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KMID : 0385320070180020146
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Journal of Korean Psychoanalytic Society
2007 Volume.18 No. 2 p.146 ~ p.155
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The Wolf Man Analysis Terminable and Interminable
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Lee Byung-Wook
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Abstract
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The Wolf Man is the most famous and most controversial patient analyzed by Sigmund Freud. His analysis was the longest analysis in all of psychoanalytic history as it involved many analysts over the course of about 60 years. The Wolf Man was a pessimistic melancholic person and had an obsessive narcissistic personality. He also had a number of difficulties in his work and love life. Based on the analysis of the Wolf Man’s dreams, Freud discovered an infantile neurosis that included early psychic trauma and a primal scene chiefly in terms of the father-son relationship with anal eroticism. He also disregarded early mother-infant relationships and actual losses later in life. Therefore, the Wolf Man case might be considered to play a bridging role in the turning point of psychoanalytic development in terms of theory and technique. Although the Wolf Man’s depression and obsessive broodings were not cured by analysis, we have to appreciate that the Wolf Man lost everything, including power, love, fortune, and honor during the first and second World Wars and in the Russian Revolution and Civil War. He was never able to overcome the great tragedies of his life, but it was evident that the analysis saved him from a serious crisis and transient psychotic episode, and the continuous analytic care he received throughout his lifetime enabled him to lead a long and more tolerable life, despite the incomplete analysis. Whether the Wolf Man’s analysis was terminable or interminable seems to be somewhat antinomic. I therefore conclude that many analysts’ relay-type dedications for the Wolf Man were partially successful, but their analytic care seemed to resemble that of an overprotective mother in terms of their concern for the Wolf Man’s weak and pathological dependency.
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KEYWORD
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Wolf man, Analysis, Terminable
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