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He looked clean and cool, rather than sweaty and scruffy as he usually does, then began with the usual evocative associations – evocative and provocative, so as to ensure either reassurance of love or reassurance of hate. He was more coherent. Yet it is hard to recall anything he said. This is typical even though something is said. I was able to show him that by taking a minutely fragmented view he could avoid feeling the seriousness of the situation, which was revealed if all the minor statements of dissatisfaction were added up. This I think suggests splitting attacks on the depressive position. Thus the depressive stupor becomes a mass of tiny persecutory depressions: the door slams; singing in his head; a pain in his ankle; “I don't know why; I'm sorry; the waitress brought some coffee; only half a cup”; and – despairingly, “I could not go on”.
This can be regarded as a splitting attack on depression, or an attempt to bring the fragments of persecuting depression together in a creative way, i.e. to form a whole; or a series of pictorial images, ideograms, which will not coalesce; or ‘undigested’ fragments, i.e. not proper pictorial images but facts sensually perceived yet remaining as bits of sensory awareness that have not been rendered fit for storage and are therefore not memories proper.
This explains my being the person who is dead, who, as he said, has “had it”. In other words, if the pieces are brought together and do coalesce, it is seen that the fragments are really me, only in pieces. And since I cannot exist like that, I must be dead.