The paper explores damaged self-feelings and low narcissistic investment in the self, and presents material and argument to show that interactions with a certain type of caretaker are crucially involved. The damaging object here is termed, elaborating a concept of Kohut's (1971), the ‘anti-selfobject’. Interaction with the anti-selfobject damages psychic structure and has a profound effect on later relationships. It is closely involved in what appears to be destructive behaviour in the analytic setting. Case material illustrates the thesis and there is discussion on the subject of technique.