ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts discussed in this book. The book highlights how patients can be terribly conflicted and struggle with both paranoid fears and depressive anxiety regarding knowledge, learning, and change. It shows how some patients utilize pathological levels of projective identification that in turn creates great difficulty in maintaining an open mind to the reception and cultivation of knowledge. Knowledge of oneself and of one’s objects is a delicate psychological area fraught with conflict. Knowledge and learning brings about a frightening sense of freedom. Shafer goes on to note that understanding can bring about loss of omnipotence. The book provides some case material that has illustrated projective identification states in which patients attempted to lodge various unconscious aspects of object relational conflicts into the analyst. It deals with chaotic states of mind in which both paranoid and depressive experiences are overwhelming the ego.
