TRANSFERENCE, SOMATIZATION, AND SYMBIOTIC NEED

A tventy-eiglit-ye,?r-oldm arried male with bisexual behavior developed a recurrence of a peptic ulcer in the course of psychoanalytic treatment. Under the impact of the transference neurosis resomatization took place and brought into sharp focus a recapitulation of his inadequate, infantile symbiotic relationship with his mother. This had facilitated the development and maintenance of a negative oedipal involvement with a maternal father. By way of homosexuality he expressed his ever-present need to merge with the “mothering” father, arid through him with the mother. Homosexuality provided temporary emotionally nurturing objects and part objects. T h e rcpctitive pleas for love, the insatiable desire to suck and be sucked, to wish to eat and be eaten, the pseudolialliIciIiatory invocation of the analyst's presence wherever tlie patient went in the intervals of separation between analytic sessions, the sensation of fusion with the analytic couch, tlie distorted anatomical subjective perception of bodily swelling during analytic sessions-all these eloquently attested to the infantile primal hunger which could not be allayed. It is postulated that psychologic and environmental factors pertinent to his life situation as outlined in this paper, in conjunction with a presumed genetic physiological predisposition, combined to cause the original peptic ulcer in his adolescence, and were also responsible for later recrudescences of this lesion. This patient, his life history, his symptomatology, his therapeutic and working alliance in tlie psychoanalytic procedure, have served as a contribution to the furtlier understanding of tlie psychosomatic process and its resolution, particularly as it may refer to the subject of peptic ulcer. © 1969, SAGE Publications. All rights reserved.