ABSTRACT
Freud's 'Mourning and melancholia' would suggest that self-doubt is actually object-doubt where the doubted object is 'taken in' and becomes part of the self. Freud's explanation of the patient's neurosis is that it is due to the repression of his oedipal aggression. However, the explanation for why one person might develop such a serious disturbance and another might not surely depends on the preceding conflicts that block oedipal development. The presence of cynicism was clear from the start with Cassandra, a borderline patient. Borderline patients and those with personality disorder have developed a psychic structure based upon the conviction that there is little or no hope of ever being cherished or understood. Patients like Cassandra struggle consciously with a mixture of idealisation and cynicism but unconsciously have internalised a fundamentalist object. Diderot wrote, 'Scepticism is the first step towards truth. It should be general, for it is the touchstone'.
