ABSTRACT
The great variety of psychopathological symptoms were identified by psychiatry well over a century ago. They include chronic anxiety, irrational fears, obsessionality, neurotic guilt, shame and hysteria; phobic, panic, manic and depressive states; the whole spectrum of psychosomatic illnesses; behavioural disorders that manifest as perversion, violence and delinquency; disorders of perception such as delusions and hallucinations; as well as disorders of affect such as schizoid, borderline and schizophrenic states. Many of these conditions alternate or appear in combination and manifest in varying degrees of intensity. But varied as they are they fall into two main categories: they are either the expression of our most primitive instincts, such as rage, lust, and fear; or they are the expression of equally primitive defences against them. These psychoanalysis has identified as splitting, projection and projective identification. Each of us, in infancy, resorts to these defensive mechanisms in order to mitigate the intense psychic pain that inevitably comes with being an infant. According to Fairbairn we are all, at the deepest level, schizoid (1952:3-27). Put more provocatively: none of us is normal.
