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Psychoanalytic Psychology
2014, Vol. 31, No. 2, 262275

2014 American Psychological Association

0736-9735/14/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0036340

AN INCESTUOUS DEVELOPMENT:
A Study of Severe Psychopathology in a Fictive
Adolescent From In Treatment
Tempe Watts, MPhil
City University of New York
Through the examination of a character in the television series In Treatment, the
author will discuss derailments in early adolescent development, particularly in
the formation of healthy self-representations of the body as stimulated by
pubertal growth. Loewalds article The Waning of the Oedipus Complex
(1979) will be used as the basis for considering the importance and role of the
incest taboo and the reemergence of the Oedipus complex in typical adolescent
development. The concept of incestual interactions between parent and child
will be described, in which a parent disregards boundaries between adolescent
and parent and overwhelms the adolescents formation of identity with parental
sexuality.
Keywords: adolescence, development, incestual, Oedipal
The experience of seduction in relation to one or both parents, in action or in fantasy, has been
fundamental to psychoanalytic thinking. Freuds presentation of his seduction theory and,
later, theories of infantile sexuality and the Oedipus complex (Freud, 1905, 1924), emphasized
the influence of overt and covert sexuality within the context of the parental relationship in the
development of psychopathology. In this article, I will attempt to discuss the impact of
incestual and primal scene events, experienced in childhood, as they reemerge and interfere in
adolescent development, as well as the potential for pathological aspects of personality to
crystallize and solidify if these developmental tasks are interrupted or delayed. In particular,
I will offer an exploration of the interference in and disruption of identity formation in the
critical period of adolescence, in response to a seductive, incestually laden interaction in an
Oedipal primal scene context. Particular examination will be given to the experience of the
body and the development of healthy body self-representations as stimulated by physical
growth during early adolescence. Ambivalence about this growth disrupts necessary integration and solidification of ones identity. As a result of these derailments in development, the
establishment and persistence of identity diffusion, as observed in borderline personality
organization (O. F. Kernberg, 1975, 2005, 2006), may occur.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Tempe Watts, MPhil, The Graduate
Center, City University of New York, New York, NY 10035. E-mail: tempe.watts@gmail.com

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In order to understand the potential impact and implications of incestual interaction

and primal scene material, I will discuss the necessary developmental tasks of early and
middle adolescence, and the impact of derailments in this process on the formation of
pathological personality (O. F. Kernberg, 1975, 2006). As means for context, I will briefly
look at the role of the incest taboo and the reemergence of the Oedipus complex1 within
normal adolescent development. To discuss these issues, I will use the fictional case of
Sophie, a teenage psychotherapy patient in the TV series In Treatment (Garcia, 2008). The
examination of a fictitious character may not be simply an intellectual exercise. A
well-formed and coherent dramatization, such as this character, may create a pinhole
through which one can study a particular set of concerns that may be less sharpened,
although no less present, in a real therapy. Although her character could be examined
through many lenses, I will attempt to restrict my exploration of her to consider how her
attempts to manage her response to overwhelming feelings about her parents gave rise to
increasing identity diffusion and other aspects of borderline personality organization, such
as unstable and intense object ties, impulsivity, overreliance on primitive defense mechanisms, particularly denial, splitting and dissociation, and culminated in repeated and
serious suicide attempts and other self-destructive behaviors. Identity diffusion, in this
case, is specifically marked by poorly defined boundaries between internal and external
reality, the relative lack of integration of good and bad self and other representations, and
a consequent vulnerability to the self other boundary.
According to Loewald (1979), tension between the pressures of parental influence and
the childs innate need to initiate and test his own capacity for creativity and uniqueness
is the fulcrum and core of the Oedipus complex (as opposed to castration anxiety or
related ideas regarding sexual and aggressive drives; Freud, 1924). This yearning for
emancipation propels the child to Oedipal parricide in a revolt against and appropriation of parental authority. The child makes reparation for this psychic (and, Loewald
implies, through replacement and inevitable mortality, eventually literal) parricide by
internalizing a transformed version of the childs experience of the Oedipal parents. The
notion that the in reality . . . [killing of] something vital in . . . [the parents] contribut(es)
to their dying (Loewald, 1979), as well as the impact on successive of generations, will
be particularly relevant to the case of Sophie.
Ogdens (2006) interpretation of Loewalds article on the Oedipus complex is that the
entirety of the personality is founded and developed through the Oedipal configuration as
it is reworked and reorganized at important phases of development throughout ones life.
In health, the incestuous aspect of the Oedipus complex requires the creation of a
transitional incestuous object relationship which, over the course of ones life, mediates
the interplay between undifferentiated and differentiated aspects of self and relatedness to
others (Ogden, 2006, p. 651). This conceptualization implies that disruption or failure in
the process of the creation and utilization of this transitional incestuous object relationship
would compromise a significant aspect of healthy personality development and object
relations.
Loewald (1979) specifically addresses the issue of actual incest and describes it as a
violation of the sacred innocence of the narcissistic unity of preoedipal identificatory
bonds within the family. He views the sexual act of incest as designed to overcome
temporarily and consciously the established individuality of the partners (p. 767). In this

1
For the purposes of both simplicity and consistency, I will mainly use the term Oedipus
complex to refer to the development process as it was described by Loewald (1979).

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WATTS

sense, it is a regressive, back-sliding repetition in the process of individuation. However,

Loewald specifies his language, using the terms incestuous object and incestuous
object relationship to refer not to actual incest but to external and internal object
relationships in which incestuous fantasies predominate (Ogden, 2006, p. 662, footnote).
It is in this sense that I will use these concepts understand the character of Sophie.
During the Oedipal phase, identificatory processes transform into secondary identifications of superego development. If parents foster the predominance of incestuous trends,
the primary identifications are not allowed to become partially transformed into superego
identifications, as the Oedipal relationship is not given up but is rather maintained.
Incestual interaction destroys the demarcation between a fused form of the mother child
relationship and a differentiated object relatedness within the same person (Ogden, 2006).
A persons capacity to establish healthy object relatedness, a dynamic interaction between
separateness from and union with others, depends on the barrier between primary
identification and object cathexis, between merging and individuality (Loewald, 1979,
p. 772). Lack of resolution of the Oedipus complex means that, both concretely and
abstractly, new relationships are not developed, as antiquated object relations are not
relinquished and replaced by more mature object relations. According to Ogden (2006),
the incestuous Oedipal relationship persists (in health) as a mediating factor for the tension
between the urge for autonomy and the pull toward developing relationships (in falling in
love, sexuality, empathy, etc.). Sophie repetitively and simultaneously seeks infantile
identifications and Oedipal objects within the same person, as with her coach and with
Paul. She is impaired in seeking new object relations, with peers, for example, as would
be expected for her age.

Sophie
On the TV show In Treatment (Garcia, 2008), we meet Sophie, a 16-year-old competitive
gymnast, in session with Paul, a psychologist, seeking a professional opinion regarding
her actions in a very serious accident in which she is hit by a car while riding her bike.
A social worker had suspicions that she was suicidal, which would have legal and
insurance-based implications, and, at least initially, she denies this analysis.
Sophie engages in acutely self-destructive behaviors, both prior to and in the early
stages of therapy. Although the audience is mostly only privy to Sophie in session, we also
see brief interactions with her mother and father outside of session, and actions she takes
that require Pauls attention outside of session, which will be discussed further in this
article. Sophies experience of herself and her relationships, as well as her way of
interacting with her surrounding world, are informed by many factors, particularly her
relationships with her parents and their relationship with each other, her long participation
in and success with gymnastics, and her relationships with her coach and his family and
with fellow gymnasts, all within the context of her age and the expected developmental
tasks she is undertaking.
In particular, Sophies history includes a secret with her father, which she understands
to have bonded her to him psychically. This secret, which has incestual- and primal-scene
undertones, along with the Oedipal triangulation she experiences with her parents,
interfere with the expected adolescent development of her identity and relationships.
Sophie is left unable to undertake these developmental tasks, and is vulnerable to the
emergence of a pathological personality organization and the establishment of destructive
repeated behaviors. When Sophie is seven-and-a-half (she remembers her age quite

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specifically), she comes home from school to find her father, a fashion and artistic
photographer, having sex with one of his models. He sees her watching, gets out of bed
and closes the door, locking it. Although she does not reveal this affair to her mother, as
will be discussed later, her parents eventually divorce and her father is subsequently only
sporadically involved in her life. She is deeply frightened by, and angry at, his abandonment, recalling that shortly before he left, after September 11 (bringing to mind catastrophic and apocalyptic fears), he told her that she was going to inherit an evil world, and
expresses rage and confusion that he would frighten her and then leave her alone. This
experience of rage, confusion, and fear in the face of catastrophe could also refer to her
reaction to the sexual act she witnessed.
In order to examine the possible impact of this individual experience on Sophies
personality structure and its interference to adolescent tasks, it is necessary elaborate on
the environment in which this event occurred and to consider her early relationships with
her parents prior to this incident. As both described by Sophie and demonstrated by scenes
with her mother, Sophies relationship with her mother is dominated by Sophies rage and
devaluation of her mother. We witness Sophie to be rather controlling within their
relationship, verbally abusing her mother. Her mother responds to her daughters berating
quite helplessly, even pathetically, and her impotence both amuses and further enrages
Sophie. Her mother is depicted as emotionally fragile and insecure, dependent on Sophies
positive attention, which causes Sophie to resent her. Although she feels burdened by the
secret her father requires her to keep, her conscious resentment is mostly focused toward
her mother for not figuring out the truth. In interaction with Sophie in the therapy, her
mother is competitive for Pauls approval, and when he disagrees with her, she storms out
and, then, in a rage, returns to announce that Sophies father has been away and is not
aware of Sophies recent suicide attempt. After engaging in an Oedipal competition and
unable to tolerate losing, she attempts to save face by attacking her ex-husband.
Despite their combative relationship, compared with her father, Sophies mother is the
more secure and stable object, and she may therefore find it safer to acknowledge and
express anger at her. Sophie is deeply conflicted about her relationship with her mother.
She openly and viciously verbally abuses her mother, but through a brief slip, reveals a
wish or need to remain in a pattern of disparaging and pushing her mother away in order
to remain close, in a reversal of affect (Freud, 1958): I have to run off to the gym in order
to be with her, I mean without her. Sophies mother seems frightened of Sophies anger,
but may have some sense of the underlying reasons behind her ferocious attacks, although
uses this knowledge to respond in a hysterical manner. She says to Sophie, in comparison
and in competition with the father, Maybe Ill leave you alone and you can love me just
a little.
Sophie describes the last time she and her parents were together, in which they told her
they were separating and greeted her in the kitchen with frozen, fake smiles, glazed
over. When they both start to cry, Sophie is stuck in the kitchen, hungry as fuck, with
these two babies, forcing her to care for herself and them. When her father leaves, her
mother falls into a serious depression. She mocks Paul for suggesting that Sophie might
be sad, is that what people are supposed to do in therapy? Thats what shed do. Sophie
is forced to ward off her own mourning for the end of her parents relationship in order
to support her mother and care for herself. She views her father has having a life while
the rest of them are like walking corpses, as if he left them for dead. She has internalized
her mothers depression (Green, 2001) and feels the loss of her father such that she has
an experience of feeling she has died.

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When we meet finally Sophies father, he shows himself to be continually seductive

with her. He arrives unannounced at her therapy session and attempts to keep her from
going in. He manipulates her body as if she were a toy, making jokey, creaking noises as
he moves her arms, both age inappropriate and controlling. He tells her that it kills me
when I dont hear from you, slays me, I dont eat, I dont sleep. He proceeds to demand
to know what she discusses with Paul, particularly about him, and expresses fears that
Paul is brainwashing her. Sophie initially attempts to defend her fathers behavior,
sounding as though she is parroting her fathers words that artists have to crap on
conventional things in order to create, and seemingly desperate to not be one the
conventional things her father has to crap on.
Sophies relationships with her parents are represented by their reactions to her request
that they each help her to write her opinion on her accident, regarding her intentions,
conscious or otherwise. Her mother attempts to take over and write it for her, prompting
Sophie to become infuriated and to leave their home. She wished for her mothers help,
not for her opinion to be replaced by her mothers, and in response, sets an immediate and
rigid boundary by physically leaving. Her father outright refuses to help her, claiming that
it is unprofessional, attacking the therapist and rejecting Sophies wish to talk about the
incident. Sophie may have wanted an excuse to talk about the accident, using Pauls
directive rather than stating her own wishes in order to initiate the conversation. This
creates a slight barrier, protecting her from feelings of disappointment and rejection when
her parents are unable to listen to her.

The Transitional Oedipal Relationship

To emphasize the importance of the mother in the role of developing object relationships,
Ogden (1987) discussed the first triadic object relationship to exist between the mother
and child, as the father, as a libidinal object, initially is discovered within the mother. As
Odgen (1987)) puts it, Psychological development involves the elaboration of an increasing capacity for awareness of otherness mediated by interpersonal processes and the
maturation of the infants biological and psychological capacities (p. 487). In trying to
speculate on how capable Sophies mother was in facilitating this process, we may
examine the function of stereotypically feminine interests in identification with father.
Ogden suggests that a preoccupation for clothes and makeup, utilized for the purpose of
attracting the sexual attention of others, may indicate a womans difficulty in internalizing
her own father, hoping to revive a specific early love relationship in which her damaged
self-esteem was rendered less painful through the influence of the love of her father (p.
494). Sophies mother is indeed very invested in feminine appearance and worries that her
daughter rejects this. If she has, in fact, struggled with her own internalization of her
father, she would have likely insufficiently facilitated this process for Sophie as well,
which, in turn, would have a profound impact on her daughters ability to manage the
bombardment of confusing images, feelings, and fantasies that she experiences as a result
of the kind of primal scene she witnesses.
Although this event involves her father and a woman other than her mother, and does
not culminate in direct sexual contact between Sophie and her father, I am conceptualizing
this incident as a kind of incestually laden, Oedipal experience and primal scene. That is
not to say that Sophies witness to this scene is the same as an act of incest or the same
if her mother were directly involved in the scene, but despite the actual players in this
particular triangulation, her mother is very present in Sophies mind. She experiences this

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SEVERE PSYCHOPATHOLOGY IN A FICTIVE ADOLESCENT

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interaction as devoid of boundary, and this is the basis for her belief that she shares a
psychic connection with her father.
As first expressed by Winnicott (1965) in the form of There is no such thing as a
baby, and elaborated on by Green (1975), there is no such thing as a mother and infant
because father is always represented in the unconscious mind of the mother (Ogden,
1987). Through previous processes of identification with the mother and internalization of
mother, Sophies mother is present in her mind when she sees her father with another
woman. This becomes apparent when Sophie expresses disgust toward her mother, that
she couldnt see whats in front of her face, seeming to believe that her mother did or
should know what was happening. Although both her belief of a magical connection to her
father and her belief that her mother should know what is in her mind are not unusual for
a seven-and-a-half-year-old, the persistence of these beliefs may also begin to be demonstrative of Sophies lack of differentiation and boundary between her and each of her
parents and to each other.
There is some evidence that, beyond this particular incident, Sophies father may have
regularly perpetuated incestually laden interactions with Sophie through the display of his
art (of nude models) and by openly conducting sexual affairs. Ogden (2006) noted that,
depending on the parents level of anxiety regarding being killed in the childs mind or
more generally concerned with mortality, parents may try to protect themselves against
giving way to the next generation by behaving as if there is no difference between the
generation (p. 658). He suggested that
when parents do not close bedroom and bathroom doors, or display erotic photographs as
art, or do not wear clothing at home because the human body is not a shameful thing, they
are implicitly claiming that there is no generational difference children and adults are equal.
Children, under such circumstances, have no genuine parental objects to kill and only a
perverse version of parental authority to appropriate. This leaves the individual a stunted child
frozen in time. (Ogden, 2006, p. 658)

The artistic claims of the two latter examples directly apply to Sophies father. He
swaggers with a narcissistic, aggressive, and exhibitionistic display of his body and his
conquests, an apparent denial for who is the child and who is the adult. Sophie displaces
this experience onto her mother with regard to the affairs: Shes supposed to be smarter
than me. Given her fathers inappropriate denial of differences between children and
adults, and Sophies tenuous sense of separation from others, witnessing her father in a
kind of primal scene may have stimulated confusing fantasy as he emphasized their lack
of difference. Early experiences of incest have been found to impair the capacity for
integration and reality testing (Furman, 1956).
As suggested by Diamond (1956), a fathers seductive behavior may weaken the
childs repressive barrier so that her incestuous fantasies, rather than being repressed, find
conscious expression, and thus leave a legacy of guilt, self-blame, and negative selfrepresentations. This formulation provides value in viewing incest as a continuum rather
than categories of fantasied versus actual event. Freuds (1924) viewing of fantasy as a
force equal to reality in forming the foundation of neurosis implies a dialectical tension
between experience and its internal representations (Diamond, 1989). In this way, reality
impinges on and shapes fantasy, whereas fantasy continually alters perception and
interpretation of reality.
Whether stimulated from within or by external experience, fantasies as mental representations of libidinal impulses, unconscious wishes, and conscious desires, are experi-

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enced as produced by the self. As such, they inevitably leave a residue of guilt or
responsibility, which must be analyzed before the incest experience can be overcome
(Diamond, 1989). Women who reported having pleasurable, positive, or even ambivalent
feelings about incestuous abuse, appeared to have suffered greater feelings of trauma than
did those for whom the experience was completely repulsive (Russell, 1986). Herman and
Schatzow (1987) found that the defensive style of incest victims varied according to age
of onset of abuse, with women abused in latency more likely to utilize partial repression,
dissociation, and intellectualization (all overused by Sophie, particularly dissociation).
In the beginning of therapy, Sophie claims that she and her father are telepathically
connected. There are multiple ways of understanding this belief. In addition to serving the
purpose of staying connected to him in her mind when he leaves the family, it may also
be indicative of her tenuous sense of boundaries. As she is included in a kind of primal
scene, in a sense, she may also be responding similarly to the aspect of being an incest
victim, in which the child feels special and elevated. However, given her description of her
father closing the door, she may also have created a fantasy of telepathic fusion with her
father in order to manage the Oedipal disappointment of her father sleeping with the
model, that is, choosing another over Sophie.

Adolescent Development
One of the primary developmental tasks of adolescence is what has been referred to as a
second individuation process of adolescence (Blos, 1967). This requires the loosening of
infantile ties to the parents and attendant seeking of nonincestuous and peer-group
relationships. As discussed, this process is greatly impaired by incestually laden interaction, but, for Sophie, was further obstructed in that she had already been unsuccessful in
separation. Sophie should have become more aware of herself as distinct from the
significant people in her life, in a process of internalization. However, in various ways, she
demonstrates that this distinction is not as differentiated as would signal psychic separation. In finally coming to terms with the fact that she tried to kill herself during her
accident, she remembers thinking, I finally killed her, although she cannot articulate to
whom she was referring. Speculating who the her might be, she could be attempting to
kill split-off parts of herselfparts she identifies as weak that she wants to disown,
creating a sense of badness that she wants to eradicate, as in Fairbairns (1952) theory
of moral defense in abused children. In another sense, she could have tried to destroy
unintegrated part-objects of her mother, of her father, and particularly their secret together
(Klein, 1946).
Among the tasks of adolescence are the attainment of a nonincestuous object and
the achievement of a sense of identity. The advent of psychobiological changes in
adolescence prompts the need to change the earlier concepts of the body ego. This
changing body ego, along with a partial ego regression, causes a threat to the
adolescents sense of identity (Hammerman, 1965). At her age, one would expect
Sophie to be engaged in the process of the development of the multiple selfrepresentations, particularly of gender and sexuality, and forming the foundations of
a sense of self and object relations. Although much of the content of her sessions
revolves around sexuality and relationships, she is fundamentally struggling to manage some developmentally appropriate tasks, such as shifting away from the family
relationships toward the social world. She is preoccupied with painful, difficult
feelings toward her parents, interfering with necessary separation and individuation,

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269

and keeping her perpetually angry and lonely (Blos, 1967; Levy-Warren, 1996). She
is also quite socially isolated, as she is deeply involved competitively in Olympiclevel gymnastics. Although she is surrounded by peers, she has formed no friendships
and has no romantic interests, as far as is known to the audience.

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The Process of Developing Identity

The capacity to maintain stability and continuity of identity is a function of increasingly
stabilized boundaries between that which is internal (e.g., ones own bodily sensation,
affects, thoughts, fantasies) and that which is external (e.g., social and physical phenomena, and affects, thoughts, and fantasies of others). In adolescence, this requires the
continued, gradual, timely relinquishment of parental attempts to structure adolescents
activity in favor of age-appropriate self-regulation. Incestual intrusions are inappropriate
paternal assertions of need and control over the childs body and sexuality. These
intrusions can disrupt the stabilization of these boundaries between internal and external,
and also the mobilization of active efforts at mastery, which can foster a sense of
autonomy and control over oneself. Incest interferes with the normal developmental
processes that sharpen the distinction between internal and external reality, and thus
disturb the continuity of identity by inhibiting the establishment of a realistic selfrepresentation and its distinction from the wishful self-representations, leading to deficits
in identity diffusion in borderline personality organization (Marcus, 1989). Although
Sophies personality structure is, by definition, in flux during adolescence, at the time that
she is treatment, she is operating at a borderline level of development. Paulina Kernberg
(P. Kernberg, Weiner, & Bardenstein, 2000) argued that at each phase of development, an
age-appropriate identity is formed, and, therefore, a means for comparison for expected
development is reasonable. The predominance of primitive defense mechanisms, especially projective identification, as a result of incestuous relationships can be understood as
an outgrowth of the persistence of an assertion of omnipotent control. Sophie enacts a
pattern in her relationships of transforming her sense of helplessness into harassment,
insults or provocation, and induces a similar feeling of helplessness in others.
Sophie struggles to know herself, as demonstrated by her initial description of herself:
My name is Sophie. Im 16 years old. Ive been a gymnast since the age of 6.5. I was U.S.
junior champion at the age of 12. Im an only child. I dont know, what do you want to know?

Sophie delivers this sketch in an overly formal manner and emphasizes action, the
activity that consumes much of her life, and just makes a specific note that she is an only
child, perhaps symbolic of her loneliness and isolation. Although in itself this description
is not necessarily an indication that Sophie is delayed in her ability to know herself or
articulate her sense of self, she exhibits diffusion and a lack of differentiation in her
identity. Sophies father dates models continually after the divorce, and in referencing an
incident with one of his girlfriends, Paul seeks to clarify whether this woman was the same
as one Sophie had mentioned earlier. She replies that she thinks so, but Who can keep
up? In this throwaway line, she demonstrates her difficulty in maintaining people as
separate and distinguishable from each other, and likely indicates that she imagines her
father to be using women interchangeably as well, such that these women have little
substance and hold little significance to her and her father.
Furthermore, in service of the process of individuation, adolescents need to desexualize their relationship with their parents and their parents relationships with each other

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(Levy-Warren, 1996; Shopper, 2002). This illusion of parental celibacy, which can
modulate sexual feelings, along with the strength of the incest taboo, propels adolescents
to seek intimate relationships outside of the family. Sophies lack of friends indicates her
aversion to turning away from her parents and her need to stay bound with them and their
sexuality. A divorced father who dates women significantly younger than his ex-wife can
stimulate his daughters fantasy that the father might have chosen her, in that he reveals
his sexual interest in much younger women. For Sophie, her father has also praised her
beauty and likeness to the models he dates, and tells her that she could get work as a
model, essentially turning her into one of the women he dates. In her first session with
therapist Paul, Sophie notes the many models of ships with which he decorates his office
and comments that he should make a round window to the outside, in order to feel like
hes on a real ship. Although poignant, this and other comments seem to signify her
sense of unrealness, maybe akin to a sense of deadness, indicating depression (Blatt,
1998). She feels she is going through the motions, and only through the use of external
superficial signs can she simulate something real. She is relying solely on the outside
world to define her sense of self and enters therapy by focusing on parents and other
adults, avoiding turning attention inward and toward similar peers, a problematic practice
in middle adolescence (Levy-Warren, 1996). She is concerned about her own sense of
realness and seeks reassurance from Paul that she is all right and not crazy. She is also
concerned with the rules of therapy, testing boundaries, including a no suicide
contract. When he describes their arrangement as a pact, she says, If it was a pact wed
be drinking poisoned Kool-Aid together, seeming to imagine them in an erotic bond of
death. Although wanting to know and understand the rules and boundaries in therapy are
important to adolescent psychotherapy, her imagery of being involved fully with another
includes fused death, and her identity and sense of separateness seem diffuse.
A couple of years after she witnessed her father with the model, and immediately
following September 11, she writes to an imaginary friend in her diary, I know I must
hide things from [mother]. You and I must sustain ourselves, and she notes that she must
have meant restrain, rather than sustain. The figure of the imaginary friend of her diary is
not much more elaborated than in this instance; however, one could imagine the important
function (secretive, exclusive, protected) of generating her own internal object for someone in Sophies position. In this poignant moment, she reveals that in order to restrain
herself from divulging the secret to her mother, she needed to decathect from her and
began a deep rupture in her relationship.
Sophie fears the murder of her father within her psyche, as represented in a dream that
reveals her fear that therapy will kill her father, viewing Paul as a serial killer, waiting
to kill her father. Some writers believe that a key aspect in the use of and developmental
processes for both Oedipal and primal scene is multiple identificatory positions, including
self in relation to the parental couple; self coupled with mother; self coupled with father;
identification with mother in couple with father, self excluded; identification with father
in couple with mother, self excluded; and so on (Aron, 1995, Knafo & Feiner, 1996); thus,
a binary view of the role of gender (patricide for boys, matricide for girls) is unnecessary.
From this perspective, Sophie fears that she will not atone for her parricide (Loewald,
1979) and keep an internalization of her father. As she begins therapy with only an
undifferentiated and idealized vision of her father, and has not yet successfully navigated
through an adolescent separation-individuation phase, her fears may be warranted. She
may correctly understand that in order for her to live (to separate from her father and to
consolidate her identity), her father (or her internalized representation of him as psychi-

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cally fused to her) will have to be killed, which will likely occur as a result of her work
with Paul. As (Loewald, 1979) puts it,
In an important sense, by evolving our own autonomy, our own superego, and by engaging
in nonincestuous object relations, we are killing our parents. We are usurping their power,
their competence, their responsibility for us, and we are abnegating, rejecting them as libidinal
objects. In short, we destroy them in regard to some of their qualities hitherto most vital to us.
Parents resist as well as promote such destruction no less ambivalently than children carry it
out. (p. 756)

I include this last sentence regarding parental ambivalence in reference to Sophies

father, who, within his seductive and manipulative dialogue, is terrified that he will be
destroyed in Sophies mind by the therapy (through brainwashing). According to Ogden
(2006), a relative absence of genuine parental authority leaves the child with little to
take in. In using Winnicotts (1975) concept of childrens fantasies needing brakes, he
suggests that when this authority has not been established, the child does not possess the
secure knowledge that her fantasies will not be allowed to be played out in reality. In the
case of Sophie, she defended herself against her the danger of the actual murder of her
father by idealizing him, and when this defense begins to unravel, she projects her
murderous feelings into Paul.
The organization of the superego is a form of immortality for the Oedipal parents, in
that it involves an internalization of or identification with the parents. As defined by
Ogden (2006), the superego is that aspect of the self that is derived from appropriated
parental authority (p. 659), and takes the measure of and responsibility for who one is and
how one conducts oneself. By Sophies behavior, she does not appear to have sufficiently
taken on this responsibility. She demonstrates a high level of independence, as becomes
crucial in adolescence, but this autonomy occurred before she was able to fully take
responsibility, and she displays difficulty in many aspects of self-care and self-regulation,
and the sense of pride that is apparent in appropriate autonomy is not evident (LevyWarren, 1996). As independent and precocious as she presents herself, her self-destructive
behaviors, besides conveying other meanings, such as an attempt to kill off a part object
or an aspect of herself, could be interpreted to be a protestation against caring for herself.
For example, she makes many basic, regressive, or childlike demands of Paul, asking for
water while in double casts up to both elbows, having pizza delivered to a session (which
arrives before she does, so Paul has to respond to and pay for the delivery), arriving in
soaked clothing to a session, and ultimately overdosing in Pauls office, literally putting
her life in Pauls hands. This split-off functioning is common among incest survivors, who
may initially present as overly competent and mature (a word Paul uses to describe Sophie
early on), developing a precocious, pseudomaturity, and independence that is disassociated from an underlying archaic dependency bonds (Price, 1993, p. 218). The child splits
off aspects of ambivalence and conflict (in this case, projected toward Sophies mother),
and may defend him- or herself by detaching from sexual feelings. Sexual aspects of the
maturing body often do not become integrated into the whole person, and the process of
building cohesion and consolidation of body image is damaged.
In latency and adolescence, the Oedipal transitional relationship between mother and
daughter, is commonly reenacted in the shopping expedition in which the daughter tries
on clothes and the mother participates through an identification with the man, admiring her
daughter (Ogden, 1987). The development of a healthy gender identity is reflective of a
dynamic interplay between masculine and feminine identities. For Sophie, identification

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with her mother is rejected in order to protect her father from intense anger resulting from
the experience of abuse (Shengold, 1979). She must break with her experience and register
him (delusionally) as good, which can be a mind splitting, mind fragmenting operation
(p. 539). Sophie is therefore conflicted in any attempt at gender identification, and relies
on gymnastics to keep her body prepubescent.
Although she does make significant growths in establishing boundaries and the
beginnings of differentiation, throughout her therapy, Sophie continues to struggle with
her sense of her body. Sophie is in significant conflict regarding growing up, so to speak.
She appears to demand that she be given free reign and independence, without intrusion
from her mother and, at times, from Paul, but she exposes definite investment in not
growing and physically developing. Sophie herself gives insight into early experiences of
attempts at control over her body:
When I was little and I would starve myself and there would be this period usually in the
morning where I was really hungry, like so hungry I thought my stomach might start eating
the rest of me. And then it would go away suddenly like turning off a light switch and I felt
like was floating on clouds.

She later described feeling more recently that when she pushed through the pain of
gymnasticsshe felt like I didnt have a body at all, like I was just a pair of somersaulting eyes.2 She enjoys being light and thin . . . like she could just slip away through
a crack in the door if she had to . . . wanting to be light, to be there and not there. In these
brief memories, she reveals a long history of using a primitive form of dissociation as a
primary defense, and attempts to regulate herself through controlling her body and its
ability to withstand pain and discomfort.
Sophie describes frequent dissociative bodily experiences, not especially typical of an
adolescent developmental period but rather typical for people who have experienced
trauma. Although her dissociation works in service of protecting herself, this experience
works against the developmental tasks of this time period. As, developmentally, she
should be learning about her body and sexual impulses, she becomes further disconnected
and unknowing of her body. In gymnastics, she detaches from, rather than reconnects to,
her body. She uses her sport to gain control, put boundaries in place, and follow rules that
were not there. Her experience of boundary violation and connection with her father
regarding his sexual affairs creates confusion about sexuality, which is perpetuated in her
relationship with her coach, Cy. Childish images are fused with sexual ones, such as Cy
drawing a cartoonish, but provocatively naked, mermaid on Sophies casts, split in two,
half on each cast (appropriately symbolic of Sophies experience), and colored in by his
daughter.
Sophie expresses wishes to stay, and pride in staying, thin and small in order to
compete in gymnastics, and flippantly calls the other gymnasts Ana and Mia, as in
anorexic and bulimic. Although she denies either behavior, she fears gaining weight and
fully experiencing puberty, such as widening hips and breast development. She seems to
want to avoid confronting her sense of gender, which would be particularly difficult if her

2
It is interesting that she feels her body disappears such that she is left with only eyes, as she
is hypervigilant with regard to her parents, and it was witnessing her fathers affair with her own
eyes that was a significant moment in the development of her identity, including the events
subsequent influence on her sense of her body. Also of note is the suggestion that a patients wish
to hide is an aspect of a primal scene configuration (Knafo & Feiner, 1996).

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body developed. She fights against her mother about buying feminine clothes. Her
mother pushes Sophie to embrace feminine roles, even buying her a bra for her 16th
birthday, a somewhat age-inappropriate gift for her age. Her mother wishes Sophie to
identify with the mothers gender and sexuality, and more concretely, for Sophie to dress
how the mother would like to dress herself. As a girls body acquires secondary sexual
features that make her body similar to her mothers, eating disorders are more likely to
develop. Sophie may fear a sense of merger, as a more adult body would blur the
differences between them differentiation with which Sophie is disposed to struggle.
Sophie may also be attempting to ward off identification with her mother as a woman
and, therefore, potential mother (Levy-Warren, 1996). Alternatively, she may be avoiding
competition with her mother, as in not wanting to own or inhabit the sexual power that she
may already worry that her mother does not possess, but which her mother has been
insecure about and desperate for since her husbands affairs. As with many adolescents,
Sophie is also developing her sexuality at the same that her mother may be experiencing
a decline in her sense of sexuality, further complicating competitive feelings that can
emerge during bodily development (Levy-Warren, 1996). She views her mother as weak,
making her an undesirable object for feminine identification. Sophie may regard her
mother as having lost in triangulated (Oedipal) relationships, such as her mother in
competition with the models for her father, or in competition with Sophie and the secret
she shared with her father, and may therefore consider her mother to be an Oedipal
loser. By resisting her bodys development, she may avoid a sense of competition with
her mother and accompanying aggression.
On the other hand, Sophie may feel triumphant over her mother by having a modellike frame rather than a typical female body. Sophie and her mother each have their own
fantasies about what makes a woman attractive (Levy-Warren, 1996), especially due to
Sophies fathers affairs with models, whom Sophie describes as sluts. Sophie states that
her father loves the way that [Sophie] looks, and that if she was not a gymnast, she
would be a model. Sophie may view the proportions of a model to be the epitome of
female beauty and sexuality. Sophie may be attempting to develop self-representations of
gender (Levy-Warren, 1996), as in forming images of what feels female, but she is in
significant conflict in this process. She views her mother as weak and stupid for not
knowing about the fathers infidelities. She describes her father and the models with whom
he has sex with, that nudity was normal in her house growing up, possibly making images
of femininity and masculinity confusing.
However, Sophie is conflicted about this identification, not fully rejecting her mothers
wishes. Her mother buys shoes for Sophie that Sophie calls Barbie shoes, and although
she mocks them, she wears them to a party. Although, she struggles to understand why she
wore them, perhaps she is more able to play with the clothes as long as she thinks of them
as Barbie shoes, likened to toys. Sophies mother expresses fears about the toll gymnastics
is taking on her daughters body, saying, Your boobs wont grow, youll hate your body,
youll be deformed. Although her disparagement of gymnastics could also be partly due
to her sense of competing for her daughters attention, and her anxiety and disapproval
about her daughters relationship with her coach, she is particularly frightened by the
changes (or lack of change) gymnastics could realistically cause to Sophies development.
Her mothers description of the dangers of avoiding normal physical growth is stark,
and Sophie seems concerned as well, although she is ambivalent about sexual maturation
and takes pleasure in the control she maintains over her bodys development. This conflict
also arises in her experimentation in sexual relationships. Sophie discloses that she
dissociated during an upsetting sexual experience with a peer male gymnast, the only

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sexual contact she recounts while in therapy. She describes that she felt nothing, nothing
at all, and that her partner told her that she fucked like someone whod been sexually
abused. She is bombarded by primitive, diffuse images after they have sex, when her eyes
are closed, seeing everything around [her] falling apart, disintegrating turning to ash in
front of [her]. This reaction to sexual contact can also be understood in the context of her
trauma experiences, and is an aspect of her undifferentiated, diffused identity. Sophie
begins to try for normal adolescent social interaction with peers, but due to disruptions in
her development, fears she will crumble. Her relationships with her parents are too central
for her to risk exploration.

Conclusions
In this article, I attempted to trace the development of pathological personality organization, particularly that of identity diffusion in adolescence, to experiences of disruption in
the resolution of the Oedipus complex in the context of incestually laden interactions.
There are limitations to the kind of examination I have given to this fictional case, with
a neat and well-formed patient and sensationalized aspects of the treatment unfolding in
dramatic fashion in response to a shoot-from-the-hip protagonist. However, the basic
human experiences that the screenwriters infuse in this character of Sophie poignantly
capture the early development of psychopathology in adolescence and crystalize the ways
in which subtle, and not so subtle, boundary violations disrupt growth and maturity. The
typical and necessary developmental tasks of individuation from parents is both in
immediate deficit and continually impaired by the interference caused by a breakdown in
boundaries between the internal and the external that are ideally established through a
healthy transition through the Oedipal relationships, which are continually reworked as
developmentally necessary. Loewalds metaphor of the waning of the Oedipus complex
evokes the lunar phases in which, although the moon may appear smaller, in reality, is
merely repositioned rather than actually diminishes. In Sophies case, these issues appear
centrally and are stuck in full moon, so to speak, blazing starkly and brightly, and
subsequently interfering in the development of healthy self and object representations and
relationships. With Pauls help, the repetitive triangles that Sophie compulsively reenacts
will phase into meaningful connections and a coherent and stable sense of self, allowing
the conflicts of the Oedipus complex to wane.

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