From strong hold to letting go

In cases where the organizing archetypes have not been mediated by a good enough parental experience, the body subject to drives lacks nourishment from the eros, and remains disconnected from the organizing energy of the self. As a result, analytical work may collide with the destructive forces of the Great Mother as it follows its path. The author illustrates the way out of the archaic maternal with the clinical case of a young woman who was able to wrench herself away from the deadly only by offering a bodily sacrifice: regression all the way back to the psychosomatic womb, played out within the transference relationship, anchored in the eros. This offering, which was both real and symbolic, required physical work and the renouncement of an imaginary ideal, on the part of both analyst and analysand. The process brought out her creativity.