ABSTRACT
I would like, first of all, to clarify what I mean by the reversal of the ‘container/contained’ relationship, and then talk about this theme using some clinical material. It is rare to meet the phenomenon ‘in pure culture’, so to speak, but it can happen that a child, at times a baby, still desperately in need of containment, is exposed to the experience of being used as a receptacle (this word is more appropriate than container) of massive projections. Often it is the very adult who should have provided the function of containment, had he or she been fit to do so, who projects into the child or the baby. I came across this problem mainly in cases where the parents of patients were psychotic or borderline.
