ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author describes a patient who did not have a sufficiently mature or integrated mental organisation even to be aware of the nature of her needs or problems. As with a small infant, she was not able to communicate directly in words because she was not capable of such advanced or integrated thought; instead, she had established ways of surviving based on evacuating uncomfortable feelings and perceptions into someone else, who had to live and experience for her that which she found intolerable. The author shows how the patient and worked together to try to tackle some of the problems interfering with her capacity for favourable communication, and how when fresh anxieties were aroused by new experiences, the communication cord broke down – a repetition of old patterns or difficulties. The author highlights some of those difficulties as they play themselves out in the struggle between cooperative and adverse elements.
