The Body and Mind (Including of the Analyst) in the Treatment of a Psychotic State: Some Reflections: Commentary on Paper by Riccardo Lombardi

Abstract

Riccardo Lombardi's paper is considered from a British (Independent) object relations perspective. Although the paper deals with the experience of shame and its relationship to fantasies about sex and death and how these are experienced (including in the body), shame is also a profoundly object related mental state, perhaps one of the most damaging when suffered in infancy, leading to reflexive functioning. The nature of shame is touched upon and its impact on personality development, and how this is handled in the transference and countertransference by Riccardo Lombardi with his particular patient. Although the patient's struggle to own his own hate is Lombardi's principal focus in the clinical account, this author suggests that Lombardi was attuned primarily to the patient's developmental failings due to the impact of shame and, by working primarily in the countertransference, was able to facilitate growth of certain personality functions for the first time.