The Dread of Falling

The Dread of Falling: Reflections on Primitive Mental States offers a comprehensive and original view of primitive mental states from a psychoanalytic perspective, allowing the reader to understand the nature of these states from developmental, theoretical and clinical vantage points. The book begins with a review of early mental development and its relevance to the understanding of primitive mental states. Alina Schellekes explores major primary anxieties of being and considers object relations that characterize loose or shattered structures of the self. "The dread of falling" both describes a concrete anxiety prevalent in such states and serves as a metaphor and common thread through the book to portray the deep dread of losing base with one's meaningful objects. Schellekes looks at how, in cases of severe developmental deprivation or late-onset trauma, mental void structures or states of emotional indigestible excess may evolve, creating complex challenges in the analytic process. Schellekes explores various mental survival tactics that are often developed and deployed by patients finding themselves in such extreme cases: omnipotent self-holding defences, autistic manoeuvers, rebirth fantasies and excessive daydreaming. She discusses the quality of analytic presence that is necessary when facing unrepresented mental layers and uncentered states of mind, so as to minimize the risk of toxic states in analysis and of premature terminations. Including perceptive analyses of literary and fine art works, the book invites the reader on an intellectual and emotional journey through complex mental landscapes of patient and analyst, encompassing profound theoretical understandings and subtle clinical observations.

Alina Schellekes is a Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst of the Israel Psychoanalytic Society; head of the Primitive Mental States advanced track at the Psychoanalytic Program of Psychotherapy, Tel Aviv University; chair of the Frances Tustin Memorial Trust; and recipient in 2006 of the Honorary Mention of Phyllis Meadow Award in New York for excellence in psychoanalytical writing. In 2008, she won the Frances Tustin Memorial Prize; in 2023 the IPA Hayman Prize for Published Work pertaining to Traumatized Children and Adults.

1. Early emotional development and primitive mental states: A brief perspective 2. The dread of falling and dissolving 3. When time stood still: Thoughts about time in primitive mental states 4. Arid mental landscapes and avid cravings for human contact: Beckettian and analytic narratives on psychic void and its vicissitudes 5. Daydreaming and hypochondria: When daydreaming goes wrong and hypochondria becomes an autistic retreat 6. Sentenced to life: Reflections on trauma and the inability to bear vitality, following the movie Turtles Can Fly 7. Stations along the via dolorosa of good enough endings Concluding notes: Bone-building interpretations