A body with chronic fatigue syndrome as a battleground for the fight to separate from the mother

Journal/Book: J Anal Psychol. 1997; 42: 11 New Fetter Lane, London, England EC4P 4EE. Routledge. 201-216.

Abstract: I describe the therapy of a 20-year-old woman who believed that her difficulties in concentrating and remembering were caused by her 'ME' (Myalgic encephalomyelitis, Chronic fatigue syndrome, or CFS). She had been fathered by a man who never left his own wife. Work with her dreams revealed a within-body drama in which she was locked in an unspeakable fight to the death with her mother. Her symptoms improved after parallels between a dream and an accident showed her own self-destructive hand in her story. Another dream, reflecting her first 'incestuous' affair, showed her search for her original father-self as someone separate from mother, and a later affair provided a between-body drama, helping her to own the arrogant and abject traits she had before seen only as her mother's. I show how we worked in the area of Winnicott's first 'primitive agony' as experienced by a somatizing patient, stuck in a too-close destructive relationship with her mother-body. I discuss how analytical work can be done with the primitive affects and conflicts against which the ME symptoms may be defending.

Note: Article Simpson M, 2 Cottons Field, Dry Drayton, Cambridge CB3 8DG, ENGLAND

Keyword(s): chronic fatigue syndrome; dreams; myalgic encephalomyelitis; primitive agony; somatizing; Winnicott

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