PSYCHOANALYTIC PSYCHOLOGY, 1994,11(1), 21-32

Copyright © 1994, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Impossible Projects": Men's Illusory

Solutions to the Problem of Work

Steven D. Axelrod, PhD

New York, NY

This article describes a specific type of work disturbance encountered in clini-

cal practice with male patients. The "impossible project" is characterized by
grandiose, boundary-less content, intense absorption in solitary activity; and
difficulty formulating and sustaining goal-directed work. It is the man's attempt
to "patch over" significant ego deficits without fundamentally reworking the
traumatic identification with his mother and the emotional absence of his father.
The project is fantasized as providing a hitherto elusive masculine identity but
also partakes of feelings of fraudulence and impossibility.
Three cases exemplifying the impossible project serve to highlight the
typical family constellations and developmental deficits of these men. How best
to respond to the patient's work strivings as well as common transference
paradigms are discussed.

Men in early to middle adulthood often seek treatment for problems in

working. It is not uncommon for some of these men to immerse themselves
in major work projects, which they contrast to the humdrum routine of the
work world. For some, the project is little more than a fantasy. For most, it
is a long-term activity that is pursued either in addition to or in place of
day-to-day paid work.
These work projects are imbued with grandiose fantasies. The men dream
of being recognized or discovered by a wider audience. The content of their
projects often involves a grand synthesis or a doing away with ordinary
boundaries and categories—for example, "performance art," in which all
media are blended, or a multilingual calendar containing phrases from all
world languages. The projects are fantasized to provide an experience of
wholeness that has been missing.

Requests for reprints should be sent to Steven D. Axelrod, PhD, Suite 704, 24 East 12th
Street, New York, NY 10003.
22 AXELROD

For the men described in this article, work on the project is a predomi-
nantly solitary activity with tenuous links to the outside world. There is a
kind of absorption in the project that lends it a quality of timeless activity,
Even though the man works hard, he often experiences his activity as
busywork that is beyond his capacity for regulation.
These men typically describe a sense of bewilderment about the world of
adulthood. They feel like outsiders, different from other working men. Re-
gardless of what is done on the project, the man feels like a fraud—an
imposter—and is subject to crises in self-esteem. The work project itself is
experienced as impossible.
Fast (1975) described a similar "syndrome" in borderline patients who
value self-involvement and enthusiastic commitment to a creative pursuit at
the expense of initiative, purpose, and goal-directed activity. She attributed
the "borderline work style" to a disturbance in the transition from narcissism
to reality in the first years of life. Satow (1988) described patients who suffer
not from work inhibitions, typically rooted in the oedipal phase of develop-
ment, but from a need to fail at work that has its origins in preoedipal object
relations. She attributed the work difficulties of her patients to an anal-sadis-
tic struggle with their mothers. Failure represents both an attempt to preserve
a sense of self from an intrusive mother and a way of remaining merged with
her.
The subjects of this article, like those described by Fast and Satow, have
experienced primary disruptions in the development of a work identity. Their
work difficulties are rooted in problems at the preoedipal level of develop-
ment. These developmental failures are examined in light of the early stages
of male development: disidentification from mother (Greenson, 1968), the
first constructions of the ego ideal, and the achievement of gender identity.
Case material is used to illustrate the interplay between these developmental
factors and the specific types of work difficulties that have been observed.

MALE DEVELOPMENT

The importance of the precompetitive, idealizing, and admiring relationship

between the little boy and his father hais been emphasized by a number of
authors (Bios, 1985; Greenspan, 1982; Ross, 1982; Tyson, 1982). The early
bond between son and father serves two interrelated functions: It protects
against a drift toward predifferentiated oneness with the mother and provides
an important bridge to the world outside the family. The dyadic father is "the
early personification of the reality principle [for the boy] who makes grow-
ing into manhood an attainable expectancy" (Bios, 1985, p. 39). The father's
approval and affirmation of his son are essential for the normal unfolding of
the child's ego capacities.
In optimal development, this bond between son and father is based on a
shift in the cathexis of the ego ideal from the mother to the father. This is part
 "IMPOSSIBLE PROJECTS" 23

of the epigenesis of the ego ideal from self-idealization to idealization of the

procreative mother and then the protective and reassuring father. The male's
ego ideal achieves its adult form with a deidealization of the father (Bios,
1985). According to Bios, the adult ego ideal is the "agency of autonomous
aspiration" (p. 38) represented in a drive for perfection that nonetheless
admits of the limitations of both self and object. To Chasseguet-Smirgel
(1985), the ego ideal implies "a hope, a project" (pp. 29-30), and plays an
important role in the cathecting of development as such.

PATHOLOGY OF THE EGO IDEAL AND THE

ILLUSION OF WORK

Primary disruptions in the development of a work identity suggest malforma-

tion of the ego ideal. Bios and Chasseguet-Smirgel offered differing perspec-
tives on the pathology of the ego ideal that pertain to the work difficulties of
the men described in this article.
Bios (1985) emphasized the pathogenic importance of the early emotional
unavailability of the father. This leads to a fixation at the level of the dyadic
father-son relationship and the resulting search for the father accompanied
by "pseudo-purposefulness and chronic incompleteness of action" (p. 27).
Chasseguet-Smirgel (1984, 1985) related the pathology of the ego ideal
not to the search for the father but to the illusion that the father is not
necessary for development. In the cases she described, the mother's seduc-
tiveness toward the son and her rejection of the father foster the child's
conviction that he need not grow up and need not take the father as a model.
The mother communicates that her son is a suitable partner for her and that
"he corresponds to his own ego ideal" (Chasseguet-Smirgel, 1985, p. 31).
The result is a perverse personality structure in which "pregenital desires and
satisfactions (attainable by the small boy) are seen as equal or even superior
to the genital desires and satisfactions (attainable only by the father)"
(Chasseguet-Smirgel, 1984, p. 2).
The role of illusion in the perverse is exemplified by the fetish. In
classical formulations, the fetish makes sexual gratification possible in the
face of early traumatic exposure to the absence of a maternal phallus. The
fetish is an illusory penis that mitigates overwhelming castration anxiety.
Bach (1991) broadened our understanding of perversion and further clarified
the function of the fetish. He suggested that what is traumatic for the little
boy is not the discovery of the mother's lack of a penis per se, but his
experience of a more fundamental absence of maternal relatedness. The
result is a significant failure in ego development associated with a traumatic
attachment to the mother. In Bach's view, the fetish not only perpetuates the
illusion of the maternal phallus, thereby reducing castration anxiety, it also
functions to patch over ego deficits.
In some male patients, the work project serves the function of a fetish.
24 AXELROD

The project is intended to make up for chronic difficulties in age-appropriate;

achievement. Some of these men were labeled "underachievers" or even
"learning disabled" in school; most have had marked difficulty completing
things in their lives. The work project is an attempt to patch over these:
difficulties without reworking the traumatic identification with the mother
and emotional absence of the father. Because it is an attempt to move:
forward on the basis of an illusion, the project is experienced as impossible.
Regardless of what is actually done on the project, the patient continues to
feel fraudulent and subject to crises in self-esteem. It is as if important
experiences of himself as a developing man must ultimately be denied him.
The men described in this article have family constellations similar to the
men with perverse personality structures described by Chasseguet-Smirgel
(1984, 1985), Stoller (1985), Cooper (1991), and others.
Mothers of these men are typically (he dominant figures in the families.,
by virtue of the intensity of their demands and threats of violence. They are
disappointed in their husbands, who are usually passive and withdrawn
They imbue their sons with many of their own narcissistic fantasies. The
mother-son relationship is seductive, even incestuous, and if the child disap-
points his mother, he readily becomes the object of her scorn and ridicule.
The fathers of these men typically worked diligently and had significant
job stability but were disappointed in the ordinariness of their accomplish-
ments. Thus their own sense of incompleteness was often mirrored in theii
wives' devaluing of their accomplishments.
The patients have desperately wanted to escape the frustration and ordi-
nariness of their fathers' lives. Typically, they felt that they did not want to
be like their fathers, sensing that they would be more admired by their
mothers if they were different. In adult life, they feel they are not like other
men, may experience their gender identity as shaky, and may be prone to
ego-dystonic homosexual fantasies.
The three cases that follow illustrate the interplay between impossible
work projects and the developmental issues that have been described. The
case material is also used to suggest aspects of the treatment approach to
these patients.

CLINICAL MATERIAL

Tim

Characteristics of the impossible project close to its genetic roots can some-
times be observed in the productions of children and adolescents. Tim, a
14-year-old boy, started treatment 4 years ago because of his parents' con-
cerns about argumentativeness at home and social isolation. His father was
worried about Tim's becoming homosexual. Tim presented as an attractive,
fine-featured child who was often mistaken for a girl in infancy and early
 "IMPOSSIBLE PROJECTS" 25

childhood. He spoke in a droning, babyish, sometimes lisping fashion and

displayed some effeminate mannerisms.
Bob, Tim's father, remembers his own difficulty in deciding on his life's
work, and he married quite late. He felt that his father was ashamed of him
for his choice of a traditionally female-dominated profession. Tim's mother,
Marjorie, is an executive who typically works late into the night at her home
computer terminal.
Bob and Marjorie have a loveless, "cold war" marriage. He repeatedly
suggests that Tim needs more discipline but cannot persuade Marjorie to go
along with him. She criticizes Bob for being uninvolved with Tim but
undermines his attempts to change this. Bob has become bitter and with-
drawn, spending hours in front of the television as the object of Marjorie's
and Tim's ridicule.
During the first months of treatment, Tim said that his father must have
wanted a daughter so he could have sex with her and make her pregnant. Tim
couldn't imagine himself as an adult man. He had several episodes of panic
that he'd never be able to go to college, have a career, and get married; if his
parents died, he would become homeless.
In the second and third years of treatment, Tim's play became more
organized. He decided he would be an author when he grew up and spent
much of his time writing elaborate adventure stories. These stories were
impossible projects. Typically the main character was a boy who set out to
avenge the death of his father or to find his kidnapped father. He encountered
one danger after another as he met a villainous monster in his many guises.
For Tim, the length of the story seemed to be an end in itself—the longer the
better. The characters became innumerable and impossible to keep track of.
The stories were convoluted, and they were almost never completed. One
obstacle would lead to another until the quest was abandoned.
The defensive function of this material could eventually be addressed,
leading to increased consideration of Tim's reality concerns. His fantasy
productions continue, but Tim now talks more about his difficulties in school
and problems organizing his homework. He insists that everyone hates
school or their job and is shocked when I suggest that it doesn't have to be
that way. We have discovered together the importance of differing points of
view, which has given a kind of reality to the difference between the gener-
ations, something it never had before. Tim is now able to consider the
father-son relationship without being overwhelmed by anxiety and rage, as
evidenced by this vignette from a recent session:

In class, we had to write a letter to the president. In the letter I said that
money should be taken from the military for other needs, like all the
problems with the environment. I signed and sent it but didn't put my
age because younger people aren't listened to. If they asked my age I'd
sue for discrimination....Last year the fifth-grade class wrote a letter to
the president and got a form letter back from a secretary. That's not
26 AXELROD

right....A three-year-old could be a future president. If he writes the

president and the president is too busy and doesn't respond then he
doesn't want to be president anymore. Did anything like that ever
happen to you?

Philip

Philip is a 41-year-old man who started treatment 6 years ago. At that time,
he had recently broken up with a girlfriend, was guilt-ridden, had suicidal
thoughts, and was $15,000 in debt from heavy cocaine use.
Philip described his father as "a working stiff who never asked for very
much." Growing up, his father was distant and passive, though sometimes
violent towards his children. As an adult, Philip has been ashamed of his father's
inarticulateness and lowly position. In contrast, he described his mother as a
"big personality"—opinionated, controlling, and self-dramatizing. She reacts
viscerally and can be extremely vengeful if she feels betrayed or abandoned.
Philip feels that during his childhood his autonomy was crushed by his
mother, who both intimidated and overprotected him. At the same time, she
was critical of her not-very-bright husband and communicated to Philip her
preference for his intelligence and sensitivity. When she went back to school
in her 40s and threw herself into more intellectual circles, Philip followed
and centered much of his adult social life on his mother and her friends. They
were both particularly drawn to a group of gay academic men.
Philip described his mother as the "masculine ideal of power." Fantasies
of the phallic mother surfaced early in treatment when he reported an early
memory of seeing his mother's pubic hair—"big and deep like a beard." At
the same time he told me he had never considered it weird to "want to fuck
your mother"—he had had fantasies of doing so for as long as he could
remember. Philip's early sexual fantasies included being used as a dildo by a
36-foot woman and having a 12-inch woman whom he could undress and
look at whenever he chose to. He has likened himself to Cinderella and
Sleeping Beauty and described himself as "neither heterosexual nor homo-
sexual, just sexual," although he has only been heterosexually active. He
describes longstanding voyeuristic trends as well as, on occasion, fantasies
of sexual self-mutilation.
Philip described his childhood in very bleak terms. School held little
interest. He completed 2 years at a community college, then dropped out. An
attempt to return to college in his late twenties was disastrous.
When he entered treatment, Philip complained that he had been unable to
bring anything to completion. Although he had settled into a more stable job
in a technical field, he felt fraudulent on the job. At 35, he felt like a child
in the adult world—bewildered and lacking something important that others
seemed to have.
In treatment, work on his feelings of being enslaved to his mother and of
being nobody on his own enabled him to return to college and eventually to
 "IMPOSSIBLE PROJECTS" 27

graduate. A turning point was reached when we analyzed his relationship to

a powerful male professor who Philip felt wouldn't notice him because
Philip "wasn't a woman and couldn't fuck him." The fantasy that he could be
both a man and woman no longer contaminated this area of functioning, and
completing college no longer had the aura of impossibility about it.
During the third year of treatment, material related to passive merger
wishes and homosexual impulses became more prominent. Philip had intru-
sive homosexual fantasies in public places; he described the fantasy that I
thought he could be cured only if he were to become actively homosexual.
It was during this time that Philip first told me of his idea for a project. It
was a book that would include all the essential information about a particular
topic and would be distinguished by its all-inclusiveness. After discussing
the book with me, Philip said he was worried that if he didn't follow through,
I'd be disappointed in him and the treatment would be a failure.
For the next year, Philip's turmoil about the book was the central event of
his life. He spent all of his free time researching it and felt that this precluded
his having a relationship with a woman. He saw the book as his ticket out of
the ordinariness of the world he had grown up in, just as he felt he had been
the ticket out for his mother. The book would be his way of overcoming his
fear of the world; it would be his therapy. He would finally be able to ask
questions and get answers, to acquire the information others had so he would
no longer feel like a child in the grown-up world.
In treatment, we worked on Philip's urges to subjugate himself to the book
project and his wishes to substitute progress on the book for the resolution of
core conflicts and developmental failures. The book's aura of impossibility
began to diminish. Philip got an agent and eventually received a modest
advance and a contract for its publication.
Philip's initial exhilaration gave way to despondency as he felt acutely
lacking in what it would take to bring the project to fruition. Archaic
identifications and perverse patterns of relating resurfaced. Philip got angry
and felt abandoned by his agent, a man who seemed too distant and preoccu-
pied to respond the way Philip thought he should. He was obsequious toward
the female editor of the book until he became outraged that she had altered
the book so much that it was no longer his. He had been terrified of confront-
ing her, imagining her to be much more powerful than she in fact was. As the
developmental issues attached to the project were addressed in treatment,
Philip's work on the book resumed. Feelings of the project's impossibility
and its domination over his life gave way to feelings of hopefulness and
enthusiasm about its prospects.

Gary

Gary is a 40-year-old man who began treatment at age 35 with complaints

of low self-esteem, feelings of estrangement from others, and periods of
depression.
28 AXELROD

Gary's parents had married relatively late after a courtship by mail. Soon
after marraige, his father began to withdraw and his mother went on frequent
alcoholic binges. Her blatantly seductive behavior during Gary's childhood
continued into his adult life, with frequent comments about his body build,
sexual potency, and resemblance to movie stars.
Gary's father was a passive, withdrawn man, stiff and uncomfortable
around people, always something of an enigma to Gary. The father gave up
his own career goals to start a business backed by his father. Although the
company was successful, Gary recalled in one session that his father "didn'n
seem proud of it, and nobody in the family gave it credence." His memories
of his father at work are of a man poring over figures, separated from the
vitality of the production floor. He never wanted to do what his father did.
Whether it was hobbies, sports, or traveling, Gary feels that his father
held out the promise of doing things together but never came through. Hi;;
perception is that his father, like his mother, didn't want him to grow up.
When he began to come into his own at boarding school, he saw his father
become more depressed and withdrawn. When he was 16, his father commit
ted suicide by gunshot on the same day that Gary left the house to spend hi<;
first night with a girlfriend.
As a child, Gary had marked difficulty reading, which eventually required
remediation. Although his academic problems eased when he went away to
boarding school, he completed high school only with great difficulty after
his father died. He went to college briefly and eventually enrolled in art
school, where he did well but never finished. Just as he began to win praise
for his photography, he dropped it—to the surprise of his mentor—and
decided to do his final project in animation.
Gary moved to a different city and began work on his animated film,
which was about the pollution of the Earth by capitalist tycoons. In the film,
a Moses figure is transformed into a woman with pendulous breasts who rids;
the world of polluting muck and changes it into a paradise. After more thar
6 months of painstaking work, painting thousands of individual cells, Gary
had just a few minutes of film. He realized it could take years of solo effort
to get smooth movement in the film and to complete it. He abandoned the
project and his plan to get work in the animation field.
Because he could live on his inheritance, Gary decided to do what he had
always wanted to do—play music. He would make up for having to stop
playing the trumpet at age 10, when, as he saw it, he had been unable to
concentrate because of his erratic, intrusive mother. He would be free of
distractions and would be able to achieve the concentration and sense ol'
continuity that had been missing in his childhood.
Gary built a small practice and recording studio in the loft that he had
moved into with his girlfriend. His days were spent mostly alone in long
hours of practicing the piano and composing pop songs. His practice regimer
was rigid and highly repetitive. When frustrated, he found himself cursing
his father and wishing he had murdered him. In repetitive dreams during this;
 "IMPOSSIBLE PROJECTS" 29

period, the incestuous attachment to his mother led to a loss of concentration

and control. Invariably he would have to turn away from a goal to attend to
a woman, whether it be mother, past girlfriends, or his fianc6e.
As Gary's treatment progressed, underlying feelings of grandiosity in
merged relationship with his mother became more accessible. His mother
had been frustrated in her wishes to be a ballerina or an artist, and she was
bitterly disappointed in her husband but had built Gary up as a hero: "She
[mother] fed my delusions of grandeur. I didn't need a father. I could be the
father and accomplish anything I wanted to." At the same time, the mother
of early childhood was represented as the source of power for Gary, as in his
dream of "somebody on stage, a woman with a strapped-on penis, coming all
over the stage like a fountain or sprinkler."
Gary's work on his music has been connected to the fantasy implicitly
shared with his mother that "once I get this done I'll take the world by
storm." But this has been most difficult for him and only after years of work
has he been able to play a tape of his work for critique by professional
musicians. His identity as a musician has been shaky—he has never im-
mersed himself in the musical world and has struggled with whether he is
more of a songwriter, producer, or performer. He has collaborated with two
other men, but their partnership dissolved, in part because of Gary's feeling
that they were too distant and unresponsive. He has felt more comfortable
writing songs and recording them alone, playing the synthesizer and most of
the instruments himself.
When Gary found out his wife was pregnant and learned that he would be
having a son, his longings for his father intensified. The pregnancy initiated
a series of dreams with homosexual themes. The wish to acquire strength and
cohesiveness through involvement with a powerful man emerged in the
transference.
With his son's birth and with continuing work on both his longing to be
close to a man and the mourning of his father's death, Gary has been able to
look at his musical project in a more realistic light. While he says that he
remains committed to exploring music, he also is aware of wanting to be
seen by his son as a man who can accomplish things. Gary has recently
enrolled in a course to retrain in an area of commercial art and now considers
returning to work in this field while continuing to work on his music.
The interweaving of work difficulties with Gary's core developmental
issues is illustrated in a recent dream:

In the dream I was talking to somebody about doing a commercial art

job. But I had the feeling that this person wasn't professional and I'd
be getting a runaround. Besides, I had already committed myself to
another job in music. Then it got intense. My mother was involved. My
clothes were all ripped up and the zipper on the crotch was pulled
down. Then it switched and I was talking to this guy I went to high
school with about having to go back years later to finish a high school
30 AXELROD

education. Then it switched again. The field on the side of our second
house was completely filled with water. There was a huge sailboat
sailing on the water. I got on a windsurfer. Then I looked up at the
house. My mother, aunt, and aunt's husband were standing in the
window drunk, waving and motioning me in. I motioned that I'd be in
soon, got on the windsurfer, and sailed away. It was a nice feeling.

In his associations to the dream, Gairy connected the first section to his
rejection of his father, his sense that his father's business was an exercise in
futility. He also associated the big sailboat to his father and to me. Thus,
although he could not identify with his father of the "workaday" world, he
longed for the father who could protect him from the uncontrolled, sexual -
ized relationship with his mother. This is the father who could do things with
him and with whom he could experience the vital physicality of early
childhood, depicted in the strong sensations of wind and surf.

CONCLUSIONS

In this article, a clinical picture has been outlined that includes a specific
family constellation, developmental deficits, and involvement in impossible
work projects. The three cases discussed are representative of a larger group
of 8 to 10 severely character-disordered men whom I have treated or whose
treatment I have supervised. These cases share most of the characteristics or'
the impossible project outlined earlier, although there is some variation in
the degree of gender identity disturbance and the achievement of stable,
intimate relationships.
Additional case reports and further study would help substantiate the two
major hypotheses of this article: (a) that the impossible project is a stable,
identifiable form of work disturbance; and (b) that it is related to a charac
teristic family constellation and personality disturbance. The impossible
project syndrome can be differentiated conceptually from neurotic forms of
work inhibition (Kets de Vries, 1978; Ovesey, 1962) where the picture is one
of less isolated activity, procrastination, perfectionism, and decreased out
put. In these cases, the core conflicts relate more to the aggressive drive than
to identity per se. Although oedipal conflict is not absent in cases of the:
impossible project syndrome the attenuation of the early bonds of affection
and admiration between father and son lends the man's Oedipus complex a
diffuse, phantomlike quality.
The impossible project syndrome can be understood as one type of work
disturbance seen in patients along the narcissistic-borderline axis (Axelrod,
1993). It can be distinguished from the borderline work style (Fast, 1975),
which is characterized by a more unstable activity level and a higher degree
of work-related interpersonal conflict. It can also be contrasted to the narcis-
sistic patient's work compulsion in which there is a high degree of goal
 "IMPOSSIBLE PROJECTS" 31

orientation and achievement as well as a need to dominate and control

others. Work compulsion may be more likely to be associated with discrete
early childhood trauma (e.g., illness or the death of a parent; Axelrod, 1993)
than with the family constellations described in this article, but this idea
needs further verification.
The focus of this article has been on impossible projects in men. There is
some anecdotal evidence of a similar type of work disturbance in women,
although further investigation of the issue of gender linkage is very much
needed. Tessman (1982) noted the special role of the relationship to the
father in the woman's eventual consolidation of a work identity. Whether the
father's importance in the formation of an ego ideal that facilitates work
achievement is more than a cultural artifact is certainly open to question and
deserves further study as gender roles continue to change.
In terms of treatment, the analyst best understands the patient's involve-
ment in the impossible project as representing a tension between disavowing
the need for the father (Chasseguet-Smbrgel, 1984, 1985) and searching for
the absent father (Bios, 1985). The patient's project reflects a kind of hollow
grandiosity that arises in relationship to a seductive mother. But it also
represents an attempt to create something big enough and exciting enough to
pull the patient out of the mother's orbit. The work project may in this
respect become a substitute for the absent father and is an attempt to estab-
lish a relationship with him. The common experience these patients have of
imitating "what men do" may be a first step toward achieving more reliable
masculine identifications. Thus, in treatment the work project may be seen
as both a defensive avoidance of developmental imperatives and an attempt
to re-start stalemated development. The analyst may shift the focus from one
to the other, balancing acceptance of the patient's work involvement with
attempts to draw the project into the realm of goal-directedness and realistic
appraisal. In the process, the patient may either become involved in a
different kind of work or be freed to pursue the project in a more productive
fashion and bring it to completion. The goal in each case is to help the patient
extricate himself from impossible projects and involve himself in the kind of
work that is the cornerstone of adult developmental change.
The men described in this article have ego deficits rooted in the pre-
oedipal relationships with both the mother and the father. Although treat-
ment invariably addresses the impairments in the early mother-child
relationship, the emphasis in this article has been on the analysis in the
transference of the boy's early need to be protected and loved by a strong,
idealized father. In treatment these patients are initially polite and compliant,
lacking interactive vitality in their relationship to the analyst. However, as
treatment progresses, it becomes clear that this seemingly inert transference
obscures a disavowal of the analyst's importance as well as both fear and
idealization of the analyst's strength, intelligence, and healing powers. Fre-
quently, the impossible project serves to encapsulate these feelings and must
be handled as, in part, resistance to the emergence of transference conflicts.
32 AXELROD

Strong longings for the absent father eventually surface in the transference
and are often sexualized. The patient looks to the analyst to be the strong,
vital presence that will enable him to extricate himself from his engulfing
mother. As these feelings are interpreted and worked through, the patient can
begin to differentiate sexual excitement from a sustained interest in work,
thereby achieving a more stable and cohesive work identity.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

An earlier version of this article was presented at the April 1992 meeting of
the American Psychological Association, Division 39, in Philadelphia. My
thanks to Dr. Charles Spezzano for his sensitive reading and valuable discus-
sion of this article.

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Perversions and near-perversions in clinical practice (pp. 75-92). New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press.
Bios, P. (1985). Son and father: Before and beyond the Oedipus complex. New York: Free Press.
Chasseguet-Smirgel, J. (1984). Creativity and perversion. New York: Norton.
Chasseguet-Smirgel, J. (1985). The ego ideal: A psychoanalytic essay on the malady of the
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