ABSTRACT
Primordial states of suspension require different responses from the analyst than other more developed states of mind. Equivalency places the center of gravity outside the body instead of inside. An internal center of gravity anchors the subjective perceptual experience in a reality that informs, teaches, and facilitates identifications, which accumulate and form a sense of identity. The proximity of the analyst does not help to mediate these states initially. The proximity, of which the patient has been unaware, places the analyst in a helpless and vulnerable position of being witness to the ongoing psychic annihilation without being able to have an impact on it. Their center of gravity is found in space, not in substance. Until they become more solid in phantasy, they cannot have an internal psychic center of gravity to stabilize them and to allow them to have a foreground and a background of experience.
