Psychology and Treatment of Depersonalization: Fritz Wittels. Psa. Rev., XXVII, No. 1, 1940.

Fritz Wittels who, in an earlier paper1, Unconscious Phantoms in Neurotics, introduced a psychology of phantoms, tries to explain depersonalization by this phantom psychology. He says, in reference to observations made on various cases, '… it seems to me that the cause of depersonalization is an unusually great number of phantomatic figures leaving the ego in such a position that it cannot decide which one of the figures has to be acknowledged as its representative'. In terms of the libido theory we might say that 'insufficient ego libido is invested in any one of these phantoms. Hence they are all grey and colorless surrounding a perplexed and swaying personality.' And later he finds that, '… it does seem as though the superego is responsible for the disintegration of personality, by condemning all of the phantoms without exception as unreal'… As an explanation of the libidinal basis of the still enigmatic phenomenon of depersonalization, this does not appear to be adequate. With depersonalization, very delicate ego psychological relations are bound to be disturbed. Cathexes of receptive organs of perception for interior and exterior processes are hardly