ABSTRACT
R. Caper considers the normal primitive mental states contain omnipotent fantasies, which are accompanied by a sufficient sense of reality to enable to the child to learn through experience. By contrast, in primitive psychopathological states, the omnipotent unconscious fantasies (delusions) persist owing to a failure in learning from experience. In that a sufficiently containing mental space has not been constructed, the patient needs to resort to primitive pathological forms of functioning, such as pathological splitting, pathological projective identification, and the predominance of omnipotence. Splitting is an essential psychic process involved in coming to terms with the complex and difficult reality in which the newborn finds himself at the beginning of life. For example, the patient's attempts to attack the setting and the analyst's analytic function, the analyst's assertive response, and the patient's later introjection of this assertiveness, as well as the use of pathological projective identification.
