A Child is Being Eaten—I: Psychosomatic States, Anxiety Neurosis and Hysteria—a Theoretical Approach II: The Abysmal Mother and the Cork Child—a Clinical Illustration

This paper has attempted to explore the eventual links between psychosomatic and hysterical symptoms in psychoanalytical patients. It is a continuation of earlier research (McDougall 1980) in which the difference between the two types of symptomatology was examined in some detail. In that paper I had proposed that psychosomatic phenomena, in contrast to hysterical ones, were devoid of repressed fantasy content capable of being verbalized and thus had no direct symbolic meaning such as we find in the unconscious structure behind neuroses. I came to question this concept of a total lack of symbolic significance, in the course of discovering the massive measures that certain patients employ in order to render psychic pain inoperative through a radical elimination of any representation of intense affect. However I was unable at that time to appreciate the underlying archaic significance of psychosomatic reactions to psychic conflict and to understand the economic impact that this entailed for the psychic structure.

Certain patients reveal in analysis that they have at their disposal few psychic defenses against mental pain other than total foreclosure