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How do we speak about the impact of experience in the pre-verbal period, the inscribed but not yet psychically represented? What kinds of theories are available to us to do so? Do we hold a theory that assumes that all registrations or inscriptions are psychic in some sense and so there is no frontier in need of crossing? Or do we believe that some registrations or inscriptions are pre-psychic, not yet organized and a theory of frontier crossing is necessary? This paper will attempt to take us beyond neurosis: to how we try to think about, understand and work with non-neurotic patients and areas of the mind; and to the all too familiar challenges presented by situations whose exploration and resolution do not proceed according to the classical descriptions of the analytic process.
As I use the term, neurosis implies organization, psychic representation, symbolization, conflict, compromise formation and defense. For neurotic patients and the more structured (i.e., neurotic-normal) parts of patient's minds, the technical assumptions of the topographic theory will serve us well in understanding their conflicts and in guiding us in our technical stance - neutrality, abstinence, free association, etc. However, with child cases and widening scope patients-borderline, «limit cases,» narcissistic and psychosomatic disturbances, perversions, addictions, and other impulse disorders - in the many situations