ABSTRACT
This chapter is about the terribly destructive nature of cutting, and the way aggressive instinctual processes are affected and linked with both the early parental environment and later traumatic experiences. In the first chapter, Glasser's (1992) core complex was outlined: briefly summarised as the fantasy of fusion leading to annihilation anxiety; the concurrent defensive responses from that, and also from the fear of the mother's indifference; both these defensive responses leading to aggression turned inwards against the self, and enacted on the surface of the body. The encaptive conflict that I suggest as a central unconscious psychic formation among the young women seen for psychotherapy who were selfharming is a variant and possibly perverse side formation of this core complex. In this context, it is interesting to note that Glasser's (1979) original concept was seen in the context of perversion. However, instead of fusion with an idealised mother, the encaptive conflict involves the captivation by an avaricious object who overwhelms, and from whom there is ambivalence about separation. The fear of being possessed conflicts with the fear of rejection, and the psychic conflict leads to a defensive compromise. The solution to the conflict is hostility, which is turned inwards against the self and the body, rather than directed outwards on to an external object.
