37

The treatment of a young anorexic girl led the author to reflect on hate and its relations with mourning, and more generally with the object and the drive. Winnicott’s concept of hate in the countertransference, Abraham and Torok’s study of the ghost, and Green’s notion of the deobjectalizing function are taken into consideration in her attempt to understand the psychopathology and processual dynamics at work in this case of severe anorexia. The patient’s intense transference cathexis, supported by her analyst and the team of carers, allowed her to recathect her psychic life and to free herself from a succession of identifications with dead objects that were significant for her mother and father (a child, a grandfather, an uncle). In the analytical situation, through the objectalizing function and the transitional space that she offered, the analyst facilitated the reintegration between libido and destructiveness in favour of Eros and the psychic treatment of hate.