ABSTRACT
I shall try to sketch out a way in which symbolic functioning appears to be undermined in certain cases of severe disturbance. The failure I shall discuss reflects a developmental crisis, features of which became apparent to me during the analyses of three patients, two of whom I shall discuss here. Each of the patients, though very different in important respects and brought up in dissimilar circumstances, suffered serious narcissistic disturbances. A characteristic the patients shared was the experience of having incorporated an object with random, invasive tendencies, which at times could lead them to the brink of, or into, psychosis. By “incorporation of an invasive object,” I wish to convey a primitive, violent introjection of aspects of an object that creates the experience of inundation by the object that can give rise to serious disturbance in the nascent personality. This form of pathological “proto-identification” takes place in early infancy and is consequent upon precocious interaction between infant and object, including, critically, failure of containment and maternal alpha-function (Bion, 1970).
