ABSTRACT
In an attempt to elucidate elements of the totalitarian state of mind, the chapter shows clusters of experience that, while seeming to involve discontinuities, nonetheless continue to come together in clinical observations. This chapter presents some of the processes associated with breaking through the barrier to contact. A constellation of factors including incursion of experience and hence psychic pain which is less easily controlled, the emergence from exoskeletal life signified by the breakdown of the shell, and the fear of insanity are further worsened by fears of mutilation and being destroyed. Leaving capsular life, as well as the possibility of psychological birth, is associated with death and often the fear of being eaten. The extension of the psychoanalytic work allows for the definition of the patient’s true self as distinguished from the dictator-archaic superego. The elaboration of the patient’s true feelings can occur in relation to a different kind of object relations than occurred in a barriered state of mind.
