The Sense of Aliveness and Feelings of Being Real

This is an account of a young woman who grew up with feelings of depersonalization, derealization, and lack of agency, so that she often didn't feel real or completely alive. While the psychological basis for these feelings seemed clear in her early developmental history, it was discovered that she also had major visual and psychomotor disabilities that exacerbated her situation in complicated ways. This paper touches on some of the narcissistic problems that make it difficult for the analyst to accurately view and to work holistically with issues of psyche-soma. It also suggests that actively helping the patient to perform the eye exercises that she was unable to do on her own may have been a useful parameter in this case.