My brother's keeper: intensive treatment of a case of delusional merger

We have presented the intensive treatment of a young woman whose chronic suicidality had resulted from a delusional merger with a brother who had died during her childhood. The case offered a particularly clear example of derailment of the developmental process of self-differentiation, leading to the formation of a highly pathological introject and delusion of merger. Emphasis was placed on the repetitive and self-object aspects of the transference bond that became established and on how the analysis of these shifting dimensions of the transference contributed to the therapeutic process.