Object relations issues in the treatment of the preoedipal character

It was through tolerance of Ms. D.'s infantile rage (i.e., rage against reality and its limits) that the analyst was able to open up a dialogue with the patient that could lead to a developmental mourning process. The same was true for the borderline character, Ms. A.! The interpersonal dialogue between analyst and analysand, which had both empathic and interpretive functions, allowed Ms. D. to reactivate her capacities for an intrapsychic dialectic gained during infancy. In her case, as well as in that of Ms. A., the initiation of an internal dialectic allowed for a mourning process to unfold. It is proposed that this internal dialectic is evidence of the existence of the psychic structure necessary to promote both mourning and the mutuality of interpersonal dialogue. The inability to mourn, generally seen in narcissistic and borderline characters, can be seen, therefore, not only as a failure in psychic structure formation, but also as a failure in psychic structure function that is due to intrapsychic defense.