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CLINICAL
FORUM
331
minutes, he, this
6
ft.
3
in., 220 lb., officer,
(and
I) committedmurder, he
cursing and slashingwith his "scalpel," while Iwas shouting, "Give it to
the son of a bitch. He deserves it."
Finally, through physical and emotional exhaustion, he stopped.
I
intended to do a repeat, but he held up his hand with no signof a tremor
and said,
"I
don't feel like it any more."
He had noted that this colonel resembled his dominating father, a
point that was then interpreted to him. He left my office relaxed and
smiling.During the next 2weeks,
the
tremor did not return, and he was
discharged, feelingcertainthat he could return to his practiceof surgery.
(Sometimesone might think of
an
abreaction as a brief "psychological
surgery" itself.) Total treatment time: 1hour.
I have been asked by colleagues, "Weren't you afraid that in his rage
this powerful manmight have attackedyou?" Theanswer is
"No."
Iwas
resonatingwith him. Iwasnot the target,
an
objectlying onhis operating
table. We were therapeuticallyallied in a togetherness-but I was glad
that the commanding officer and not me was the object of his transfer-
ence. That is the differencebetween resonance and transferen~e.~
From
1953
to
1964,
I
used these procedures further in treating
PTSD
cases within Veterans' Administrationhospitals and clinics, initially, at
the V. A. Regional Office (outpatient) Clinic in Chicago. It was a large
installation, and, as chief psychologist,
I
was responsible for
a
substan-
tial staff plus 20 interns from nearby universities. The clinic was very
psychoanalytically oriented and associatedwith the ChicagoPsychoan-
alyticInstitute, headed by Alexander and French
(1946),
andmost of our
consultants came from the Institute. Having published a book on
hypnotherapy, I was considered within that installation as an oddity,
because "Freud has proven that hypnosis by-passes the ego, and that it
achieves only temporary symptomaticbenefits."
Many
PTSD
veterans therewere
by
now chronic and difficultto treat,
because they were "being paid to stay sick"by their V. A. disabilitypen-
sions.
If
they showed any progress, their pensionswere reduced or elim-
inated. They were in fact resistant to any treatment that might be effec-
tive, hypnotic or otherwiseand they were expected to stay that way.
This situation was epitomized by a humorous incident. A former
patient whohad been successfullytreated for abattle-related phobia and
was symptom-freevisitedme
2
years later and related the following:
"I
went back to the SpokaneV.
A.
Center and requested discontinua-
tion of my disabilitypension on the grounds that
I
no longerhad
a
neuro-
sis, and itwas ridiculousfor the government tokeeppayingmemoney."
3A
detaileddiscussion
of
the relation
of
"transference"and"resonance"
to
eachother
is
published
in
Watkins
(1978).
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