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Originally presented at the Meeting of the Boyer House Foundation in Tribute to L. Bryce Boyer, at the Miyako Hotel, San Francisco, CA, May 15, 1999. (Bibliography may not be complete.)
As I begin today I want to think Dr. de Paola for a most interesting and thought provoking paper. I would also like to express my appreciation to NCSPP for inviting me to an event honoring my dear friend, Bryce, and through him, the staff of Boyer House Foundation. In my discussion, I will talk about pathological organizations, reverse projective identification, countertransference, truth, and the dream state. I will use theory, much of it derived from Bion, to highlight Dr. de Paola's rich clinical material, hopefully in the way an artist uses light and shading to create contrast and depth. And I will allow myself considerable liberty in referring to Bryce Boyer's ideas as they were evoked for me by Dr. de Paola's paper.
In his paper, Dr. de Paola contributes to a central facet of Kleinian theory examining the movement between the paranoid schizoid and depressive positions, and the function of the pathological organization. He joins writers such as Steiner, O'Shaughnessy, and Joseph, who describe relatively stable constellations of defenses resorted to as refuge from meaningful contact with the analyst.
Rosenfeld's paper on destructive narcissism is particularly relevant to Dr. de Paola's case. In that paper one can hear forshadowings of de Paola's formulation in Rosenfeld's references to the formidable power of the death instinct manifesting in envious attacks on the patient's dependent and loving link with the analyst. Those of us familiar with this paper will notice the similarity between de Paola's interpretation of himself as Mafioso guardian and Rosenfeld's notion of “the gang.” For Rosenfeld, the gang referred to a potent and ruthless aspect of the personality experienced as a band of thugs. The gang enslaves the patient's dependent self by promising quick relief from the agoni