ABSTRACT
This chapter provides clinical illustrations of the theoretical concepts: the infantile psychotic self, early body image, and intergenerational transmission. It describes the case of Karl, in whom obsessive–compulsive symptoms enveloped his "seed of madness" and the sum of his bodily symptoms became a "spokesperson" of it. Karl sensed the existence of his infantile psychotic self as an undifferentiated and dangerous being in a container, a crocodile in a pouch. Karl's case clearly shows the internalizations of one's interaction with one's early environment, and the contamination of such internalizations with unconscious fantasies. Karl is a bachelor who lives in Munich, Germany. According to Karl, during his first childhood bout, the symptoms had disappeared a few months after they had begun, but they resumed again when he was 17. Karl had a traumatic relationship with the representation of his symbiotic mother and her mothering methods.
