You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
The author's main thesis is that there is a close connection between lonesomeness and compulsions, and that compulsions serve as a defense against the sadness and loss provoked by certain patterns of 'withdrawn mothering'. Very often the child's compulsive loneliness reactivates the mother's unconscious infantile fantasies equated with her damaged phallus. Many interesting clinical vignettes are provided to illustrate the development of sadness in the child within a peculiar mother-child relationship in which mother deprives the child of attention in diverse ways. The child reacts to the emotionally withdrawn mother by developing compulsive manifestations. The compulsive activity symbolizes the wished-for possession of mother and also defends against loneliness. This type of defense and gratification is most prominent in the individuation-separation period. In part the mother's chronic withdrawal is explained on the basis of her equating the child with her fantasied infantile phallus damaged by masturbation. The withdrawal is seen as the mother's struggle against masturbation. Intolerant of the child's phallic activity, the mother functions more comfortably with him on an anal-sadistic level and hence re-enforces the child's anal fixation.