A recent article (Lederer, 1997) discusses a type of client referred to as the “Unwanted Child,” whose injury originated in infancy and who characteristically cannot discharge his or her aggression toward the source of the frustration. Instead, these clients attack themselves, sometimes with dire consequences. This phenomenon is known in the modern psychoanalytic literature as the “narcissistic defense.” This current article proposes that there is an important survival aim to the self-attack: to provide stimulation to the abandoned infant within (C1) and to keep it from deteriorating into marasmus and death.
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