ABSTRACT
The history of psycho-analysis is the sum-total of the complex and circular interplay of three factors: the changing clinical picture of our patients; the growing conceptual knowledge which one call metapsychology; and the analytic process which is regulated by the analytic technique. This chapter discusses a new type of patient that has come into prominence in the last two decades, with the aim of asking whether, if the scholars apply the recent researches into infant-care techniques and the hypotheses about the early stages of ego-id differentiation, they cannot perhaps fruitfully study a particular sort of clinical task that this type of patient sets them in the analytic situation. Fairbairn singled out three prominent characteristics of individuals in the schizoid category: an attitude of omnipotence; an attitude of isolation and detachment; a preoccupation with inner reality.
