The mirror transference in the psychoanalytic psychotherapy of alcoholism: a case report.

The development of a mirror transference in the successful outpatient psychoanalytic psychotherapy of an alcoholic patient is described in this paper. Important features of the case were a very severe initial period of resistance, a dramatic shift from a climate of bitterness and rancor to one of quiet and satisfaction that coincided with the establishment of the mirroring relationship, then recall of important genetic material, and finally, a period of many gains in the patient's contemporary relationships. Very few interpretations were given. The psychotherapy was chiefly an attempt to provide the object relationship that would be therapeutic, an archaic relationship of the grandiose self and the mirroring self-object. The theoretical work of Balint and Kohut was applied to this problem (with the alcoholic patient) and proved extremely helpful in predicting the major turning points in the psychotherapy and in guiding the strategy of the therapist. The principal difficulty not fully predicted was the extent and depth of the resistance to a positive transferace; once this resistance was overcome, the psychotherapy proceeded in a way similar to that generally described by Kohut with regard to patients who became involved in a mirror transference.