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The author presents an excellent review of object relations theory in the context of his perspective of the paranoid process. In following this material it is helpful to have read the author's previous book, The Paranoid Process (1978), which formulates the theoretical basis for the clinical applications of the process. The author's perspective is that the paranoid process is not necessarily a pathological
phenomenon, and its significance in the phenomenological sense is briefly outlined in the present volume.
The theory of the paranoid process is an extension of the theory of internalization particularly concerning itself with those forms of internalization that have pathogenic potential. The core internalizations serve as the basis for the organization of the self and as the source of externalizations that influence and shape the nature of the individual's object relations. Study has made it clear that the paranoid process is a quite general, even universal, process that comes into play in many aspects of human experience and personality functioning.… The elements of the paranoid process are nothing new but have been part of psychoanalytic theory from the time of Freud's understanding of the role of internalizations in development and personality organization, (p. 16)
The author gives two reasons for persisting with the use of the term even though it is confusing in the context of psychopathology. The first reason is that the mechanisms involved can be identified with clarity in frank paranoid pathology and the second being that the term “paranoid process” highlights an “inherent potentiality that is one of the more significant implications of the process itself in personality development and functioning” (p. 15). By this he means the potentiality “even in relatively better organized and better functioning personalities, to shift under appropriate eliciting conditions in the direction of paranoid pathology” (p. 15).
Much of the material presented in this book is fa