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.
Stolorow
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Stolorow
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D000328:Adult; D001293:Attitude to Death; D003702:Delusions / Q000523:psychology / Q000628:therapy*; D005260:Female; D005783:Gender Identity; D006117:Grief; D006801:Humans; D007062:Identification, Psychological; D009769:Object Attachment; D010553:Personality Development; D011369:Professional-Patient Relations; D011575:Psychoanalytic Therapy / Q000379:methods*; D012801:Sibling Relations; D013405:Suicide / Q000523:psychology