title: Aloneness and the Isakower phenomenon.
abstract: Under the sway of the oedipal imperative, the Isakower phenomenon has long been regarded as a regressive perceptual defense against castration anxiety accompanying incestuous wishes, often stimulated by primal scene exposure-fantasy. Clinical material from the psychoanalytic psychotherapy of a borderline patient with object constancy deficits is offered to support a reconceptualization of the Isakower phenomenon: Following annihilatory rage and the destruction of extant inner objects, resulting in a regression to the "drive organization of memory," the face-breast imagery within the Isakower phenomenon arrives as a hallucinatory alternative to unbearable aloneness.
authors.affiliation: Veterans Administration Minneapolis Medical Center.
authors.forename: C A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Peterson
mesh_terms: D001010:Anxiety, Separation / Q000523:psychology; D001883:Borderline Personality Disorder / Q000523:psychology* / Q000628:therapy; D005201:Fantasy; D006212:Hallucinations; D006801:Humans; D008132:Loneliness / Q000523:psychology*; D008297:Male; D009034:Mother-Child Relations; D011575:Psychoanalytic Therapy