A Falsifying Adolescent

Abstract

The author describes an adolescent patient who, while often speaking factual truths, maintained an aura of falsity in her life, and in two interludes of psychoanalytic psychotherapy, that functioned as a barrier to psychological insight. To match her falsity, the analyst at times modified his functioning as a “real” therapist and took on her personification of neglectful and false adults. Eventually, the analyst became an object that the adolescent could trust and rely on. In discussing the case, the author introduces and applies Bion’s ideas regarding truth and falsity, and three variations of container-contained relationships—symbiotic, commensal, and parasitic—in the context of the case’s relational perspective.