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The Editors are pleased to announce that the Michael Fordham Prize for the best paper relating to clinical issues submitted in 2012 has been awarded to
Martin Schmidt
for his article
‘Psychic skin: psychotic defences, borderline process and delusions’
which appeared in the February 2012 issue (Vol 57, 1, pp. 21-39)
Abstract: In this paper, I apply the concept of psychic skin to analytic work with people suffering from personality disorders and psychoses. When psychoses emerge, the defensive skin which protects the ego is breached and violent unconscious forces rip through the personality. Some of the patients diagnosed as schizophrenic with whom I work have identified with archetypal characters such as Christ, Satan, John Lennon and the Queen. I attempt to show how the adoption of these inflated personas can serve as secondary psychic skins. Such delusional identifications can provide a protective shield to hide the denuded self and prevent intrusion from the external world. Through clinical example, I try to demonstrate how these archetypal ‘second skins’ can preserve life until internal and external conditions make it possible for the self to emerge. I contrast such psychotic identifications with ‘thin-skinned’ and ‘thick-skinned’ narcissism as well as ‘defences of the self’ in borderline states where the psychic skin may be damaged but does not disintegrate. I also look at the ways in which Jung's own personal experience was different to this and how he managed to avert psychotic breakdown.
Keywords: archetypal identification, art therapy, inflated persona, liminality, schizophrenia, self harm, shame
Submissions are now invited for the 2015 annual prize, which should reach the editors by 30 June 2014. For further details, contact the Managing Editor, JAP, 1 Daleham Gardens, London NW3 5BY. Email: