About Clinical Issues in the Treatment of Primitive States: From Gigolo to Self Realization—The Turning Point

Freud's definition of interpretation is: Interpreting means to find a hidden meaning. Freud seemed closer to prescientific dream interpreters, noting that its origin is prescientific, religious, or superstitious, and subjective in nature. Analytic interpreters show people that which is hidden, that which is unconscious, gives meaning to that which seems to have no meaning otherwise. Soon, the players go to the stage door, just as the patient moves out of the waiting room and into the consulting room, his stage, the psychoanalytic couch. The authors follow and take their seats, being now the audience who expects the play to unfold. In the beginning of the analysis a desperate man, hounded by thoughts of suicide, depression, deep anxiety states, outbreaks of sweating in the operating room, tried to save himself and run away from the position of the gigolo. Dr. Miller's external tragedies never end and his internal response to these tragedies brings the analytical work to a new phase.