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The history of psycho-analysis is the sum-total of the complex and circular interplay of three factors: (a) the changing clinical picture of our patients; (b) the growing conceptual knowledge which we call metapsychology; and (c) the analytic process which is regulated by the analytic technique (cf. Kris (16)).
In this paper I shall try to discuss a new type of patient that has come into prominence in the last two decades, with the aim of asking whether, if we apply the recent researches into infant-care techniques and the hypotheses about the early stages of ego-id differentiation, we cannot perhaps fruitfully study a particular sort of clinical task that this type of patient sets us in the analytic situation.
Historically speaking this type of patient has gradually articulated himself into clinical focus from the diffuse mass of syndromes that were and are designated by the term 'borderline cases' (cf. Leo Stone (23), Stern (22)). It is important, however, even at the risk of a certain amount of artificiality, to isolate this new type of case and give it the clinical status of existing in its own right and setting us tasks just as specific as the hysterias, obsessional neuroses, affective disorders, and character-cases have done earlier on.
In our literature the first cogent statement about the mental processes of this type of case is by Fairbairn in his paper 'Schizoid Factors in the Personality' (4). Though it is basically the definition of the schizoid processes with which Fairbairn is concerned, in many respects his sensitive delineation of the theme deserves our attention here. Fairbairn stated: '(i) … schizoid conditions constitute the most deep-seated of all psycho-pathological states. … (ii) The therapeutic analysis of the schizoid provides an opportunity for the study of the widest range of psycho-patholgical processes in a single individual; for in such cases it is usual for the final state to be reached only after all available methods of defending t