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This fine book by one of Greece's leading psychoanalytic thinkers centres on the dynamic meaning and psychic economy of so-called borderline patients. Dr. Potamianou's researches have given her a special interest in the capacity to invest relationships, and particularly in the tendency of fragile patients to sudden disinvestment of significant object relations. The reader is led to reflect on the complex psychic structure of borderline patients, particularly when neurotic defences appear to be an important part of their overall clinical picture
These complex, fragile patients are the focus of this book Potamianou seeks to demonstrate how the analytic situation can be structured in order to prevent serious regression and the profound disinvestment of internal or external reality to which they are particularly liable Extreme narcissistic vulnerability is characteristic of these analysands, frequently allied with a grandiose self-image and fantasies of omnipotence. Their narcissistic pathology does not lead to a profound disorganization of the ego, but one can observe various forms of fragility in the ego structure, and extreme expressions of the underlying pathology often come to light in the course of the analysis. As Potamianou points out, severe psychic pathology may frequently be masked by a patient's manifest neurotic symptoms
On the question of the emotional investment of significant objects Potamianou accepts the classic Freudian concept, but she insists on the organizing quality of object relation links and, above all, on the function of these links in maintaining boundaries between self and others.
Difficulties arise with borderline patients of this kind when they feel that their object relationships threaten their psychic economy,