This article’s aim is to narrate the birth of a therapeutic relationship, with a style in which theoretical formulations are derived from the phenomenology of clinical experience and not vice versa. From this perspective, the protagonist of the tale is the evolution of the relationship itself, and the analytical session resembles a jazz session in which the musical theme is gradually structured, taking shape as the piece unfolds. The analyst knows he can rely on his setting and with the certainty that some standard elements won’t be ignored, without knowing in advance which ones. Concretely, the text describes some moments of the analytic therapy with Susanna, an intelligent and vital patient who adopted a series of important dissociative defences of a perverse type, which while protecting her from the risk of a psychic breakdown made her life exhausting and repetitive. Three closely interdependent themes emerge from the narrative: 1. The account of the way in which the analytic couple manages to free itself from cyclical and sclerotized relational modes and acquire a more flexible relational capacity, in which one can be in a transitional space where there is neither complete separation nor absolute fusion. 2. The formulation of some hypotheses on the link between complex trauma and the formation of dissociative structures of a perverse type. 3. The analyst’s work on his own countertransference, which highlights how in the transference field there is a circular relationship between somatic sensations, rȇverie and theoretical insight.
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