Betrayal of the Self: The Violence of Narcissistic Defense. Winfrid Trimborn, pp.  1033-1056.

If the infant's objects have not been sufficiently available as self-objects, the infantile ego reacts to premature loss, overwhelming anxiety, and helplessness by creating a pathologically narcissistic organization that is supposed to ward off future dangers of trauma and nameless dread, according to Trimborn. In denying separation and the related affects, the subject defends against the realization

of dependency, and thus against any meaningful object. Still, the longing for fusion with an idealized primary object will elicit fear of self-loss and necessitate the fight against that fear.

The author calls this pathological organization that defends against the reactivation of the primal trauma (including projective identification, splitting, manic denial, omnipotence, idealization, devaluation)—and thus works against the needy self—a betrayal of the true self; however, to give up this pathological organization will also be experienced as a betrayal, a betrayal of the false self. The author suggests that the ensuing violence seen in this pathology aims at preserving this narcissistic self-organization. The aggression strives to effect restitution and survival of the narcissistic self. The author emphasizes the difference between a self-preserving aggression and a sadomasochistic aggression; the former does not mean to hurt the object, but rather to extinguish the perception and awareness of the object (the threat of being extinguished via fusion with the object).

Trimborn differentiates between three basic structures of this pathological organization: (1) As long as the subject still searches for an object, the object relations are hysterical, sadomasochistic, and addictive; while the violence of the borderline personality consists in an omnipotent control of the object via projective identification and splitting between good and bad objects. (2) The subject tries to avoid any meaningful contact via schizoid and autistic withdrawal; the violence consists in a denial