The International Journal of

Int J Psychoanal (2013) 94:963–966 doi: 10.1111/1745-8315.12089

Wolf Man: Concluding commentary

We are deeply indebted to Roy Schafer and Justine McCarthy Woods for
their expert, comprehensive, contemporary interpretations of the original
Rorschach test of the Wolf Man by Frederick Weil (1955). Both Schafer
and Woods were hampered by not having direct personal contact with the
Wolf Man. Woods was further restricted by being given the Wolf Man’s
material as a blind, anonymous Rorschach test. The interpretations by three
different Rorschach experts allow for comparison of convergent and/or con-
trasting views, as well as the validating effect of consensus not possible with
a single interpretation. Publication of the Rorschach protocol of the Wolf
Man allows other experts to evaluate the test now and as may be desired in
the future. Weil had the advantage of spending time with the Wolf Man,
noting his depressive affect, that he always talked only about himself and
his litany of complaints about his health, his declining vitality and sexual
potency. He was also privy to the Wolf Man’s overt reactions to the test’s
administration and to the administrator.
The findings of the Rorschach test, so relevant to Freud’s most elaborate,
longest case history, raise a number of significant questions. Are the find-
ings consistent with Freud’s case report and conclusions? Do the Rorschach
results shed new light on the Wolf Man’s diagnosis, psychopathology,
psychoanalyses, clinical outcome, and his life history? What does the
Rorschach test, carried out long after his psychoanalysis, reveal about the
limits and benefits of his treatment? We can also speculate as to whether an
initial Rorschach test, carried out before any analytic interviews or investi-
gation, might have suggested a different analytic approach from traditional
psychoanalysis?
Although the test was interpreted at different points in time, by the three
experts with varying degrees of collateral information and from different
perspectives, a clear overall convergence emerges along with some expect-
able diversity. Weil’s conclusion of a severe ego disturbance, in the context
of his then current ego psychological orientation, is complementary to Scha-
fer’s inference of fragile ego integration with erratic reality testing under
stress. Their findings are compatible as well with Woods’s inference of a
person without overt psychosis living in a world of projective identification,
uneasy in interpersonal situations. His psyche is dominated by part objects
that cannot be integrated into a whole. Woods further notes that parts of
the body related to sex are split off, unrelated to real people with whom he
cannot identify. This inference is congruent with the Wolf Man’s own recol-
lection of life prior to his analysis: “Everything had seemed unreal, to the
extent that people seemed to me like wax figures or wound-up marionettes
with whom I could not establish any contact” (Gardiner, 1971, p. 50). The
recollection coalesces with his complaint of being behind a veil (relieved by
a daily enema). All three interpretations encompass the impairment of real-
ity testing, derealization and fragile boundaries between inside and outside,
Copyright © 2013 Institute of Psychoanalysis
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964 H. P. Blum

fantasy and reality. For Weil, this is the boundary between ego and id, for
Woods, the self–object and part–object differentiation, and Schafer sees
crumbling defenses as consistent with the formulation of very severe psy-
chopathology. Woods notes the presence of missing heads, inferring the
Wolf Man’s fear of losing his mind. Schafer notes the Wolf Man’s mindless,
defensive passive posture, depending on others for initiative, while hiding
his assets. All the experts in their own way address the Wolf Man’s homo-
sexual conflicts and concerns about anal–vaginal penetration, which rever-
berate with his castration complex and in his analysis with his feminine
identification in the primal scene. Woods wonders whether the Rorschach
points to the lack of a stable sense of self, and possibly also a stable sexual
identity. Although the Wolf Man would frequently ask for advice in a con-
ventional manner, Schafer noted an oppositional attitude.
All the interpretations are consistent in identifying the danger of regres-
sive disorganization in a borderline personality. Today the Wolf Man would
most likely be evaluated as having borderline psychotic psychopathology
with narcissistic, depressive, and particularly prominent paranoid features.
(It may be noted that the pseudonym ‘Wolf Man’ for the actual name of
Serge Pankejeff has its own affective connotations for the Wolf Man, for
psychoanalysts, and for the general public. Wolf Man is a label associated
with aggressive assault and paranoia.)
How does the Rorschach enlighten us about the Wolf Man’s clinical
course, the possible effect of his analytic treatments and subsequent psycho-
therapeutic and social support? His analytic outcome appears to have been
co-determined by therapeutic agents before and beyond interpretation. The
Rorschach suggests that the Wolf Man’s analytic process was not internal-
ized. The analysis was organized, with its manifold strands, connections and
primal scene reconstruction, primarily by Freud. (Presumably Freud was
simultaneously considering his own infancy primal scene experience and
fantasy.) The Wolf Man was dependent on Freud as a deified protective
object, a self-object or narcissistic object; this object was safeguarded by the
Wolf Man projecting and splitting off threatening, devouring persecutory
objects. Freud and subsequent analysts provided an auxiliary ego and
served as containing, sustaining and orienting objects, which may have sur-
passed the importance of their interpretations. In his memoirs, the Wolf
Man was deeply impressed by Freud’s powerful personality and intellect.
The Wolf Man may have agreed to the Rorschach test so as to seek addi-
tional therapeutic help, and to continue to outwardly comply and ingratiate
himself with the analytic world on which he was so dependent. The Ror-
schach test might have evoked renewed analytic interest in the Wolf Man’s
famous case with latent narcissistic and economic gains. Perhaps the Wolf
Man received an indirect honorarium as he had received for some writings
of his memoirs.
By the time of the Wolf Man’s analysis, Freud had observed the misuse
and overuse of dream analysis. However, Freud (1918, p. 177) remarkably
relied on his analysis of the Wolf Man’s dream, asserting that: “The patient
related the dream at a very early stage … and very soon shared my convic-
tion that the causes of his infantile neurosis lay concealed behind it”. Freud
Int J Psychoanal (2013) 94 Copyright © 2013 Institute of Psychoanalysis
 Wolf Man: Concluding commentary 965

observed innumerable variations of the dream, repeated in the Wolf Man’s

later analyses and paid close attention to every detail of the imagery. The
imagery that appeared in the Wolf Man’s Rorschach test might have uncon-
sciously been linked to the imagery of his centerpiece dream and his draw-
ings and paintings of the dream. Ongoing analytic attention to his dreams
and fantasies might have had an iatrogenic influence, in part accounting for
his facile reporting of his fantasy life to keenly curious visiting analysts.
Could the Wolf Man’s Rorschach test have been employed as an analytic
exercise in evaluation of analyzability and possible transference psychosis?
Could it have predicted that the Wolf Man would be an interminable ana-
lytic patient? Might it have predicted that he needed preparatory psycho-
therapy, pharmacological agents, or a different analytic approach? The
Wolf Man remained in Freud’s analytic contemplation and Freud (1937)
referred to the Wolf Man in Analysis terminable and interminable. Freud
responded to Rank’s concept of short birth trauma treatment, and he
responded indirectly to Rank’s criticism of Freud’s interpretation of the
Wolf Man’s dream. He also continued his dialogue with Ferenczi, ponder-
ing if there was a natural end to clinical psychoanalysis. Freud indicated
that he had himself tried brief psychoanalysis without success. He recog-
nized the desirability of longer analysis and recommended periodic analysis,
about every five years, for psychoanalysts. Freud did not elaborate on
forced or unilaterally imposed termination (as in the Wolf Man case), or
the mode and selection of a definite termination time, nor did he propose
the formulation of a termination phase. Adequate mourning, new ego inte-
gration and independence after termination were not then discussed, and
the Rorschach confirms that these gains were not achieved by the Wolf
Man. The Wolf Man’s imposed termination may have interfered with
mourning the loss of Freud as a transference, real and new object.
The Wolf Man hovers in the background, I believe, in much of the fur-
ther discourse of Analysis terminable and interminable. Relevant to the Wolf
Man, Freud questioned whether analysis could provide prophylaxis against
future psychological illness. Freud was pessimistic about such therapeutic
power, aware of the potential for recurrence and later destabilization exem-
plified by the Wolf Man. The Wolf Man would also have been a very
appropriate model for Freud’s discussion of ego alteration, consistent with
Weil’s later Rorschach diagnosis of severe ego disturbance or ego deviation.
Freud’s prescient remarks were pertinent to the Wolf Man and current
views of borderline personalities. Freud asserted (1937, p. 235): “Every nor-
mal person, in fact, is only normal on the average. His ego approximates to
that of the psychotic in some part or other and to a greater or lesser
extent…” In Freud’s formulation, the Wolf Man’s psychopathology repre-
sented proximity to a psychotic ego.
After 100 years, psychoanalytic theory, developmental knowledge, and
Rorschach testing and interpretation have all evolved. Today the Wolf
Man’s disorder, from infantile anorexia, his fears of eating and being eaten,
to his breakdown at age 18, would all be considered in genetic and develop-
mental perspectives. The clinical picture and the Rorschach test results are
all indicative of oedipal conflict and castration anxiety, fused with
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966 H. P. Blum

separation anxiety and pathogenic pre-oedipal antecedents. There are many

current issues concerning the Wolf Man’s attachment, separation, individua-
tion, and his untamed narcissism. The termination of his analysis with
Freud in June 1914 coincided with the assassination of the Austrian Crown
Prince, a precipitant of World War I and a prelude to a traumatic radical
alteration of his self and object world. The Wolf Man’s Rorschach is a
further contribution to understanding the benefits and limits of psychoanal-
ysis in borderline patients, and research on analytic outcomes. Although he
remained a borderline personality, the Wolf Man never again required
hospitalization after his analysis with Freud. Within the continuing develop-
ment of psychoanalytic thought, the Wolf Man is indeed an interminable
analytic inquiry.
Harold P. Blum, MD
23 The Hemlocks, Roslyn Estates, NY 11576, USA
E-mail: hpblum1@gmail.com

References
Freud S (1918). From the history of an infantile neurosis. SE 17, 3–122.
Freud S (1937). Analysis terminable and interminable. SE 23, 209–253.
Gardiner M, editor (1971). The wolf-man by the wolf-man. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Weil F (1955). Some evidences of deviational development in infancy and childhood. Psychoanal
Study Child 11, 292–302.

Int J Psychoanal (2013) 94 Copyright © 2013 Institute of Psychoanalysis