Lost and Found – A Five Year Old’s Struggle to Find a Home

This paper will highlight Meltzer’s seminal concept of the claustrum, an unconscious phantasy of space inside the body of the internal mother that has been broken into and occupied. The function of such a phantasy of invasion into the internal mother is usually defensive in nature, where infantile anxiety has not been assuaged by adequate means of containment. The infantile part in seeking to avoid anxieties of annihilation and abandonment, in phantasy forcibly enters the internal maternal object residing there in search of relief. The price of seeking out such relief from vulnerability and helplessness is entrapment with lies, deceit, cruelty, and fraudulence as bedfellows. Meltzer pointed to the difficult struggle in escaping such fraudulent ways of being, to be able to acknowledge the goodness of the creative couple and the bearing of depressive pain. The claustrum is therefore a claustrophobic enclave. The setting is the inside of a maternal object that is made up of separate compartments, each filled with its own geographical features and qualities. This paper will draw upon intensive psychoanalytic psychotherapy with a five-year-old adopted child to illustrate the quality of existence within the claustrum and the child’s struggle to find an internal home. Waitara Ko tā tēnei tuhinga he aronui i te ariā tairangi a Merete, arā Meltzer, mō te mokoā, he mariko maurimoengā mokoā i roto o te tinana o te hinengaro whaea kua wāhia kua whetaia. Ko te tikanga o te mariko pērā ki te hinengaro whaea, i te nuinga o te wā, he momo whakatumatuma mēnā kāre i mau pai te whakamāoriori taiohi. Ko te wāhanga ki te taiohi i a ia e whai ana ki te karo manawa pā ā-kore, ā-whakarerehanga i rō mariko ka houa te rawa hinengaro whaea kei reira nei e noho ana ki te kimi taumatua. Ko te utu o te rapu whakamāmātanga o te pēhitanga me te paraheaheahanga he whakamau ki te kōrero parau, ki te mahi whakawiriwiri me te whānako hai hoa moetahi. I tohua ake e Merete te uauatanga o te whawhai ki te māwhiti i ēnei momo mahi, o te kaha ki te whakaae ki te pai o te tokorua mariko me te pupuri mamae pēhitanga. Nōreira, he wāhi whakatinā te mokoā nei. Ko te tūnga, ko roto o tētahi rawa morimori i hangaia mai i ētahi tūāporo whakakīa ki ōna ake matawhenua, kōunga hoki. Ka huri tēnei pepa ki te tātarihanga whaiora hinengaro o tētahi tama tāne whāngai tokorima ngā tau hai whakaahua i te kōunga o te mauri kei roto i te mokoā me te karawheta a te tamaiti ki te kimi kāinga hinengaro.