ABSTRACT
This chapter considers individuals who use cats to symbolize body and mental images. It focuses on those adults who deploy cat images as extensions of their self- and/or internalized object representations, for whom cats function as protosymbols: for whom a cat is what it in reality represents. The chapter explores the early reports, provides further case studies, and expands mental health professionals understanding of the internal worlds of various types of “cat people.” Because of the long history of close association between humans and felines, and because of the ambivalence that has frequently characterized that association, it is not surprising that cats appear frequently in children’s literature and games and in popular culture. The chapter details adult cat people’s use of cats or cat images as protosymbols into three categories: cats as reactivated transitional objects; cats as differentiated but unintegrated self- and object-representations; and cats as undifferentiated psychotic cores.
