ABSTRACT
This chapter concentrates on (S-A)-PO interactions that lead to unconscious processes which disrupt the normal organization of thoughts, feelings, and actions, redirecting them in unnatural directions and causing negative consequences in the Infant—notably, attacks on linking, non-verbal learning, procedural memory, consequent meaning-makings, Bollas’s unthought knowns, and associated contextual contingency factors that shape character structure.
SAO/TEND concurs with Dorpat’s use of denial as the umbrella that also includes splitting and repression, along with all versions of not-knowing. It also supports the concept of psychological armor as a screen phenomenon of primal repression, manifesting in Cohen’s intrapsychic “holes” and their function as containers for split-off components of selfhood in order to accommodate to the PO’s demands.
Primary and secondary process cognition, First-Order Perceptual Distortion, primary disavowal, autonomous disavowal, emotional macular degeneration, and cognitive macular degeneration are defined and addressed. Splitting is presented as a function of both defense and structure-building.
Phantasies reflect projected outcomes of (S-A)-O interactions. Some emotions are “hated,” because they elicit the emergence of a PO and are experienced as a threat to homeostatic safety and security.
Dorpat’s covert methods of interpersonal control and Miller’s poisonous pedagogy illustrate many of the foundations occurring within TEND.
