ABSTRACT
Our metapsychological discussion of identity formation has enabled us to distinguish a position of the subject in relation to (a) and the Other where the secondary defense and psychological processing have not taken place. Should such a subject position be empirically verifiable, the consequences would be the following. First, in the psychodiagnostic field, the differential diagnostic becomes relatively simple. Secondly, at the level of treatment the authors are confronted with a problem that is structurally different from our customary psychopathology, the latter having already undergone secondary processing. There are two arguments in favor of the existence of such an actual-pathological position. One is classical and conceptual: we must look again at what has long since been a forgotten part of Freudian theory and clinical practice, at what in 1898 he called the "actual neuroses". The other draws on more recent empirical work: we must call upon the flood of contemporary research into somatization, alexithymia, and the panic disorders.
