With reference to Wolfgang Hilbig's short novel Alte Abdeckerei (translated into English as Old Rendering Plant), the author attempts to achieve greater depth for reception theory geared to literary psychoanalysis. He relates Jean Laplanche's concept "enigmatic messages" to the literary text with its consistent ambiguity and stubborn refusal to permit straightforward interpretations. Proceeding from Walter Benjamin's views on the work of art and Laplanche's "general seduction theory," he regards the work of art/literary text as a quasi-subject, the meaning of which evades the reader in confrontation with his own ambiguity and has to be identified via an ongoing process of unremitting failure. With the concrete analysis of passages from the novel, the author attempts to demonstrate the substantial explanatory power a model of the intersubjective relation between recipient and text possesses for the dynamic act of reading. On the other hand, it comes up against its limits (or requires significant extension) as soon as ambiguity and the "abject" (Kristeva) are understood as productive forces in their relation to the sexual unconscious.
Excessive entitlement attitudes and exaggerated restitution demands vis-a-vis the object are frequently observable in patient with borderline structures. In the treatment situation they can lead to extremely difficult passages, sometimes even to termination. The article discusses a pathological attitude, a highly organized state of mind associated with violent grudges and resentment onslaughts, rage, envy, and shame, and based around object-relation fantasies and dysfunctional object-relation patterns. Against the background of previous theoretical engagement with this subject and detailed clinical material, the author attempts to identify psychodynamic features and characteristics of the transference-countertransference processes involved. The ultimate objective is to stimulate a fruitful interpretation of these factors.
With reference to material from two cases, one involving an adult, the other a child, the author demonstrates how extensively and sustainably persistent acting out on the part of an analysand can prompt the psychoanalyst to display defense impulses. Without such defense impulses, work with the given analysand would in certain phases come grinding to a halt. Thus, these impulses protect not only the analyst but also the treatment itself. The price for this is high, imposing major impairments on the analyst's receptivity. Accordingly, it is imperative to get to the root of these impediments as soon as they make themselves felt. In other words, being alive to influences that interfere with free-floating attention is part and parcel of that attention itself.
