The Psychotic: Aspects of the Personality

The Psychotic: Aspects of the Personality presents the results of Dr David Rosenfeld's many years of experience as an analyst working with deeply disturbed or psychotic patients, and demonstrates how the deeply resulting clinical and theoretical formulations may additionally be applied to less disturbed patients.

Part One, dealing with the theory and clinical treatment of the psychotic aspects of the personality, includes a review of the literature and a rich array of clinical material to illustrate Dr Rosenfeld's technical approach. A chapter devoted to the survivors of concentration camps shows how the concept of encapsulated autistic nuclei leads to new diagnostic and technical procedures, while a further paper discusses the psychotic difficulties attending heart-transplant surgery. Further essays illuminate the importance of the accurate detection and the use of the countertransference and the significance of the supervisor's supportive role in severe cases.

Part Two develops Dr Rosenfeld's notion of the primitive psychotic body image (PPBI), and shows how the model has proved its effectiveness in such areas as somatic delusion and drug-addiction.