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Gianna Williams describes the central theme of her book in the first few lines of her introduction as ‘the theme of the impairment in taking in from another, in internalising dependent relationships'. These concepts are the building blocks, a son of primary alphabet out of which, in different combinations, the narrative of the book originates and develops.
One can make a broad central distinction within the impairment of the capacity to establish a vital relationship of dependence on another. On the one hand, are the situations of deprivation or trauma which have either prevented the development of internal structures or overwhelmed them with intolerable input. On the other, are the pathologies where dependency is actively rejected by a turning to destructive internal structures and parts of the self. This distinction is not, however, clear-cut, as the author illustrates in the chapter ‘Doubly deprived’. Here she describes the interplay between external deprivation and the deprivation derived from the development of crippling defences which perpetuate, internally, the experience of actual emotional deprivation.
However, the distinction is useful in identifying the primary function which brings about the development of a specific edifice of defences, in some cases it is a protection from psychic fragmentation; that is, the result of an attempt to survive in a predicament of extreme deprivation or threat, thus acting on the side of life and survival. On the other side of the divide are the defences arising from an abandonment of hope as well as those arising from the mental pain implicit in dependency upon a unique, precious and irreplaceable object. The flight from dependency on such an emotionally expensive object can take the form of