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Sperling presents brief clinical fragments of patients in analysis who experienced pathological visual perceptions of objects coming closer (and becoming larger), and of objects receding. The patients were not psychotic. The pathological
changes in perception were interpreted as regressive phenomena occurring at a time when there was a threat of massive regression. These pathological perceptions served instinctual needs, had the function of preventing a break with reality by limiting it to the sphere of the specific pathological perceptions, and expressed the basic conflict of the patient. In the examples of objects coming closer, the patient was in danger of being overcome by oral-sadistic impulses; in those in which the objects moved away, the danger was that the patient would lose the anally retained objects which meant losing omnipotent anal control.