The Claustrum: an investigation of claustrophobic phenomena by Donald Meltzer with an essay by Meg Harris Williams. Published by  Clunie Press, Perthshire, 1992;  185 pages.

For Meltzer, these lines epitomise life in the Claustrum, that rectal compartment which is ‘the heart of this book’. Indeed, it proves quite unnerving to be told that so many of those whom we thought we knew and loved may occupy one or other of the three main Claustrum compartments within the internal mother: the head/breast, the genitals and the rectum. Within each group, with its own dominant trait, brilliant composite portraits emerge, manifested as secretiveness, insincerity and covert contempt respectively. For example, here is a description of people whose ‘entry to the Claustrum was sealed in the latency period’ (p. 86):

Here we find the big, indolent baby boys and the doll's house little girls, for whom the supreme value is comfort. They are voluptuous without eroticism, curious without interest, obedient from inertia and polite without consideration. What they enjoy seems to them what the whole world is striving for, an eternal holiday with companionship but without relationship, in a pretty world without disturbing aesthetic impact. If they have money or an effortless means of earning it, they are content, but their ideal is to be pampered without any recrimination for parasitism….

Meltzer's purpose is to demonstrate how his concept of the Claustrum extends the idea of ‘normal’ projective identification into external objects, to pathological, or intrusive project identification into parts of internal objects. The innovatory aspect of Meltzer's theory is the crucial role of the interior spaces within the internal mother and how this relates to his concept of ‘aesthetic conflict’, which is ‘a tormenting uncertainty about the interior qualities of the aesthetic object’.

Concerned to distinguish between ‘a conception of the inside of the internal mother derived from imagination’ with one that is the product of the omnipotent int