ABSTRACT
For some patients, their internal world is focused around a search for an idealized object to be with. When this hoped-for state of union fails, and by de®nition it always does, their idealized objects crumple like fallen angels. The ideal object either becomes a quite ordinary human without any special sparkle or the fallen object rises up as Satan's right hand. In other words, the infantile ego's natural attempts at union with an idealized object can collapse into disappointment, loss, and persecution. This psychological and clinical phenomenon is quite disruptive and destructive to the pursuit of analytic contact. Splitting and projective identi®cation play a prominent role in the psychic life of such patients and for analytic contact to be operable, these two defenses need to be consistently interpreted and worked with.
