Chapter 4 Mental Space and Elements of Symbolism

In the previous chapter I presented my ideas on the development from concrete symbolformation to the formation of symbols in the depressive position. My assumption was that concrete thinking and symbolization are a regression to the paranoid-schizoid position. Following Klein, I thought in terms of excessive protective identification as leading to pathology. Since then, more work has been done on the actual pathology of the paranoidschizoid position, and the difference between more normal forms of protective identification, even before the depressive position, and forms which are pathological. In his paper on the Differentiation of the psychotic from the non-psychotic personalities’, Bion (1957) distinguishes between nol. In his paper on the ‘Drmal and psychotic forms of projective identification. In normal development the projection is of parts of the personality or internal objects which are split off but not unduly fragmented; projections of that kind can be gradually withdrawn in the depressive position and re-owned by the self. The more pathological forms are characterized by a great hatred of reality and therefore also of the perceiving part of the ego, including its perceptual apparatus. The individual splinters this hateful part of the ego into minute fragments and projects it into the object with great violence, which in turn splits the object in a similar manner. The result is that the subject feels surrounded by ‘bizarre objects’. Such objects are minute fragments of the subject’s personality embodied in minute fragments of the object and imbued with extreme hostility. The existence of those bizarre objects in the mind can easily be detected in the psychotic, but they may also exist in a split-off part of the mind in nonpsychotic people, particularly in the severe neurotic. In the case of more normal splitting and projective identification, projections are gradually withdrawn and integration is possible. Bizarre objects cannot easily be withdrawn, and the