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Thomas Ogden's work deserves attentive reading. He deals with deep material in clear, well-organized ways. He states his ideas, then gives solid clinical examples. He takes pains to be sure that the reader remains well oriented and grasps what is being communicated. His main interest is in primitive states or aspects of personality, but he has useful observations to make about oedipal situations, too. Ogden draws from many sources, especially from Klein, Tustin, Fairbairn, Winnicott, Guntrip, and Balint. He turns differences between Kleinian and Winnicottian thinking into a kind of dialectic, in which each compensates for, offsets, limits, and feeds the other.
Ogden describes the starting point of mental life (the most primitive psychical structure or state of being) as the “autistic-contiguous” position. The emphasis here is on sensory organization, particularly skin-surface sensation. This is a presymbolic realm in which primitive meanings grow out of immediate sensory experience. The characteristic dread revolves around dissolution of sensory boundaries, which may be felt as endlessly falling or leaking or otherwise becoming lost in shapelessness.
Ogden relies on Frances Tustin's writings in delineating the autistic-contiguous position. Tustin has graphically portrayed the black hole experience of the infant who is precociously ripped from sensory oneness with the beast. A sensation of being torn may mark an infant's experience and never go away. The rip may be so severe that one's capacity to generate meaningful sensory organizations is wounded. An individual may artificially defend himself or herself in order to endure a lasting threat to sensory integrity.
Ogden extends Tustin's work by emphasizing the dialectical interplay