ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the otherness of the self is organized around three main themes: the taint, the split, and the force or nullity. The taint is often organized and expressed by splitting processes. In B. L. Smith’s case, splitting was highly complex and dangerous. An observing mental ego never stopped working and oscillated among several attitudes. Smith’s life might have been lived by someone else except that, by an accident of fate, it happened to be happening to him. Smith’s ecstasy was not what one might call a cosmic ecstasy, but rather a psychoanalytic ecstasy. The force plays both ends against the middle and plans for the future. While it focused on Smith’s personality, it also made inroads on his body. By the time Smith got around to using a true self counterpart to free sparks of true self, the whole psychosomatic system was ready to collapse.
