ABSTRACT
For those whose development of personal being, or self, has been impeded, the experience of life is diminished. The ¯ow of interior states, the Jamesian stream of consciousness, is barely sensed. There is a feeling of nothing happening inside, of stasis, and of deadness. At times it seems there is nothing there at all save a painful or even terrifying emptiness. This is related to an inability to be alone, amounting at times to an addiction to certain people, experiences and even to stimuli. Reality comes from outside, consisting merely of the rattle of world. The constricted space of personal existence is relatively broken up, consisting of shifting states in some of which arise destructive and self-destructive impulses. All this goes in against a background of dysphoria, dissatisfaction and a feeling of low personal value. At the heart of these disturbances lies the sense that there is no ``real me.''
