ABSTRACT
As parts of the mind are lost, and with them the ability to reality-test, not only does the capacity to remember, to think, to speak, break down, but also those well-honed “defences” which have, in their respective ways, protected the personality from “too much reality” and have enabled a person to develop in his or her own unique way. If protected by securely established internal objects, and if, in turn, supported by sufficiently receptive and responsive external ones, some of the impact of the collapse of secondary processes, in Freudian terms, back into primary ones, can be withstood. Without this protection the person is left at the mercy of utterly chaotic, uninhibited, and persecutory internal forces. The degree to which early anxieties have been projected, modulated in the mind of a reflective mother, and then reintrojected by the infant in manageable form, is crucial.
