The Basic Fault: Therapeutic Aspects of Regression

Balint's classic collection of essays, "The Basic Fault," is no how-to guide for aspiring psychotherapists seeking help in managing severely regressed patients. Instead, this thought-provoking collection takes us through the historical unfolding of the complex notion of regression in psychoanalysis, focusing at length on the disagreement between Freud and Ferenczi. Balint describes a crucial distinction between "benign" and "malignant" regression (still a controversial idea in the psychoanalytic community in the 1970s) and describes how an analyst might work productively with "benign" regression in therapy. Reading this book made me appreciate anew the painstaking work of British "independent school" analysts like Balint, who owed allegiance to neither Kleinian nor Freudian schools, and therefore were able to ask questions not recognized by either. I recommend this book highly for any therapist who wishes to deepen her understanding of the notion of regression.

Did you have a rotten childhood? Well, get over it! In The Basic Fault, Michael Balint argues that the adult, Freudian, Oedipal language of the analyst may be completely indecipherable to patients who are frozen at a pre-Oedipal, preverbal level where relationships are only dyadic, language is only nascent, and where some fundamental missattunement between the infant and the environment (e.g. mother) results in the basic fault. Instead, analysts might do well to focus on object relationships, not interpretations, when working with these regressed patients. The analyst waits for the patient's reflections to evolve from "resentment" to "regret", and allows the patient to have a new relationship with a new object. Don't miss Balint's treatment of a patient who performed a somersault right in the consulting room!