ABSTRACT
It is difficult to unite the term "living" with that of "intrusive identification" as this chapter considers that the relation between both is practically exclusive. "Living inside an object" is an omnipotent fantasy correlative to "intrusive identification" in an internal object, transformed into a "claustrum"; this fantasy differs from the communicative function of projective identification. The chapter shows the relationship of the self with its objects, or the paralysation of the self as a result of masturbatory-intrusive attacks on the internal objects. It discusses the mental state of the inhabitants of the claustrum; and illustrates all of this with the clinical material of a borderline patient. The flight from the world in intrusive identification is so great that there is neither any contact with reality nor any idea of psychic reality; there is a lack of the idea of nature, and reality is anthropomorphized; one does not live sufficiently in the external world.
