ABSTRACT
The "tale" is the most significant of all tales—it is that of the human condition. The "tale" that Shakespeare so often re-tells, explicitly and implicitly, is, at its barest, that of the importance of encompassing debility and death in any story of renewal. The straightforward statement is that "second childishness and mere oblivion" are facts of life that, at every stage and age, must be recognized and understood, not sequestered and denied, if any genuine development or understanding is to occur. As a person physically deteriorates, early problematic psychological constellations, if unresolved, are likely to be replayed; infantile defences, if underlying anxieties remain unmodified, are re-erected; childlike needs, if unmet, resurface. Wilfred Bion explicitly linked emotional and cognitive deficits and thus initiated a much more extensive and confident basis for exploring deeply troubled—indeed, psychotic and schizophrenic—adult states and, of especial significance, areas of developmental disturbance in infants and young children.
