You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Two aspects of patients suffering from characterological disorders have been stressed: (1) the patient's primitive, preverbal fixations allow the therapist to contribute to the form of the patient's psychopathology as he attempts to conceptualize psychic mechanisms and ego defects in secondary process communicable terms, and (2) the specific type of ego defect encountered in such patients leads to a frantic pursuit of reassurance that they are capable of being helped,
although fundamentally they constantly prove to themselves that such a pursuit is fruitless and hopeless.