ABSTRACT
The care for and therapy of a person on lifetime parole is difficult. It is late in the day. The deed has been perpetrated, probably many years previously. The man or woman on parole has been stirred up, calmed down, reassured, and worried, and one can reasonably expect to find some well-established defense. Persecutory anxiety is based on a fear of attack or aggrievement after an attack, real or supposed. It is the form of anxiety found throughout the animal kingdom. During the very early months of life when primary splitting or differentiation takes place, the giving, gratifying, present mother normally is loved, while the absent, depriving, frustrating mother is hated. The width of separation or divergence between the loved object and the hated object depends on the characteristics not only of the mother, but also of the baby. Psychic risk is more subtle.
