90

The force of repetition at work in the transference in the treatment of an adult patient subjected to both physical and sexual abuse during childhood, leads to a recurrence of the traumatic situation. The presentification of transferential violence threatens to hinder the analytic process that can indeed become traumatogenic on its own account. Identificatory haste can, moreover, entail a risk of traumaphiliac repetition for both patient and analyst. In so far as the analyst is required to represent, become, be the aggressor, he necessarily has to question his own personal tendencies to identify with the aggressor. The work of the counter-transference enables him to detach himself from the these tendencies and pursue the work of interpretation.