title: On the psychoanalytic treatment of a psychotic breakdown.
abstract: The author discusses the four-session-a-week psychoanalysis of a patient in psychotic breakdown with outbursts of violence. The analyst's first appearance in the transference was as a "rattle" (the noise made by his shifting in his chair), which constituted undeniable evidence of corporality--first the analyst's and then the patient's--leading eventually to the awareness of there being two separate persons in the psychoanalytic relationship. This case highlights the analyst's need to function in a particular way, and to allow him- or herself to be used in a particular way, in working with very disturbed patients, where issues of the body-mind relationship and of separation from the other are often central to the analytic work.
authors.affiliation: ktjfxl@tin.it
authors.forename: Riccardo
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Lombardi
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011369:Professional-Patient Relations; D011574:Psychoanalytic Theory; D011575:Psychoanalytic Therapy / Q000379:methods*; D011618:Psychotic Disorders / Q000628:therapy*; D014167:Transference, Psychology; D014754:Violence