Ordinary people and extra-ordinary protections : a post-Kleinian approach to the treatment of primitive mental states

1 Transference interpretation and the emergence of infantile dependency in ordinary people. 2 Extra-ordinary protections: the evolution of the theory of adhesive identification. 3 Ordinary people and extra-ordinary protections. 4 The "Flying Dutchman" and the search for a containing object. 5 Chloe: from pre-conception to after birth. 6 Unbearable ecstasy, reverence and awe, and the perpetuation of an "aesthetic conflict". 7 Never before and never again. 8 Changes of mind: on thinking things through in the countertransference. 9 Concluding thoughts

'Many people come to analysis appearing quite 'ordinary' on the surface. However, once below that surface, we often come into contact with something quite unexpected: 'extra-ordinary protections' created to keep at bay any awareness of deeply traumatic happenings occurring at some point in life. Judith Mitrani investigates the development and the function of these protections, allowing the reader to witness the evolution of the process of transformation, wherein defensiveness steadily mutates into communication. She lucidly and artfully weaves detailed clinical observations with a variety of analytic concepts, and her original notions--including 'unmentalized experience' and its expression in enactments; 'adhesive pseudo-object relations' and the ways in which this contrasts and compares with normal and narcissistic object relations--provide valuable tools for understanging the infantile transference/countertransference and for the refinement of our technique with primitive mental states.'

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