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In psychotic regressive processes early preoedipal identifications are revived. These are quite different from normal ego identifications. In psychosis realistic representations of the object world and of the self break down, being replaced by distorted, unrealistic, and delusional concepts, a state resembling infancy, when the child is flooded by 'magic images'. In normal development, merging of the self-image with the love-object image paves the way for ego and superego identifications with the goal of becoming like the love object in the future. Disintegration of this process in the manic depressive leads to his treating himself as though he were the bad (delusions of worthlessness) or the good (delusions of grandeur) love object. In the schizophrenic, there may be the conscious belief that he has become another object. The schizophrenic shows enormous cathectic fluidity and intolerance of ambivalence. Objects are totally decathected and as quickly recathected. The manic depressive, on the other hand, maintains dependence on the powerful love object by means of introjection. The melancholic gains self-control through guilty fears and submission to a destructive superego. The schizophrenic suffers fears of persecution or of being killed by murderous parental figures. In the manic depressive, regression is more limited, does not lead to total identifications, and produces severe conflict between the ego and the superego. In the schizophrenic ego and superego deterioration is much greater; the struggle between the ego and superego is represented by conflicts between the magical self and object images within the deteriorated ego.