I believe this anguish of mine comes from infancy when these feelings were triggered simultaneously – the baby was hungry if lying alone and feeling rejected. Accordingly, as an adult, at night I dream about hunger as anguish, and during the day I perceive anguish (each one has their own, for their lost “paradise,” for their illusory dream) as hunger. By satisfying hunger, we temporarily alleviate the longing. But since this feeling is immense, we have to eat a lot, and the effect of eating is short-term.

So why does this irrational feeling of anguish arise?

Essentially, loneliness/rejection and the resulting anguish is an infantile fear of starvation. “If I'm not alone, but with someone who loves me and doesn't reject me, that means they'll feed me, and I won't die” – that's what the infant thinks. This is what an infantile person thinks on a subconscious level. An adult can feed themselves; they are oriented to the real feeling of hunger and satisfy it. The infant is oriented to the feeling of loneliness as a fear of death and satisfies this feeling with the help of food, which is widely available and excessive in our time, or by constantly searching for a partner, and when a partner appears, by total fusion with them.

The anguish I experienced in the dream, which turned out to be physiological hunger, was very similar to the sensation that haunted me for many years in waking life and which I identified as pain from loneliness. This anguish stems from the combination in the infant psyche of physiological hunger and the feeling of rejection, frozen forever, like a gnat in amber, in the ouroboric structure. It is the anguish of the infant who has been expelled from the womb and deprived of the breast, that is, rejected. This infantile anguish arises from the impossibility of returning to the womb, where it was warm and nourishing, from the unrealizability of this illusory dream. Essentially, it is the consequence of auto-aggression, by which the person punishes themselves for rejection.

The ouroboric personality is always lonely because it lacks empathy, views others consumeristically, and cannot connect with anyone on a deep level, yet it suffers from loneliness. In short periods of love, anguish disappears, feelings burst into life, and there is a sense of reality, bringing the joy of being. But then inevitably comes alienation and coldness. And again, loneliness, and again, anguish.

This is why I identified my anguish, with which I began the narrative, as loneliness. I constantly need someone whose resources I can access, a partner through whom I will achieve my dreams, defeat loneliness, be loved and protected, and, on a deep unconscious level, return to the “fullness” of the illusory “paradise” of the mother's womb.

This universal anguish permeates the entire existence of the ouroboric personality and is weakened only when there is a chance to realize the illusory dream, i.e., when a “dream embodiment” appears.

In the ouroboric structure, there is no love or empathy, but there is idealization and a desire to possess a person who seems (it is an illusion) to the actor as someone who can help achieve what is desired. This desired thing varies from person to person – love, fame, power, money, status, stability, relationships, family, health, children, etc. These desirable things are the components that make up the Reference Image. Personally, I have always dreamed of stability and high social status.

By its own internal logic, often superficial and nonlinear, the ouroboric person decides that a particular person is the right one to make their individual desire from a dream become a reality. And “love” arises, or rather its ersatz – idealization. A substitution takes place: the actor thinks they feel love or sympathy, but this feeling is a burning desire to possess the object (another person) for personal and undivided use, as if this will lead to the realization of a dream. The “incarnate” is idealized and depersonalized; details cease to be important and are eliminated from the assessment of the possibility of building a connection with this person. The illusory perception of this “embodiment of desires” prevents realistic evaluation. Everything boils down to one thing only – to get it, or rather, to get what you want by using this person. This is called “love” or “attachment,” hence all the “I cannot live without you!” Such phrases should be understood literally as: “I need you urgently because I think that with your help, I can finally escape the hell of ouroboric inferiority and unite with my Reference Image!”