The Pipe Child and the Cork Child: Infantile Vulnerability and Malignant Symbiosis

Abstract

The author, based on his experience of intensive psychoanalysis with children suffering from early developmental catastrophes, examines narcissistic intrusive identifications and their related unconscious phantasies, anxieties and defenses. The paper describes two central unconscious phantasies: that of Pipe Children, who experience themselves as open-ended, hollow pipes, helplessly subjected to infiltrations and invasions by the object’s psychic toxic material; and Cork Children, who feel compelled to stuff and block what they perceive as the object’s holes or internal voids, in order to keep the container functioning and themselves alive. Some varieties of internal scripts within the child are described, particularly those of children experiencing either the impenetrable object’s invasive projections of psychic materials, or a more primitive osmotic/diffuse identification, in which there is no clear differentiation or localization between leaking-in and spilling-out psychic materials in self and object.