ABSTRACT
This chapter presents case examples to convey how the experience of illness and deterioration of the body in old age affects the people concerned, whose varying capacities to contain their feelings and to mourn the losses they are faced with shape the way this phase of their lives unfolds. First, it gives an example of such a claustrophobic encounter for a couple with the reality of their mutual deterioration leading to a breaking down of their fragile equilibrium, increased cycles of projection, and the loss of capacity for containment in the psychiatric team around them. Then, the chapter shows that the picture of the couple was one where both partners' minds had been very developed with considerable emotional maturity, but it was difficult to hold onto their capacities, which were being so challenged by the dementia. Finally, it focuses on more omnipotent defences: the retreat into timelessness as a reaction to the mental pain of vulnerability, loss, and fragmentation.
