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We are indebted to Dr. Bychowski for this addition to his important series of papers on the general subject of the role of the introject in borderline and psychotic states. While the case illustrations of oscillation and fluidity provoke a flood of ideas, I shall confine myself to certain features of the case of the young schizophrenic woman, in which congealment, as a mode of ego operation and defense, is discussed by the author in considerable detail.
I am unclear as to exactly how Dr. Bychowski perceives the split in the patient's ego and just how the pathologic introjects deriving from the parental figures are represented in this split. Also, in spite of his lucid presentation, the complex clinical material appears to lend itself to a somewhat different set of formulations regarding the defensive activities of the ego than some he has offered us.
Turning to the question of the pathologic introjects, we lack enough information about the all-important psychotic transferences to allow us to see them clearly, especially as to what is healthy and what is pathologic—and, of course, what is healthy ego and what is defended against hinges upon such understanding. Turning first to the way the patient perceives the parents (the mother is not described separately): they are “great, unique, brilliant”
and “simultaneously malicious, loathsome, cruel.” According to the author, this is a duality in the patient's perceptions of the parents. Yet, on the subject of knowledge alone, the patient behaves in two ways: first, as “pretending to pursue the interest of a sophisticated young intellectual,” and second, as one capable of discussing “with competence and erudition some point of … scholarship. …” This to my mind suggests that the patient's ego perceived a split in the nature of intellectual activities of the parents. To continue, in her behavior toward herself Miss A. can speak with the “voice of a comforting and protecting parent” and, on the other hand, she can “tremble for