Emptiness as Defense in Severe Regressive States
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8333205 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Lucy Lafarge (239 Central Park West (Suite 1–BE) New York, NY 10024, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1989 |
| Volume | 37 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 965-995 |
| Publication date | 1989-08-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0003-0651 • E-ISSN: 1941-2460 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/000306518903700405 |
| PMID | 2632631 |
| OpenAlex | W1991619451 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 11 |
| References cited | 7 |
This paper examines the empty states experienced by severely ill borderline patients. At times of stressful regression, these patients use complaints of emptiness to describe profound disturbances of affect, cognition, object relations, and bodily experience. Empty states may be seen as complex defensive configurations which protect a borderline level of psychic structure from the impact of aggressively charged object relations, and ward off further regression to states of fragmentation or fusion. Severely ill borderline patients consolidate an empty screen by means of a characteristic repertoire of primitive defenses consisting of various forms of projective identification, including bitriangulation and projective identification of psychic agencies, somatization, acting out, and specific alterations in cognition. The author describes the highly deviant organizations of the object world seen in empty states, and the complex and disturbing countertransferences which these states evoke
Affect (linguistics) · Cognition · Cognitive psychology · Emptiness · Epistemology · Fragmentation (computing) · Identification (biology) · Object (grammar) · Object relations theory · Projective identification · Projective test · Psychiatry · Psychic · Psychoanalysis · Psychotherapist · Somatization · Artificial Intelligence · Body Image and Dysmorphia Studies · Communication · Computer Science · Medicine · Mental Health and Psychiatry · Psychology · Psychotherapy Techniques and Applications · Social Psychology
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In Memory of Lucy Lafarge
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Toward an Ethic of Play in Psychoanalysis
Agoraphobia and Melancholia
The Thrall of the Negative and How to Analyze it
Sense of Emptiness
Void and narrative in the clinic of addictions
| Unique citing works | 11 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,48 |
| Citation span | 2003 - 2026 (24) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 9 |