Lucy (not her real name) had presented herself to me with a history of 'choosing the wrong men'. She was divorced, her ex-husband having beaten her severely enough that, on one occasion, he had broken her face in 4 separate places. Her previous husband had also beaten her severely. Every boyfriend she had ever had had shown violence towards her and she had been obsessed with each of them and panicky whenever a relationship broke up. Her father had been violent towards her, her mother and her older brother. So, it looks like an 'urge to repeat' situation of sorts, or a search for that which is familiar and therefore offers security, albeit destructive security.... but no. She had already been to another therapist who had thoroughly explored that entire area and pronounced her cured; her next boyfriend put her in hospital with a broken wrist and dislocated shoulder after trying to throw her out of a second floor window.

With this type of client, I would not consider any other form of therapy than analytical or regression techniques; not that I believe it is the ONLY way, just that it works well for me. The insight and understanding that an individual can gain is quite often profound and can be the best guarantee for future well-being.

I must say at this point that I don't 'perform' analysis in quite the same way as some readers might imagine, for this sort of case; I make no mention of Repressed memories, nor do I indicate that we are about to embark on any sort of search for anything that is not already available to consciousness. The last thing I want to do here is to suggest that the client must find something that was so awful when it happened that their mind could not tolerate it. It's a tricky subject that needs careful handling anyway, with the current concern about recovered memories, and perhaps I'll write more about it another time. Suffice to say that where a repressed memory needs releasing, it gets released. So - on to the case history.

Lucy accessed emotion right from session one, finding quite a few tears and not a little anger at the way her father treated the entire family. Not at any time, though, did she appear to consider quitting. Then, during session seven, this is what we found:

Lucy: I often had to look after my brother...

Me: Tell me more about that.

Lucy: He was gentle and couldn't fight. I had to stop the kids at school from hitting him sometimes. He should have looked after me though, 'cos he's older than me.

Me: (waiting)

Lucy: (after a long pause) I used to try to stop my dad from beating him up... mum just used to watch, 'cos she was so scared of him.

(sudden big cry starts)

Lucy: I just need someone to stop my dad from hurting all of us. I just need someone who can beat *him* up!

Me: What else is there about that?

Lucy: (another long pause) oooohhhh.... (more tears) All this time... all this time I've been trying to find someone who's strong enough to beat him up.... (more tears)

We did quite a bit more on the session including releasing anger attached to dad and accepting that his anger was not aimed specifically at her, more that he was angry and needed to discharge it at every opportunity. She and her family just happened to be first in the line of fire. She was happy enough about this and actually decided that he was probably deeply unhappy himself and that she would give him a big hug next time she saw him. This was really a secondary consideration, though, because she was far more interested in the understanding she had gained of why she had searched out those violent males.

A few weeks later, she telephoned to tell me about her new boyfriend who treats her like she was a peice of fragile china and actually tells her she's a lovely lady (she *is* very attractive in spite of the beatings) which she is starting to believe. She also said that she'd recently met one of her ex-boyfriends and now found it very difficult to believe she had ever been so besotted with him.