Steiner, a "prolific London post-Kleinian", is best known for his conceptions of the "pathological organisation" or the "psychic retreat"...between the paranoid-schizoid and the depressive positions'.
[1] His book, Psychic Retreats, describes a treatment methodology for patients with complex defence mechanisms that are difficult to treat with conventional psychoanalysis.
Unlike Donald Winnicott, Steiner suggests that we should not idealize transitional areas, on the grounds that they may be confused with a psychological withdrawal that is not creative.
Withdrawal is to be understood simultaneously as an expression of destructiveness and a defense against it, serving a quasi-adaptivity which allows a quiet and temporarily protected space but at the price of impaired contact with reality: 'withdrawal to a refuge where the patient was relatively free from anxiety but where development was minimal'.
[6] Such withdrawal can also be seen as a schizoid regression in Fairbairn's sense, the borderline patient tending to shun contact with both himself and his objects.