ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a particular type of psychic pain that belongs to the emergence from schizoid states of mind in which projective identification is strongly used. It is interesting to see how frequently it is felt to be almost physical, the patient locating it often in the lower part of the chest, and yet he or she knows clearly that he is not describing a physical condition, it is not hypochondriacal or psychosomatic, it is known to be mental. It is experienced as on the border between mental and physical. This type of psychic pain is, in many ways a borderline phenomenon, as chapter discusses again later. In order to look at the problem of this psychic pain in more detail, the chapter brings an example from one of the patients, where the breakdown of a rather specific type of relating helps to precipitate the individual into analysis.
