The schizoid, borderline, and narcissistic analysand of our time and place

“As a rule, today’s patients do not simply present classically neurotic problems of an oedipal nature. Rather, they present the kind of problems which have come to be labeled schizoid, borderline, and narcissistic. For whatever reasons, problems of self and object relations—experienced as feelings of meaninglessness, feelings of emptiness, pervasive depression, lack of sustaining interests, goals, ideals, and values, and feelings of unrelatedness—are the overwhelming predominant symptoms in today’s modal patient. Furthermore, since as early as 1954, Winnicott warned young analysts that they would be unlikely to be seeing many classically neurotic patients in their practices, it is clear that we are witnessing a phenomenon of some duration.”—Morris N. Eagle in Recent Developments in Psychoanalysis: A Critical Evaluation (1984)

Image: Kathe Kollwitz, Die Witwe I (The Widow I), 1922-3.