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1 The patient's reactions to material comfort are shown by his reactions to the material comforts, the couch or other amenities, of the consulting room. Why must he have more and more of such “comforts”? Part of the answer lies in the splitting that was intended, by effecting a separation of material from psychic comforts, as an escape from fear of envy, either his own or another's.
2 The attempt to evade the experience of contact with live objects by destroying alpha-function leaves the personality unable to have a relationship with any aspect of itself that does not resemble an automaton. Only beta-elements are available for whatever activity takes the place of thinking and beta-elements are suitable for evacuation only – perhaps through the agency of projective identification. These beta-elements are dealt with by an evacuatory procedure similar to the movements of musculature, changes of mien, etc. which Freud described as intended to disencumber the personality of accretions of stimuli and not to effect changes in the environment; a muscular movement, for example, a smile, must have a different interpretation from the smile of the non-psychotic personality. The phenomena present in analysis are not identical with Freud's description of the personality acting, during the phase of dominance of the pleasure principle, to disencumber itself of accretions of stimuli. That personality is, within limits, normal; the personality I am describing is highly abnormal. Activity taking place, under the dominance of the pleasure principle, to disencumber the personality of accretions of stimuli becomes replaced, in the phase of dominance by the reality principle, by ejection of unwanted beta-elements. A smile or a verbal statement must be interpreted as an evacuatory muscular movement and not as a communication of feeling.