I am glad that Candy Aubry found my article interesting. I think that the nature of early projective and introjective activity is immensely complex and much remains to be understood. For example, Aubry takes up the question of bodily suffering whilst suggesting that incorporation ‘remains a phantasy’. Yet it is both for the patients I describe. How? The identificatory trajectory Aubry describes is normative: there are individuals who, in the absence of potential space and a ‘third’ position, assemble pathological identifications around psychotic part-objects. De-idealisation is necessary but, if such part-objects are experienced as a substrate to large areas of personality, de-idealisation can be equated with loss of the sense of self. This is one of the challenges we face in treating individuals with psychosis.

25 January 2005