Yes, a specific episode about you and her being very close

Tony: Oh! oh, I see sorry very sorry no I see ..oh erm . . no, not really, I can’t think of an illustration of that.

There was no evidence in his interview that his mother was as wonderful as he said but the delusion protected him from the reality of a very ill father and the rejection to boarding school at a time of family difficulty.

As befits a Type A self-dismissing strategy, none of the people with A in their classification could offer memories or evidence of how wonderful they said that their mothers were. For example, from the boarding group, Chris failed to offer an example of his

mother as caring when asked for one.

I was also given a trailer, that I hadn’t asked for but I was delighted to have.

And it was blue with uh, with a red top to it with a handle you could pull along. Image.

And I remember after everybody had opened their presents, I gathered all the paper up and put it on my trolley image and took it out through to…to put it all in the dustbin. Caring’ is supported with an episode of receiving gifts. No physical care or comfort. He does not mention this. He is trying hard to present his mother as caring but he is doing the caring.

*red font indicates coder notation. Speech is verbatim.

From the day school group, Roger’s response also failed to supply an example of closeness with his mother:

Err (speaking very quickly)) probably, erm (sigh) yeah I think erm the first year of school, so I’d be five years old erm my mum came in to do support work as a teacher and we did one on one training in school. Mother was there for all the class, not just him.

*red font indicates coder notation. Speech is verbatim.

What is concerning from a social psychological point of view is that, except for one person in each group classified as B, both groups of professional people who function as middle to upper class members of British society, while seemingly outwardly competent are inside, emotionally insecure people whom it seems are largely adept at splitting off and repressing their emotions and idealising attachment figures, as self-dismissing Type As. The Type A’s presentation supports Balint’s (1979) description in discussing the process of idealisation as a consequence of the child’s psychological withdrawal or suppression of a too harsh attachment figure; someone that is, who fails to provide comfort and protection. This is

‘followed by an attempt to create something better, kinder, more understandable, more beautiful and above all, more consistent and more harmonious than the real objects proved to be’ (p 68). Thus, forgetting or splitting off painful memories as Freud wrote in 1901 is a defensive strategy:

It may very well be that the forgetting of childhood can supply us with the key to the understanding of those amnesias which lie, according to our more recent discoveries, at the basis of the formation of all neurotic symptoms (Freud, 1901, p 46).

Freud (1913) described splitting as not so much a splitting of consciousness, but rather a splitting of the mind that disallows influence or correction of unconscious ideas being by conscious thought. Self-dismissing Type As split off their emotions repressing the fear they experienced at times of emotional neglect and the fear of rejection and abandonment.

Subsequent developments deprive the memory of all its affect so far as consciousness is concerned but they leave the unconscious idea completely untouched and this can then sometimes provoke somatic phenomena. Thus, the body speaks in place of split off thoughts and feelings.

Somatisation occurs in insecure people when talking about difficult topics. According to Howe, (2005) ‘the indirect expression of this internal stress can be seen as an increase in somatic symptoms’ (p 104). In relation to trauma, Kalsched (2005) wrote:

that the affect and sensation aspects of experience stay with the body and the mental representation aspect is split off into the “mind”. Such a person will not be able to let somatic sensations and excited bodily states into mental awareness, i.e., will not be able to let his or her mind give shape to bodily impulses in words or images. Instead, messages from the body will have to be discharged in some other way and will therefore remain pre-symbolic (p 66).

During the AAI, people will often cough or their digestive systems will begin to perform. This is noted in the AAI transcripts for discursive analysis as it is indicative of a change of arousal when difficult information threatens to emerge from the unconscious as Debbie said when recalling her rejection and abandonment to boarding school:

So, she (mother) would have just walked off and…and I…yeah, I do know that one.

I…I can feel it in my stomach now. Actively experiencing fear with the memory. Arousing

negative affect So I must have known something big was changing. So why that one I thought was more ominous than the others I haven’t got a clue. She does have clues. In fact, she offered a big clue just a moment ago when she mentioned her attachment to her mother. By stating she does not have a clue, she keeps the problem unsolvable.

*red font indicates coder notation. Speech is verbatim. Type C responses

There were fewer of the Type Cs, in fact, 30%, that is, eight out of twenty-six of both groups had C (including AC combinations) in their classifications. Individuals using a Type C response project their anger to the outside world as a means of protecting themselves from responsibility and blame others. They split of the ego as they unconsciously fear to be found lacking but cannot consciously admit this and ‘It is, therefore, abuse of the mechanism of projection for purposes of defence.’ (Freud, 1894, p 110).

In the DMM, the Type C strategy uses splitting within negative affect (Crittenden, 2010). The invulnerable self displays anger while inhibiting the vulnerable self who fears rejection and craves comfort. Such an angry outburst followed when one of the boarding group, who was also a psychotherapist was asked about his childhood:

Q: Taken as a whole, how do you think your childhood experiences have affected your