ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a specific set of circumstances in which the damaged internal object can exercise a perturbing and determining influence on the relationship to reality and the development of the capacity to differentiate internal and external reality. It suggests that the damaged object in such circumstances operates as a strange attractor in the mind. The chapter highlights the importance of the role of external reality in disconfirming phantasies of damage and destruction in the internal world, as emphasised in the theories of Melanie Klein and D. W. Winnicott. The chapter describes a clinical case of once weekly psychoanalytic psychotherapy with a seven-year-old child to illustrate these themes. In this clinical case, a central preoccupation for the child seemed to be that of damage, and a core unconscious anxiety seemed to be the damaging effect of the child's destructiveness on his objects.
