15 July 1959 (4.30 a.m. Blast It!). Cogitations

X said … well, what? He used words in such a way that they seemed to indicate that his mother or relatives had cut off supplies; that he could sell out £500 of shares and go to the cottage, in which case there would only be £50 and that just could not buy food. “That's all there is to it.” I attempted to draw attention to the fact that even while there was an opportunity for analysis, he could make no use of it. He defends by taking this as an accusation in which he is to blame and thus denies the existence of a very bad obstructive object. The rational comes in, therefore, not as the product of an elucidation, but as a defence against the elucidation. If I put to him that his mother is a very dangerous object denying him food, then I am giving him material to defend himself against the common sense view, and am myself felt to be disturbed to an extent which makes me unable to see the common-sense view.

There is something curious about this kind of defence which is analogous to an interpretation in which the elements are so ordered that the narcissism of the patient is spared. But I have already said that narcissism, apparently primary narcissism [Freud, ‘Instincts and Their Vicissitudes’, 1915c], is related to the fact that common sense is a function of the patient's relationship to his group, and in his relationship with the group the individual's welfare is secondary to the survival of the group. Darwin's theory of the survival of the fittest needs to be replaced by a theory of the survival of the fittest to survive in a group – as far as the survival of the individual is concerned. That is, he must be possessed with a high degree of common sense: (1) an ability to see what everyone else sees when subjected to the same stimulus, (2) an ability to believe in survival of the dead after death in a sort of Heaven or Valhalla or what-not, (3) an ability to hallucinate or manipulate facts so as to produce material for a delusion that there exists an inexhaustible fund o