Abusive Relations and Traumatic Development: Marginal Notes on a Clinical Case

This work offers a re-reading of the concept of repetition compulsion in relation to clinical work with patients who were severely traumatized at an early age. Going beyond the limit of the classical concept, which connects repetition compulsion to the death instinct, the function of traumatophilia is enlivened through the hypothesis that the automatisms of repetition may be the expression of the vital core of the Self, in search of the "transformational object."By presenting the detailed clinical case of Greta (a severely dissociated patient), the article seeks to show how the vicissitudes of the transformational object are played out in the transference-countertransference relationship, and how they come to life in the field through the creation of characters who are continually generated and transformed in the patient's and analyst's rêveries.