ABSTRACT
Herbert Rosenfeld refers a psychic structure that though highly primitive must not be confused with an infantile structure, something with which we psychoanalysts are more familiar. The patient in question is so much lacking a sense of separateness that he is almost physically interpenetrated with the analyst; for him, separations are perceived as lacerating occurrences affecting his body. Defences against perceiving a relationship of dependency are so violent that they impede normal modes of communication and transference. Resulting from a condition of traumatic birth, the patient nurtures a desire to return to the womb; he employs defences and communications in which projection of the self onto others predominates, becoming a special form of intrusion into the analyst’s mind and body. The analyst’s communications, all of which must be formulated neither too explicitly nor too tightly, and channel them in such a way as to help the patient emerge from chaotic and excited mental states, denuded of any affectual significance.
