ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the analysis of a patient for whom contact with the other was experienced as an existential threat that must be warded off at all costs. As T. H. Ogden describes it, W. R. D. Fairbairn’s conception of early psychic development is a trauma theory in which the infant, to varying degrees, is traumatized by his realistic perception that he is fully dependent on a mother whose capacity to love him has passed its breaking point. The chapter describes the analysis as occurring in three phases: schizoid, sadomasochistic and “sheer madness”. Fairbairn believed that sadomasochism is inherent in a closed schizoid system. He states “a relationship with a bad object can hardly escape the alternative of being either of a sadistic or of a masochistic nature”.
