ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the primary identification with a psychologically dead, depressed object. Analysis with a six-year-old boy illustrates the consequent generative dissociation of the self into two parts: a ‘simple’ one, the experiencing self in the dream; and a ‘complex’ one, the organizing intelligence which gives the dream meaning. The manic defense and its denial of reality is the psychic hinge of this developmental dissociation. Analysis of the patient's drawings shows how this process leads to what Winnicott called a ‘false reparation.’ This is further explored in terms of Green's work on the ‘dead mother,’ showing how this false reparation is based on mimicry aimed at possessing the dead object. As a result, the object becomes what Bollas calls an interject, instead of an introject.
