"Can you hear me? Can you hear me? My mother hasn't died!" a patient told me repeatedly but emotionally coldly the day after her mother's death. From my side, being in an emotional state where surprise, awkwardness, and anxiety prevailed, I started to wonder: "Why does she insist on the perceptual dimension of things ("can you hear me?")? What has happened to her emotions? What kind of object is she addressing?
In the example I mentioned, we have a psychological conflict or we are in the realm of the difficulty of conflict, which is expressed through the paradox: "my mother has died but she hasn't died." What is the place, that "refuge" of psychological defenses, to which both she and I resort?"