ABSTRACT
C. B. Tarantelli analyses the state of extreme traumatisation in detail, without distinguishing it from the conditions that come closer to the realm of psychoanalytic competence or practice. The view of enactments as an inevitable part of the psychoanalytic process for both analyst and patient recognises implicitly the greater need for reality than previously acknowledged. The negative judgement towards repetition reasserted itself later in psychoanalytic history, when it was linked to the death instinct and considered to be innate and unmotivated. Thus, to attribute to the environment the disturbance of primary narcissism, an imbalance to which the response is one of hate, means that the external world is synonymous with excess and trauma. Tarantelli's article "Life within death" deals with catastrophic events that are, according to her, "utterly external", causing a radical break in the psyche by virtue of the magnitude of its impact.
