Aloneness and the Isakower phenomenon

Under the sway of the oedipal imperative, the Isakower phenomenon has long been regarded as a regressive perceptual defense against castration anxiety accompanying incestuous wishes, often stimulated by primal scene exposure-fantasy. Clinical material from the psychoanalytic psychotherapy of a borderline patient with object constancy deficits is offered to support a reconceptualization of the Isakower phenomenon: Following annihilatory rage and the destruction of extant inner objects, resulting in a regression to the "drive organization of memory," the face-breast imagery within the Isakower phenomenon arrives as a hallucinatory alternative to unbearable aloneness.