ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter we found the child living, alternately, in one of two spaces. The child of 2 or 3 years cannot live in both at the same time. Subtle differences in affect and more profound differences in attention and language show that, in a sense, he or she is a different person in each space. Seen in this way, the child's existence is discontinuous. The observations and inferences of Jean Piaget suggest that the younger the child, the greater the discontinuity. This idea leads us to a fundamental difference between the tradition out of which this book arises and the psychoanalysis of Freud and his followers. The eminent psychoanalyst, Charles Rycroft, expressed the difference clearly. He wrote: ``Janet believed that self is not a pristine unity but an entity achieved by integration of `simultaneous psychological existences'. . . contemporary psychoanalysis and psychiatry tends to take the opposite view: that the self is a pristine unity but uses defences which have the effect of dysuni®cation''.1 These opposing conceptualizations lead to differences in theories of treatment that are particularly evident in approaches to borderline personality disorder. My view, in the Janetian tradition, sees this disorder as a consequence of a maturational failure. The discontinuities of psychic life that characterize the condition are manifestations of this failure, rather than the operations of defences such as ``splitting'' and ``projective identi®cation.'' In this chapter, the early fragmentation and the subsequent slow integration of personal existence is brie¯y outlined.
