ABSTRACT
This chapter describes a patient with whom there was enormous difficulty in establishing shared understanding which carried convincing meaning to both analysand and analyst. It considers over and above the eczema itself, the way this had been dealt with both externally and internally, appeared to have had a profound influence on the patient’s capacity to evaluate what was meaningful. The normal developmental process in which the mother provides a home for the projective identification of the infant and lays the foundation of a faith that the infant is meaningful, was grossly impaired. This absence of an experience in which the infant is enabled to ascribe personal meaning to the mother, resulted not only in the deprivation of mutual meaningfulness, but also exacerbated desperate impulses both to find meaning and to vengefully destroy meaning.
