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The book answers questions that analysts often face when treating borderline patients: How can they proceed when patients withdraw emotionally to an extreme degree? When their lives threaten to freeze in chaos and treatment stagnates? How can the different forms of emotional withdrawal be understood analytically? This book discusses a repertoire of psychological responses that occasionally appear in normal individuals and neurotics, but primarily in the analysis of borderline patients and psychotics. All forms of emotional withdrawal are characterized by states of encapsulation or hiding. Patients retreat into an unconscious fantasy world that serves as a powerful shield against fears and painful experiences. They become unreachable for the analyst. The analytical relationship is marked by traits of superficiality, coldness, or schizoid arrogance. Steiner has observed such states particularly in the analysis of borderline patients, whose treatment threatened to become completely stagnant or to freeze in a destructive transference offer. He aims to describe the function of these states more precisely and to find ways to analytically address them. According to his insights, it is necessary for patients to work through experiences of separation and loss in order to break free from rigid defensive organizations and transform the pseudostability of withdrawal into a vibrant development. Steiner's approach is influenced by the works of H. Segal, B. Joseph, E. O'Shaughnessy, and H. Rosenfeld. His book represents an evolution of Kleinian positions and, with its clear understanding of the clinical situation, makes a significant contribution to psychoanalytic treatment techniques.