Transference and countertransference. From deployment against feelings of loss--through psychotic regressions--to a better capacity to feel and to mourn.

Problems relating to the treatment of deployed patients are described and discussed through the case material on David Fisher. Since the deployments are not merely the defences or resistances we meet in neurotics, but a way of life with which these persons are strongly identified--deploying forces against the subjective experience of psychic pain--a different approach is felt to be required. I call this an affect-focused approach. Some of the major curative factors which have been found useful in persons with deployment are described and illustrated.