The Claustrum: An Investigation of Claustrophobic Phenomena

Meltzer distinguishes intrusive identification, an omnipotent phantasy of forcing one's way into the internal mother to possess her qualities, from the communicative projective identification that Bion described. He maps the inner world that intrusion creates: the claustrum, divided into the compartments of the head-breast, the genital and the rectum, each with its own atmosphere, in which the intruder lives in claustrophobic dread of expulsion. He traces the claustrum's part in narcissism, perversion and addiction, psychosis and the onset of schizophrenia, adolescence and politics, and the technical problems of reaching patients who live inside it. The book closes with an essay by Meg Harris Williams on Macbeth. Its publisher presents it as a companion to The Apprehension of Beauty, and Rebeca Grinberg noted that it calls the identification intrusive, a matter of quality, rather than massive, a matter of quantity.