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The 'special mechanism' Isaacs describes in a schizoid boy, is the acting out of metaphors, comparable to the translation of metaphors and idioms into pictures
in dreams. This phenomenon occurs when a verbal expression secondarily becomes again the object of the primary process. This occurs in dreams as well as in schizophrenia when attempts at restitution catch verbal representations of objects instead of the objects themselves.
When the patient who unconsciously hates his grandmother, but at the same time has tender feelings towards her, expresses his ambivalence in attempts to throw a cat with a parachute out of the window, such behavior seems to the reviewer indeed not only an acting out of the idioms of 'throwing her out' and 'letting her down gently', but also, without metaphors, the expression of the conflict between the impulses to kill her and to spare her.
Especially interesting are some acts of magical behavior of the patient such as certain motions of the fingers, the unconscious meaning of which is, 'the other people are only my puppets'. This warded off the feeling that he himself is the other people's puppet. Other magical behavior patterns of the patient are less clear and are interpreted by the author according to Melanie Klein's points of view.