ABSTRACT
The main alternative to psycho-neurosis is psychosis. The patient can be shown to be disintegrated, or unreal, or out of touch with his or her own body, or with what we as observers call external reality. The psychotic's troubles are of this order. By contrast, in psycho-neurosis the patient exists as a person, is a whole person, recognising objects as whole; the patient is well lodged in his or her own body, and the capacity for object relationships is well established. The child finds certain aspects of the anxieties intolerable, and so begins to set up defences. In perfectionism a hate of the world that would turn it upside down is dealt with in advance. This is a poor substitute for the sequence of health—destructive impulse and idea, sense of guilt, reparation or constructive activity—but for the neurotic it has to serve.
