Dreams and change processes in an ex-prostitute under relational psychoanalytic psychotherapy: Ferenczian and relational views

AbstractThis paper explores the change processes that took place in a woman, an ex-prostitute, in the context of psychotherapeutic treatment over a period of over three years. The treatment took place within a relational psychotherapeutic setting influenced by the ideas formulated by Sandor Ferenczi regarding trauma, as well as by his intense involvement with and commitment to his patients, as expressed in his Clinical Diary of 1932 (Ferenczi, 1988). Zoe, the current patient, was a woman born in Latin America who emigrated to Spain at the age of 28 and became trapped, for nearly a decade, in a mesh of prostitution networks. She eventually entered regular psychotherapeutic treatment at the age of 39. Her change process is an example of the mutual influence between the factors of resilience that characterized her and the opportunity for co-creation that the treatment signifies. The marks of the intense traumatic burden of Zoe's history and the rays of sunlight and hope that she is currently experiencing bec...