You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
This book of thirty-one previously published articles spans the period 1958-1972 and deals with the study and treatment of the whole range of preoedipal disorders. Peter Giovacchini, one of the analysts who find that the narcissistic patient can develop a transference and is thus amenable to psychological treatment, turns to classical psychoanalysis as offering the most optimistic approach. The formulations presented, although they may require future change, provide “some organization and guideline to what otherwise would appear to be a chaotic psychic morass.”
Within the framework of ego psychology Giovacchini uses a wealth of clinical material to provide a microscopic examination of ego development and structure and its efficient and pathological adaptations to reality with special emphasis on impaired identity sense. Important developmental concepts are investigated: how the crucial mothering experience affects psychic structure and object relationships; how maturational failures are reflected in several regressed states and in unresolved infantile symbiosis; how aggression appears in adaptive and disruptive aspects. Marriage is explored as a special type of object relationship; a section deals with psychic operations and ego states in severe psychosomatic disorders.
Part IV deals exclusively with various “Clinical and Technical Issues.” Countertransference difficulties are highlighted as a major factor in treatment failure; understanding the adaptive significance of the preoedipal patient's negative transference projections enables