Listening to Psychic Architecture: A Reflective Practice

In my work with adolescents experiencing obsessive-compulsive symptoms, I’ve found that symptoms alone tell us very little. A compulsion, an intrusive thought, an avoidance—these are surface ripples. To work meaningfully, I need to understand the psychic architecture beneath them: the emotional structures, the unconscious terrain, the phantasy life shaping how the young person inhabits their inner world.

(I use the psychoanalytic spelling “phantasy” here to distinguish unconscious, symbolic mental life from “fantasy” in its more everyday sense of imagined scenarios or daydreams. Phantasy refers to the foundational, often preverbal narratives and dramas that shape psychic reality beneath awareness.)

I think of psychic architecture as something laid down in the earliest layers of life: the infantile mind, the experience of being inside a womb, the emotional tone of early relationships. It holds within it not only experience, but temperament, inherited dispositions, unconscious phantasy. This architecture precedes narrative. It precedes symbol. It is the scaffolding out of which thinking, feeling, and relating will later emerge.

When I sit with a young person in therapy, I’m listening for what I’ve come to think of as five architectural signals. Each represents a different psychic force, a different defensive stance, a different emotional climate. Each one calls for a different therapeutic response.

1. Fragmentation

I listen for signs that the psyche is struggling to hold together. This might show up as:

• sudden shifts in affect or mood

• incoherent or disjointed storytelling

• rapid alternation between contradictory states

• emotional dysregulation that floods or collapses

• moments of dissociation or zoning out

• an atmosphere in the room of disorganisation or collapse

In fragmentation, the self feels at risk of falling apart. My task here is containment—not interpretation, not challenge, but the quiet holding of psychic fragments in the hope that coherence can slowly reassemble.

I focus on staying steady, structuring the session gently, offering emotional holding without pushing for integration too soon.

2. Claustrum

I listen for signs of psychic enclosure. Claustral states often feel like being walled out of the therapy room, or like speaking into an emotional void. Clinically, this might sound or feel like:

• one-word answers

• flat, closed body language

• refusal to elaborate, expand, or engage

• persistent avoidance of relational or emotional connection

• sense that the young person is “behind a wall” emotionally

• everything offered by the therapist is met with a silent or subtle rejection

In Meltzer’s (1992) terms, the claustrum is a persecutory interior space—the adolescent retreats inward to escape external relational dangers, but is trapped with frightening internal part-objects.

My task is presence without intrusion: to stay outside the wall, to survive exclusion, to be a steady, non-demanding presence that doesn’t force contact. Interpretation here risks being experienced as an invasive act. Presence itself is the intervention.

3. Superego

I listen for the harsh voice of the internal critic. Clinically, this might emerge as:

• frequent self-criticism or self-condemnation

• phrases like “I’m disgusting,” “I’m evil,” “I don’t deserve help”

• shame-laden narratives

• preoccupation with moral failing or “badness”

• confessions that seek punishment or expiation

In superego-dominated sessions, the relational field can feel morally charged, heavy with judgement. The adolescent may subtly invite the therapist to take up a punitive stance.

My task is to soften the cruelty without invalidating its reality. This might mean introducing small, non-intrusive kindnesses; gently questioning the absolutism of the internal critic; offering language that allows for ambivalence. Always it means holding the balance between recognising the attack and not reinforcing it.

4. Manic Defence

I listen for flight from feeling—into speed, ideas, activity, brightness, omnipotence. The manic defence isn’t always loud or obvious; sometimes it’s subtle, polished, socially rewarded. Clinically, it might appear as:

• the adolescent talking rapidly and brightly, skipping between topics

• performative cleverness or charm

• reports of hyperproductivity: “I’ve been so busy, I’m doing loads of homework, I’m organising everything.”

• dismissing sadness or vulnerability as pointless or weak

• avoidance of emotional material by filling space with chatter or ideas

In the room, I often feel pulled into the flight—tempted to match their tempo, to stay in the realm of thought or task.

My task here is to stay grounded without pulling them down. I gently slow the pace, reflect the absence of feeling, resist collusion with omnipotence, while making space for gravity and emotional reality to be possible.

5. Deadness

I listen for an absence of vitality, aliveness, or relational connection. Deadness can feel like a flat, blank atmosphere in the room. Clinically, it might show up as:

• monosyllabic, affectless responses

• absence of emotional resonance

• long silences without communicative tension

• narratives that feel empty or disconnected from feeling

• refusal or inability to engage even in intellectual or performative ways

Deadness is different from claustrum: it’s not a fortified enclosure, but a psychic vacuum. The young person may feel unreachable, their interiority flattened or numbed.

My task here is to be alive without flooding the space. I offer quiet warmth, an aliveness that doesn’t intrude, a presence that tolerates blankness without abandoning or overstimulating.

Why This Listening Matters

Each of these signals—fragmentation, claustrum, superego, manic defence, deadness—represents a different psychic architecture. I don’t mean them as fixed categories or diagnoses. They’re ways of listening for what dominant force is shaping the therapeutic space that day.

Each architecture demands a different stance:

• containment for fragmentation

• presence for claustrum

• gentleness for superego

• gravity for manic defence

• warmth for deadness

And crucially: what works for one risks harm for another. An interpretation that invites integration in a depressive position may land as persecution in a claustral one. A challenge that moves a manic defence toward reality may collapse fragile coherence.

This is why technical interventions can’t be lifted wholesale from one architecture to another. Listening to psychic architecture is not about applying the right tool. It’s about attuning to the psychic structure present today—and offering the stance that structure can tolerate.

Listening as a Dynamic Map

This listening is never static. The psychic architecture shifts across sessions, even within sessions. A young person may enter the room in claustrum, move into manic defence mid-way, collapse into fragmentation by the end.

My task is to follow the movement, to adjust stance moment by moment, to privilege the architecture’s need over my desire for narrative, progress, or technique.

Listening to psychic architecture is a slow art. It requires patience, humility, and a willingness to let the work unfold at the psyche’s own pace. But when we listen this way, we honour not just the symptom, but the deep structures that give it shape.

We stop treating the symptom as the enemy. We begin meeting the architecture as the survivor.

And from there, real contact becomes possible.