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The author starts her paper by focusing on the diversity of the psychoanalytic concepts related to depersonalization.
Supported by her clinical observations and based on Winnicott's and Mahler's studies on the earliest phases of the child's development and on R. & L. Grinberg's recent contribution to the study of identity and change, the author suggests that depersonalization is a disturbance of the sense of identity, which can be accompanied by loss of the sense of reality of the people around and in the external world (Derealization).
Drawing on the contributions of Winnicott, Mahler and Jacobson, she studies the aetiopathogeny of depersonalization and defends the idea that 'the nature of the process and mechanisms that lead to depersonalization is essentially the same in neurotic, psychotic and normal individuals'.
She assumes that 'the most serious disturbances that occur in the mother-baby relationship during the first stage of development are responsible for the states of depersonalization later on, states which could be called chronic or persistent'. Less severe states bring about regression of a temporary nature of transitory states of depersonalization that appear during existential crisis and that even normal people may present.
The author points out that the change may affect the sense of identity of the bodily or mental ego—a factor that she considers as 'the main factor that unleashes' the feeling of depersonalization.
After describing in detail a clinical case, the author arrives at the following conclusions:
1Depersonalization is a mental state characterized by the feeling of partial or total loss of identity that may be accompanied by the loss of the sense of reality of people around and of the external world.
2The state of depersonalization may be temporary or persistent, depending on the degree of disturbance in ego integration a