ABSTRACT
Some patients do not trust their own experiences. Since they cannot trust themselves, they look to others to show them what to do. Mimicry and ‘as if’ behavior become the means for survival in a world that feels alien to them. Their ability to use personal truth for psychic nourishment is compromised. Desperate and isolated, they deaden themselves in order to get by. Worse still, their deadness may also indicate a developmental deficit that leaves them feeling as if they do not exist. Often they describe themselves as going through the motions of life, but not living it. Feeling they are not fully alive, they come to analysis looking for what is missing. The analyst must find true life within the mimicry presented.
