ABSTRACT
It is possible for identity to be shaped to a significant degree not by competencies, talents, and qualities of character, but by the need to manage early experiences in which people's connection with their center of initiative and vitality was put at risk and their conviction that people exist, rather than being nurtured, was undermined. When this happens, integration of the elements of identity around a core self is subordinate to the task of defending against awareness of the earlier loss of people's emotional existence and capacity to be present in doing and relating and the return of the feeling of bottomless dread associated with that loss. Now, people's task is to do what people cannot to be real in the world, but to prevent awareness of, and feelings associated with, people's psychic death. One strategy for keeping the loss of self outside of awareness is to transfer it onto others.
