic effect.