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Disturbances in self feelings comprise a significant portion of patients' complaints that extend the entire range of psychopathology. They reach special prominence, of course, in borderline patients where these experiences become the central focus of the early and middle stages of clinical work and their resolution the linchpin to a successful outcome. Because of their centrality, striving to understand and treat these disturbances in the subjective experience of the self has been instrumental in providing the impetus for the creation of new theoretical models. Still, with all this ferment, the possible existence of their deeper dynamic meaning as well as their metapsychological structure are not at all clear and remain a point of controversy.
Such symptomaticlike complaints as not feeling human, real, or alive, associated with profoundly distressing bodily experiences of emptiness or an inner void, as well as a sense of personality devoid of substance and a life filled with chaos and meaninglessness are included among the conscious experiences that are in large measure reflective of severe disturbances of the self organization. These