ABSTRACT
This chapter draws attention to the many autistic characteristics that may be found in certain patients with a narcissistic character structure. Despite a work of several years in preparing the most appropriate terrain for trust in opening a breach in the "autistic core", the transition often has the nature of a sudden fracture that repeats the old irruption of the not-me, with specific characteristics in relation to the individual personal stories. The transition to the not-me has the characteristics of a sudden fracture that repeats the old break-in of the not-Self, which can entail hopelessness imbued with icy death (Alba), repeated threats of interrupting the analytic treatment (Sara), or it can engender a two-phase analysis, as in the case of Iacopo. These patients survived narcissistic catastrophe by means of a cognitive–emotional dissociation accompanied by hypertrophy and a precocious development of intellectual processes that enabled them to rise to elevated intellectual and cultural levels, and often to hold prestigious professional positions.
