ABSTRACT
Chapter Six, thinking alone, illustrates the solitary thinking—what the author calls the “autizoid” or “one-person psychology”—of a perseverant patient, whose theory of mind is informed primarily by her own terror-filled perceptions and the unfiltered conceptions taken in from others. Unable to reach her severely depressed mother from the beginning of life, this patient had learned to think on her own. Now she struggled to understand her own mind and the minds of others, with what to take in and what not to take in. Hypersensitive, feeling “alien” and alone, her fearfulness, dread, and perseveration made it difficult for her to make sense of her own perceptions or make full use of her cognitive capacities. The chapter illustrates the author’s work with this patient, helping her think together and sort out the psychic from the somatic and the concrete from the abstract, thereby strengthening her capacity to process and tolerate her own emotional experiences.
