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Section 3. Clinical Applications

The Unwanted Child's Narcissistic Defense Revisited

Pages 347-349
Published online: 28 Dec 2017
 
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A recent article (Lederer, 1997) discusses a type of client referred to as the “Unwanted Child,” whose injury originated in infancy and who characteristically cannot discharge his or her aggression toward the source of the frustration. Instead, these clients attack themselves, sometimes with dire consequences. This phenomenon is known in the modern psychoanalytic literature as the “narcissistic defense.” This current article proposes that there is an important survival aim to the self-attack: to provide stimulation to the abandoned infant within (C1) and to keep it from deteriorating into marasmus and death.

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Aaron Lederer

Aaron Lederer is an ITAA Certified Transactional Analyst (clinical) in private practice in Chatham, New Jersey. He is also a certified modern psychoanalyst and is on the faculty of the New Jersey Center for Modern Psychoanalysis. The author welcomes contact from those whose interest is aroused by this article.
 

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