thanks guys. hurts, yeah. i've been reading the archives a little to try and remember him.

does anyone have any thoughts on the 'bottoming out' stuff? i've just recently come to understand that the different analytic theories have different notions of what is at base (where analysis stops, basically). i guess i didn't think that they had one... but... they do.

seems ego psychology is big on innate / constitutional drives. thats why kernberg goes on about 'constitutional agression' with respect to BPD, i guess...

i found something on how kohut thought it was about fragmentation. about how little kids are in this unintegrated disorganised state. that mother helps integrate the experience. that eventually the experience gets integrated into a self.

i'm not sure i buy the notion that an infants experience is a 'blooming and buzzing confusion' (not sure who said that). empirical evidence seems to be that an infants experience is actually fairly organised... sigh. makes sense of t's wanting to spend a lot of time with his kid though... if he thinks its more fragmented than me :-(

(sorry that was a really stoopid thing to say).

sigh.

but annihilation / fragmentation, yeah.

but i do find it hard to seperate that from the other things...

i'm sure kohut said something at some point about experience that can't be put into words. i get that too... tend to somatosize it...

rational understanding, of course.

to get lost in it is meant to be psychosis...

what do people think?