ABSTRACT
The words ocnophil and philobat were deliberately chosen so that each should contain the root 'phil', which means love. It would be easy to be misled by the fact that the ocnophil needs his objects and the philobat avoids them, or that the philobat loves his friendly expanses and the ocnophil abhors them. This chapter describes that ocnophilia and philobatism are not opposites; they are two different attitudes, possibly developing or branching off from the same stem. For instance the ocnophil, especially in moments of danger, has to have an object to cling to. Quite often we find that the opposite is the case; for instance, that the ocnophil despises himself for his weakness, displaces this, and hates his object for his own dependence on it. Both the ocnophil's and the philobat's relationship to his objects is ambivalent, loving and hating, trusting and mistrusting at the same time.
