ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the long-term effects of traumatization occurring in early childhood. While psychoanalysis has always addressed the consequences of early traumatization, there are only a small handful of psychoanalytic studies – based on our contemporary understanding of early traumatization – which have thematized the specific consequences for the development of personality. The traumatized self became dissociatively encapsulated, and was thus deprived of further development. Over the course of the treatment, the intimate connection between the separation trauma, the development of autonomy and the identification with the primary object became manifest. The chapter finds similar issues with other patients who had suffered from an early separation trauma. Hence, dreams of such patients show how aspects of the self are replaced with aspects of the object.
