Introduction*

Ferenczi was invested in using psychoanalysis as a tool for helping the healing process in individuals who were traumatized, scarred, and damaged by environmental, interpersonal events, often perpetrated by close family members. Acts of commission or omission by a narcissistic significant other can damage the tender developing psyche by causing fragmentation of the self, dissociation and identification with the aggressor, which in turn can cause pathological distortions in personality development.

Gurevich (2016), referring to Ferenczi, Winnicott, and Nancy Smith, suggests that the self has innate survival mechanisms, such as identification with the aggressor (Ferenczi, 1932, 1933), false self-formation (Winnicott, 1959), and Orpha function (Smith, 1999), that help to preserve the self's contact with reality through dissociation and suppression of the fragmented, vulnerable true self. Orpha function coheres the fragmented parts of the self, albeit at a price: dissociation, flash-backs, nightmares, and other triggers that can plague the child and, later, the adult. The Orpha function is precipitated in an interpersonal context subsequent to physical, sexual, or emotional trauma. Resolution of the fragmentation and restoration of the true self is actualized in a relational context by working through the repetition of past traumas in the transference-countertransference (third space) interaction with an Orphic analyst. The analyst takes on the patient's Orpha function and accepts the various projections onto him or herself as victim, victimizer, or