Nothingness, Meaninglessness, Chaos, and the “Black Hole” II

The paradox of innocence dissociative “adhesive”; states in perpetrators of incest

“…For Ogden, both autistic-contiguous and paranoid-schizoid modes lack an interpreting subject who can know his own history, and know himself as agent. This inability to know oneself as historical agent is exacerbated by paranoidschizoid attacks on linkages (Grotstein, 1981). The destruction of linkages is the destruction of thought and perception; experience is rendered insignificant and meaningless, and "the significance of facts for truth undergoes eclipse or extinction" (Grotstein, 1981, p. 93, italics added).…”

“…Health and pathology are similarly defined: health involves the fluid adaptive accessibility of different modalities (Ogden, 1989); pathology is characterized by the inaccessibility of a particular modality (Ogden, 1989), and by various degrees of dissociative discontinuities of self (Grotstein, 1981). In illness, shifting coexis-474 Sue Grand tent self-states, each characterized by its own anxiety, are unknown to one another.…”

“…He or she possesses an incestuous self that lives without speech, without consciousness and without memory. This perpetrator/survivor has entered the "black hole" of nameless dread, in which hope has been surrendered, integrity has been foreclosed, and the soul has been forfeited (Grotstein, 1990). He is a schizoid who engages in evil without love or hate, but rather to control emergent internal states that he fears but never enters.…”

The Psychodynamics of Self-Observation

“…My intervention was intended to bring her into one-dimensional observation, encouraging her to approach her present moment experience and challenge her manic defense. The intervention brought her into contact with the "O" of her emotional experience, which at this time was a "black hole" experience (Grotstein, 1990).…”

Reality in Cyberspace: Analysands' Use of the Internet and Ordinary Everyday Psychosis

“…Odgen (1995) also describes the deadness of the transference, and the analyst's countertransference response, in patients seeking to avoid loss by being narcissistically invulnerable. Autistic defenses seen in the analysis of adult patients (Bick, 1968;Grotstein, 1990;S. Klein, 1980;La Farge, 1989;Tustin, 1986) have much overlap with qualities associated with the paranoid-schizoid position (Joseph, 1987;Steiner, 1993).…”