ABSTRACT
In The Psychotic Core, the analyst wrote of a division, even split, between an occultly transcendent mental self and fusional-explosive body self. A kind of hostile omniscience that thinks itself above and looks down and body feeling that mounts and explodes. Akin to a two-or three-year-old who wants to be good but periodically can't help a tantrum. Splits between watching-acting and being good-bad take dramatic turns in psychosis. Patient spoke of scoffing in his head, a mocking tone. He feared a devil had taken possession of his brain. Jewish mysticism speaks of good and evil inclinations. Melanie Klein seems to posit a double core or nucleus, good and bad experience, good and bad objects within, love and hate, creative and destructive tendencies. Fairbairn talked about therapy as a kind of exorcism of structures in which excitement and rejection fuse. Sigmund Freud paid increasing attention to stuck libido, blockages, even "lazy", inert or stagnant libido.
