ABSTRACT
The psychic struggle to exist or not is held in the body. Emotions bypass the symbolization process and reside as bodily processes, unable to be thought or remembered. Massive projective identifications deplete the patients, leaving them with unconscious phantasies of not existing. Relationally, the traumatized infant in the adult patient longs to return to the womb while simultaneously claustrophobically hating the need as well as hating the womb carrier. Claustrophobia and fusion exist unconsciously and simultaneously. This chapter describes working with such primitive mental states.
