Facing fear with people who have a history of psychosis

Abstract

In this paper I wish to focus upon the sense of terror which seems to underlie the experience of psychosis. I think that it is often the intense desire to avoid such feelings which makes people with a history of psychosis believe that they are somehow hollow or that they do not have inside themselves whatever it is that is necessary for life. I am reminded of what the Kleinian W.R. Bion suggested, when he wrote, At the beginning of life the absent object is not experienced but is replaced by an hallucination. When this fails the infant does not experience an absence but something bad (Bion, 1967, p112). 1 find myself remembering some of the phrases which Bion uses to describe the experience of psychosis when I am working with people who are in the midst of it. These phrases, attacks on linking, bizarre objects and in particular, nameless dread have the quality of metaphor in the way they help elaborate understanding, even though they clearly belong to a very particular theoretical framework. There are passages in the work of Bion which dislodge the safety of language and make the reader understand something about the quality of experience in psychosis.