ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at what psychoanalysis has enabled analysts to understand about how the capacity to experience feelings develops and what happens when it goes wrong. It examines the example of Descartes, whose life and philosophy exemplify many of the key elements, and how, significantly, he has such a key position in Western thinking. The chapter discusses the mechanisms by which children develop the capacity to cope with feelings and what happens when these mechanisms fail. Psychoanalysis had established that for thinking and emotional development to be possible there has to be an initial process of splitting, the earliest stage of this being the infant being able to distinguish between itself and the rest of the world. In the individual, the disconnection from feeling results in what might be called a personal environmental problem, in the form of lack of judgement, inability to respond emotionally to other people, and a general existential crisis of life having no meaning.
