psikotik kişiliklerin psikotik olmayanlardan ayrımı*

Progress in psychoanalytic work with psychotic patients can only be achieved if the psychoanalyst can differentiate the psychotic personality from the neurotic personality. Psychotic mechanisms are characterized by the minute splitting of the ego and the projection of these fragments into the object, thus penetrating and engulfing it. The aim of splitting and projective identification is the obliteration of the awareness of internal and external reality. The patient's destructive attacks are particularly directed against aspects of reality that have the function of linking one object with the other. As a result of these attacks, all the aspects that could provide the basis for intuitive understanding of himself/herself are jeopardized. Thus ego functions such as, consciousness of sense impressions, attention, memory, judgement, thought, are attained. In the patient's phantasy, the split off and expelled particles of the ego lead an independent existence in the external objects and are perceived as hostile to one self. In consequence, the patient feels persecuted by an increasing number of such fragments that he cannot control and feels surrounded by bizarre objects.