ABSTRACT
Sara’s case is described in detail to illustrate a typical example of the subject of this book. It is an example of how a person who has lived an active life can experience the rapid onset of a crisis of disintegration of the Self following a period of affective stress. The intense suffering experienced by the patient cannot adequately be described in words, and is in fact communicated through the body.
The role of the skin takes on importance during the crisis: the autistic residuals are manifested through the skin, and the analyst, in identifying these, is able to help transform primitive sensorial and emotional experiences from a physical problem to a psychological one.
The therapeutic intervention here proposed is taken from a widely used approach in infantile autism by Anne Alvarez, and takes into account the various mental states and the degree of integration-disintegration of the Self.
The presence within the patient’s psychological structure of various levels of integration required – in the analytic process – two different levels of communication: one with the more regressive, autistic part; the other with the more developed part, linked to the defence mechanisms that were erected over time and thus difficult to dismantle.
