Although the reduplication clearly serves to replace a defective or an absent structure, Ostow believes that the defence can be delineated more precisely.

Such patients have undergone a catastrophic experience: a segment of the real world, a part of the body, has ceased to exist for them. The primary response has already been noted by Linn as a withdrawal of attention from the horrifying percept. The attempt to regenerate the destroyed part by illusion Ostow regards as comparable to the attempt of schizophrenics to repopulate the world they have lost. He further suggests that the multiple representation characteristic of primary process perception is related to a diminution of input, whether through organic causes, as in blinding, or to psychic