Mockery through caricature: a variant of introjection utilized by a masochistic woman

This case study of a woman with moral masochism focuses upon her characteristic defenses. Particular attention is paid to her utilization of a variant of identification. This patient's mother was a strict, harsh disciplinarian who insisted upon total compliance as a condition for her approval and love. This roused considerable anger and resentment in this patient but also intense anxiety, lest she lose her mother's love. To deal with this, she adopted an ingenious strategy. She established a veneer of pseudocompliance, following her mother's dictates to the letter. She incorporated many of her severe attitudes. She took these to an extreme, in effect caricaturing her. Through this process of exaggerating these bits of maternal behavior she made herself miserable, i.e., she became anhedonic, anorectic, and anorgasmic except via painful anal intercourse. This was a most useful compromise formation that enabled her to appear as her mother's ideal child and, therefore, retain her love. At the same time, by achieving a state of misery through following her mother's orders, she exposed her as ridiculous, and thus covertly discharged considerable aggression.