13 th edition April 2010
Copyright © Massimo Fagioli L’Asino d’oro edizioni s.r.l. via Ludovico di Savoia 2b, 00185 Rome, Italy Translations: Nora McKeon and Nancy Podimane revised by Noel Gazzano www.lasinodoroedizioni.it e-mail:
[email protected]
Massimo Fagioli
Death Instinct and Knowledge
F O O R P PY O C Excerpts
Presentation Annelore Homberg
The author The book Death Instinct and Knowledge, written in 1970 and published in January 1972, has not only revolutionized the life of its author, Italian psychiatrist Massimo Fagioli, but it has also profoundly changed the panorama of contemporary Italian culture. Fagioli first worked in the psychiatric hospitals of Venice and Padua and then he went to Switzerland to work in Ludwig Binswanger’s clinic, where he was in charge of the Italian-speaking therapeutic community. In Switzerland he started his psychoanalytical training, at the end of which he wrote Death Instinct and Knowledge, a work combining psychoanalytic terminology with language accessible to everyone. According to the author, he was also motivated to write this book when it became clear that the 1968 revolt had entered a self-destructive phase. Indeed, in his daily clinical practice Fagioli had to deal with the psychiatric consequences of this umpteenth failed rebellion. In 1976 the publication of two other books and the second edition of Death Instinct and Knowledge, constituting a veritable theoretical trilogy the contents of which found no place within the Freudian universe, gave rise to a series of seminars held at the University of Rome, with an ever-increasing number of participants: it was the beginning of what became known as Analisi Collettiva (Collective Analysis), which Fagioli has continued to hold uninterruptedly for almost forty years. Today Death Instinct and Knowledge, now in its thirteenth edition, has been issued in thousands of copies. It represents the theoretical and methodological basis
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for Fagioli’s clinical activity. Also a consistent number of European psychiatrists and clinical psychologists base their practice on this book.
The book The first chapter deals with the issue of absence. Fagioli’s work starts from a clear question: how do patients react to the therapist’s vacations? Fagioli states that patients experience the therapist’s breaks as an aggression, as it is the absents of the therapist which hurts the patient, not his/her presence. Moreover, Fagioli states that the therapist can be physically present but psychologically absent, namely absent within the relationship. Fagioli demonstrates, step by step, how patients tend to become more ‘aggressive’ when faced with the therapist’s breaks, as they start feeling him/her as a persecutor who is apparently abandoning them. Usually patients don’t enact this aggression in a conspicuous way, say by insulting or physically assaulting the therapist, but with an often invisible change in their interior make-up. It is a sort of internal blackout in which the patient does not ‘repress’ the therapist and the therapeutic relationship, but makes them disappear. Fagioli calls this dynamic annulment drive (pulsione di annullamento). when the patient eliminates from his mind, namely makes disappear, an object that had great libidinal relevance for him, i.e. the therapist or a family member who died or has gone away, its consequences can be extremely significant, as the annulment drive in the worst cases leads to a state of utter emptiness or to psychic fragmentation. Confronting himself with Freud’s conclusions in his 1920 essay Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Fagioli links the
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concept of annulment drive to the one of ‘death instinct’. However, Fagioli’s concept of death instinct, seen as equivalent to annulment drive, has nothing to do with material destruction and disintegration of life into inorganic matter. According to Fagioli, death instinct is an ‘omnipotent’ psychic impulse which annuls, within the unconscious mind, the representation of certain elements that belong to external reality and which always refer to interpersonal relationships and human qualities. Therefore, death instinct alters the individual’s relationship to human reality at an unconscious level, as the conscious thought and behavior may still seem appropriate. The first chapter of Death Instinct and Knowledge ends with the case of a young schizophrenic patient. what stands out in this case description, as well as in the other cases reported in the book, is Fagioli’s ability to understand and interpret his patients’ dreams.
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The second chapter adopts a deductive approach and presents conclusions that go way beyond the clinical sphere. Fagioli states that death instinct is not necessarily destructive, but proves to be so only when it is not fused with libido. Paradoxically, with the participation of libido, death instinct becomes the source of psychic development. In this case, it acts as disappearance fantasy. A series of considerations have brought the author to formulate what has become known as Teoria della nascita (Birth Theory), which describes how the biological conditions of foetal development undergo a fundamental transformation at birth. Birth is the moment in which a purely biological existence, the foetus, is transformed into a newborn. According to Fagioli, human identity begins neither sooner nor later than at birth. This primal ‘Birth-Self’ re7
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sults from the impact that the intense physical stimuli of the external world has on the fragile newborn, and particularly from the first stimulation of the retina by light. According to the author, these new and overwhelming physical stimuli provoke the emergence of the disappearance fantasy. The first stimulation of the retina by light triggers a new way of functioning of the cortex, and the stimuli of the external world are made to disappear. Simultaneously, the merely biological experiences of the previous foetal state are transformed into the first mental images, namely into what the author calls the newborn’s ‘capability to imagine’. Fagioli states that due to its cutaneous contact with the amniotic fluid, the foetus develops a pre-psychic libidinal charge during the last months of gestation. Because of the ‘memory’ of these pre-psychic libidinal experiences, the primal self does not only constitute a first ‘sense of oneself’: it is also an intuition-hope that another human being exists, and that one can relate to him/her. Therefore, the human Self is neither innate nor does it result from the relationship with mother and breast, which are present only in a secondary phase. The human Self stems from the biological premises of the foetal state, which are transformed into human life at birth due to the disappearance fantasy. As these foetal experiences prove to be biologically adequate in all human beings, the Birth Self is fragile, but not fragmented, and it naturally tends towards relating to others. Fagioli’s ‘Birth Theory’, developed forty years ago, has recently received strong confirmation from medical research. Neonatologists now know, for example, that surviving after birth is only possible if the pregnancy is at least in its twenty-fourth week of gestation, as it is precisely during this phase that the connections between retina and visual cortex are formed (even though the foetus continues to be
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a mere biological existence without any mental activity until birth, when this possibility of human life becomes human life). Recent neurophysiological research has confirmed that the brain functioning changes radically at birth, and seems to show growing interest in Fagioli’s ideas. Fagioli’s Birth Theory strongly affirms the biological origin of the psyche. Moreover, the psyche ceases to exist when its biological premises, i.e. an adequate functioning of the brain, stop existing. In an age like ours, characterized by religious interference in the social and political life of many countries, this theory is of great interest. The description of the reasons for which human life originates only at birth constitutes, for example, an extraordinary contribution to current bioethical debates.
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The subsequent three chapters of Death Instinct and Knowledge deal with the dynamics of the first year of life and analyse the conceptual chaos that seems to reign on this subject in classical psychoanalytic literature. In particular, the third chapter reconstructs the vicissitudes of oral libido, providing the term ‘desire’ with the correct definition it deserves. Another chapter is dedicated to the theme of envy and introduces the concept of negazione (negation), which is seen as a milder form of the annulment drive. According to the author, dream interpretation is greatly helped by a correct understanding of the dynamics of negation. Fagioli’s concept of negation strongly differs from the Freudian concept of ‘Verneinung’, as in Fagioli’s view negation implies that someone or something is unconsciously represented as the negative opposite of what they truly are. whilst classic psychoanalytic doctrine considers dreams to be a ‘hallucinatory’ satisfaction of unacceptable wishes, Fagioli states that dreams express non conscious ‘thoughts in im9
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ages’ on human life. These non-conscious thoughts can take two directions: towards a profound and intuitive understanding of what is going on in one’s life and in interpersonal relationships, or towards a violent falsification, namely ‘negation’ of human qualities.
The readers
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As the author himself says, the book Death Instinct and Knowledge was written so that the theory could become available to everybody. It has always been a book addressed to everyone. The originality and the courage of his thought caused violent reactions against Fagioli, who was for a long time negated, slandered and insulted. The book offers a new psychodynamic theory and an innovative, coherent methodology to all those who work in the fields of psychiatry and psychotherapy. It allows them to face the entire range of psychiatric disorders without having to give up on the idea of treating, with a psychodynamic approach, patients affected by severe psychosis. Consequently, clinical psychologists and psychiatrists, but also their patients and kin, should all become familiar with the contents of the book. Many Italian readers, not directly involved in clinical work, appreciate the book for its new theory on the origin and development of the human psyche. Even if it may be destroyed later in life, the idea of a pre-verbal human Self inclined by its very nature towards evolutive relationships with others is particularly striking. This idea is considered by many to be fundamental for a new secular ethics, and has thus attracted growing interest among the European political left.
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Index of the book Prefaces I. Disappearance fantasy II. Disappearance fantasy and death instinct III. Disappearance fantasy and oral ambivalence. Curiosity and affectivity IV. Disappearance fantasy and envy V. Projection and intuition
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Invisible Violence. Forty years later.
Publications by Massimo Fagioli
Istinto di morte e conoscenza La marionetta e il burattino Teoria della nascita e castrazione umana Bambino donna e trasformazione dell’uomo Storia di una ricerca. Lezioni 2002 Una vita irrazionale. Lezioni 2006 Das Unbewusste. L’inconoscibile. Lezioni 2003 Fantasia di sparizione. Lezioni 2007 Left 2006 Left 2007 Il pensiero nuovo. Lezioni 2004 Left 2008 L’uomo nel cortile. Lezioni 2005 Left 2009 Settimo anno. Lezioni 2008 Left 2010 Religione Ragione e LIBeRTà. Lezioni 2009 Left 2011
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Massimo Fagioli. Biographical notes He graduates in Medicine and Surgery in Rome and specializes in Neuropsychiatry at the University of Modena, Italy. 1957-59: He serves at the psychiatric hospitals of Venice (Italy). 1960-62: He serves at the psychiatric hospitals of Padua (Italy). 1962-64: He directs the Italian-speaking therapeutic community at the Bellevue Clinic run by Ludwig Binswanger, in Kreuzlingen (Switzerland). 1964-65: He opens a therapeutic community for psychotic patients in Rome and sets up a private practice. 1968: He concludes his training at the Italian Psychoanalytical Society. December 1970: He writes Istinto di Morte e Conoscenza (Death Instinct and Knowledge). 1974: He writes La Marionetta e il Burattino (The Marionnette and the Puppet) and Teoria della Nascita e Castrazione Umana (Birth Theory and Human Castration). Autumn 1975: He is invited by the Psychiatric Institute of “La Sapienza” University (Rome) to hold supervisory seminars which spontaneously developed into the Analisi Collettiva (Collective Analysis) sessions. Since autumn 1975: Fagioli has been conducting the Collective Analysis sessions to which hundreds of people participate. 1979: He writes Bambino Donna e Trasformazione dell’Uomo (Child Woman and the Transformation of Man). 1980: The Collective Analysis moves from its university location to a private consulting room. 1981: He abolishes individual psychotherapy. 1985-94: He collaborates with film director Marco Bellocchio for Diavolo in corpo (Devil in the Flesh, 1986) – with M.
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Detmers – and for La Condanna (The Conviction, 1991), winner of the Silver Bear at the Berlin Cinema Festival; the same year he writes the screenplay of the movie Il Sogno della Farfalla (The Butterfly’s Dream). 1992: The psychotherapists who undergo their training at the Collective Analysis set up the three-monthly journal of psychiatry and psychotherapy “Il sogno della farfalla”. 1991: he begins working with a group of young architects; some of the resulting projects are published in the catalogue Il Coraggio delle Immagini (The Courage of Images, 1994). An exhibition bearing the same title was displayed until 1998 in various Italian Cultural Institutes abroad as well as at the Palazzo delle esposizioni in Rome and during a convention at the Eliseo Theatre. 1997: He single-handedly directs Il cielo della luna (The Moon’s Sky) and in 1999 Mélange and in 2002 La psichiatria, esiste? (Psychiatry, does it exist?). Since 1997 a series of Psychiatric Research Meetings have been held on a regular basis at “La Sapienza” University in Rome, and their proceedings have been then published. Since 2000 he is a frequent guest on Italian TV-programs (RAI, Mediaset, La7, Sky). From 2002 to 2012 he taught Dynamic Psychology at the Educational Sciences Department of the “G. d’Annunzio” University (Chieti-Pescara, Italy). Since 2006 he has been writing the “Trasformazione” column article on the political weekly Left. 2008: He exhibits his original projects realized from 1999 to 2008 at the Torino architectural exhibition Architektonica. Since 2009: His books – published by L’Asino d’oro edizioni – have been presented at the Salone Internazionale del Libro di Torino (Torino Book Fair). 2011: His book Death Instinct and Knowledge is published
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by the German editor Strœmfeld Verlag with the title Todestrieb und erkenntnis (it will soon be also available in Chinese). Nowadays Fagioli’s Birth Theory is taught in several Italian Universities and it is object of studies and research in national and international conferences. Massimo Fagioli continues to hold the Collective Analysis sessions, to do research and publish his findings, which are currently being translated into a variety of languages.
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Death Instinct and Knowledge Excerpts
I
Tell me where is fancy bred, or in the heart or in the head? How begot, how nourished? Reply, reply It is engender’d in the eyes with gazing fed; and fancy dies In the cradle where it lies: Let us all ring fancy’s knell; I’ll begin it. Ding dong, bell Ding, dong, bell *.
* w. Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act III, Scene 2.
The disappearance fantasy
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Psychoanalysis practitioners are well aware that, among a multitude of problems, the one we encounter most frequently if not invariably is the analysand’s behavioural or merely unconscious reaction to the analyst’s suspension of the analytical sessions. The analyst absents himself 1. The patient experiences a frustration.
The analyst’s “absence”
Before seeking to understand the meaning of the term ‘frustration’, I would like to reply to a possible objection by providing a response which may serve to corroborate the concept of a global approach to the patient in analysis and forestall an incoherent counter-transference approach. I refer to the objection for which references to and discussions of reality (such as the communication of the analyst’s need to absent himself) are addressed to the patient’s valid Self and are therefore extra-analytical. [...] I believe, instead, that everything that occurs in analysis should be considered within the context of the 1 we shall come back to this term to examine how the analyst’s failing to understand or interpret correctly may entail not only physical, but also psychological absence.
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global relationship, both conscious and unconscious, of the patient with the analyst (transference) and the analyst with the patient (counter-transference). [...] I believe that to impose the analyst’s personal needs (including being late or early at appointments, etc.) upon the patient as a simple matter of reality, without considering them as part of the analytical process, within the context of transference and counter-transference, constitutes a sudden annulment of the patient in toto along with his conscious and unconscious dynamics. It is, as I suggested above, an “absence” of the analyst, an analyst who suddenly becomes silent, who does not answer, who isn’t there; an analyst who, as we shall see, has disappeared, has died. In other words, these occurrences constitute abrupt inconsistencies which allow the patient to corroborate his internal pathological realizations of identification and projection of altered images (or objects). The analyst who, having set the session for 5 p.m., receives the patient ten minutes late, allows him to apprehend as a reality his projection of incoherence. As I have often witnessed, patients formulate a more or less unconscious thought along the following lines: «when the analyst says something, he means something else. The analyst speaks in riddles». And thereafter, every time the analyst interprets, the patient is left in doubt regarding what the analyst might have meant beyond what he expressed verbally [...]. we are faced with a phenomenon in which the psychoanalytical situation is turned on its head: it is the patient who must interpret the attitude and, more generally, the enigmatic behaviour of the analyst. we thus deduce that, in this moment of incoherence, the analyst is absent, he has disappeared. [...]
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The problem of ‘frustration’ I am aware that, although certain Authors have examined the problem of ‘the analyst’s vacations’, it might seem unjustified and obscure to attribute the significance of an analytical problem to the analyst’s absence (concept of absence which we have broadened to include psychological absence, in the sense of a “vacation” taken by the analyst-as-interpreter, although the physical object, the analyst, is present). I therefore believe that it is opportune to state from the outset that the entire content of this book can be considered, in a sense, as a study intended to clarify and elucidate this concept of “absence”, which is also a concept of not being, of disappearance. At the beginning of the chapter, separating the two sentences referring to absence and frustration from the context of the discussion, we said that the analyst absents himself, canceling one or more sessions, and the patient experiences a frustration. we shall now try to achieve as exact an understanding of this term as possible. Frustration is normally understood as the prevention of or opposition to the satisfaction of a desire or drive. I think that this definition is insufficient. If we believe that a drive is masochistic or generically autoaggressive and we oppose it, we may say that we have frustrated the subject’s satisfaction. But in this case the reaction is frequently love rather than hatred, because we have prevented the subject from performing an autoaggressive or generically non-evolutive realization. when, instead, we prevent a libidinal satisfaction – or, more exactly, one of knowledge, or one generically representing an evolution towards a more broadly human realization, towards a plus which is as indefinite and vague as the so-called neurotic human mani-
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festations to be modified appear increasingly precise and specific – then we don’t obtain a development of libido, but hatred and realizations of a minus, of emptiness, disintegration, loss of evolutive potential. Consequently, we cannot accept the term ‘frustration’ as meaning a simple obstacle to the satisfaction of drives. In the psychotherapeutic setting [...] the transference and counter-transference relationship is established and accepted as part of the initial contract for psychoanalytic treatment. Afterwards, this transference and countertransference relationship will constitute the basis and matrix of every interpretation. “Reality facts” lie outside the analytical situation, condensed in and assumed by the initial contract. A modification of the original contract leads to the inclusion of “reality facts” in the psychoanalytical situation, and hence to “confusion”, which means to the combination of reality and fantastications within the interpersonal dynamic, to the detriment of achieving the reality principle which is our aim. Viewed in the context of this, we could say, pure analytical setting, the concept of frustration starts to reveal the meaning of its complexity. within this conceptual framework, the term frustration must be regarded as:
F O O R P PY O C 1. Frustration: contesting the patient’s needs. 2. Frustration: contesting the patient’s necessities.
The patient’s ‘needs’ are those partial and isolated drives that tend towards direct satisfaction. Their matrix is the perversion of instinct. within the analytical setting, the analyst frustrates, that is he opposes, the direct and indirect satisfaction of a patient’s instinctual needs. what is accepted, since the patient always succeeds in getting indirect sexual satisfactions, is 22
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included in the initial contract (assumption of reality). [...] In this case the term frustration must be understood as preventing a patient’s blind satisfaction of his sexual instinct and his realization of the death instinct. That is, on one hand we mean frustration of a patient’s greed (perversion of the sexual instinct), because its direct satisfaction would lead the patient to introject a physical object and hence to projective identification, namely to a sadomasochistic relationship with the other, experienced as a persecutory phantom. on the other hand, we mean frustration of the death instinct, in its expression of isolated drive against the analyst directed at eliminating him, at rendering him nonexistent, or at least at devaluating him, modifying him in the sense of altering his actual human and, more specifically, psychoanalitic reality. opposition to and prevention of the fundamental dynamic for which the sadomasochistic relationship of introjective and projective identification ineluctably leads to a loss of that sexuality which, however perverse it may be (greed), once it has been contained and transformed represents nonetheless a precious matrix for the development of seeing, knowledge and verbal thought. In this context, non-frustration (consoling, reassuring, being indulgent about the fee and tolerating the patient’s “need” to miss sessions) would constitute absence and aggressiveness, it would mean pushing the analysand towards a non-evolutive realization of the Self, towards regression with defusion of instincts and splitting. we consider an analysand’s ‘necessities’ to be tendencies towards an evolutive object-relation in which sexual and death-oriented drives are contained, directed towards fusion and integration, and utilized for the development of knowledge and thinking potential. within the context of ne-
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cessities, then, the analyst should never be frustrating. our task, in fact, is to satisfy the analysand’s necessity to be helped through interpretation, and to satisfy to the greatest extent and in the best way possible his necessity to listen and absorb the analyst’s attention, cure and words. In this case the patient “contains” his own sexual desires; we must satisfy them and help him to integrate them with the introjection of the image and quality (thought) of the object-analyst. In this case, non-satisfaction is frustrationaggressiveness, which means absence. The following are apparently gratifications, but in reality they are frustrations-aggressiveness:
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1. Examination of reality, in that we confuse the patient about the identity of the object-analyst who looks at reality with physical eyes and doesn’t see the meaning of the patient’s communication. 2. orders, advice, encouragement, reassurance, in that we confuse the patient about the identity of the analyst who demonstrates a sadistic attitude of imposition, coercion, control of the object-patient. 3. Communication of scientific notions, in that we confuse the patient about the identity of the analyst who puts inside the patient abstractions, which means objects and images of objects that have not been elaborated.
Gratifications of necessities are: interpretations of the patient’s communications; verbalization of the meaning and significance of communication; verbalization of the patient’s transference relationship with the analyst. In other words, in this case we give to the patient, we satisfy his necessity to introject the words, knowledge and qualities of the object-analyst I must however note that the term ‘frustration’ is gener24
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ally taken to imply aggressiveness towards the object. That is, the term generally connotes: to coerce, to contest, contemporaneously and confusedly, both the patient’s needs and his necessities. Behind a façade of affability and gratification, the analyst can dispense the patient the aforementioned frustration-aggressiveness, and then frustrate-attack his sexual and death drives which have become further split and more loosely contained. From reassurance (caresseskisses) to reproval (physically striking or abandoning the object). Since the term frustration implies reference to an evolutive factor, we refuse to use it to designate any act addressing another person which might include a destructive charge, when our behaviour towards the other is invalidated by a mors tua vita mea dynamic. otherwise it would be absurd, within the therapeutic context, to conceive of analysis as continually frustrating. In fact, with analysis and interpetation we oppose aggressive and disintegrative tendencies. If, on the other hand, to frustrate meant to address the other person with a destructive charge, then we would tend to be as non-therapists as possible, increasingly orienting towards non-analytical interventions and attitudes, towards examinations of reality, affability, advice and encouragement; in other words, we would assume the role of a good Samaritan or pedagogue2, thus reverting to an interhuman approach based on the ignorance of an individual’s unconscious and conscious life, which means ignorant of his global way of being [...]. At this stage, it may be less difficult to accept the close connection between the problem-phenomenon of frustration and the problem-phenomenon of “absence”.
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2 Assistance and repression are the two aspects of violence that the human psychical reality has always had to deal with.
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Frustration, understood in a negative sense, as the expression of a counter-transferential emotional drive of aggressiveness (death instinct), derives, on careful examination, from an analyst’s absence. An absent analyst is one who relinquishes understanding and interpretation to assume the role of a good Samaritan or pedagogue; one who overlooks (or at least underestimates) the analysand’s human situation in order to satisfy his own personal requirements [...]. At this point, the very distinction between physical and psychical absence disappears. The analyst who physically absents himself from a session is not frustrating (aggressive) because of his physical absence, but because he prefers to think of himself rather than of the analysand. He loses interest in the external object (or underestimates it). And, dispite appearances, this loss of interest (absence) is not the lack of something, but rather the active manifestation of a drive (death instinct) directed against the external object3. we can focus on this last statement in order to conceptualize the issue of frustration within the psychoanalitical setting. In the first place, frustration should not be the active expression of an unconscious realization of the analyst, even if it is disguised by a reality fact. In this case the analyst would, in fact, be actuating a drive without being aware of it rather than, as it would appear, abstaining or being neutral. with this act, the therapist is no longer there, he presents the other person with that phenomenon of absence which is the first and fundamental “aggressiveness”.
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3 At this point, a basic aspect of the argument should be stressed. Absence, indifference, “scientific” neutrality are not the lack of, but rather the active expression of a drive [...].
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In turn, an unconscious realization of this sort by the unaware analyst includes ignorance of the evolutive (transformative) potential of the other person. And this “ignorance” should not be seen as a question of being able or not to undertake an examination of reality (make a diagnosis), but as an active counter-transferential emotional impulse (an isolated drive of the death instinct) directed at negating, annulling the potential of the analysand himself. At this stage, we are left with only one solution to clarify the concept of frustration in analysis. That is, that the therapist assumes a counter-transferential stance of non-participation to a relationship based on the tendency to satisfy the isolated drives directed against him by the analysand. In this case the (sexual and death) drives will not be attacked and destroyed by the analyst playing a Superegoic role, but rather they will remain without an object for their realization. The alternative is for the analysand to reintegrate the drive itself. [...] These considerations about the concept of frustration render more acceptable the initial affirmation for which the analyst who absents himself physically outside the terms of the contract frustrates-attacks the analysand. when the analyst absents himself he expects mature (adult) behaviour and, still more, an (adult) unconscious attitude from the patient [...]. That is, the analysand must “understand”, in other words interpret, the analyst’s behaviour. The analyst is therefore absent, as we noted before, and what is present is an external aggressive object. The ambivalent dynamics of the transfer-relation prevent the analysand’s comprehension-interpretation. By the terms of the concept of transference itself, the analyst is, a priori, a sadistic or generically deteriorated image. In other words, he is the projection of identifications realized by the
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patient on the basis of current or previous ambivalence. For this reason, severance is abandonment, in other words an aggressive action on the part of the analyst; it cannot be accepted as an agreement but, instead, is experienced by the patient as an act of violence to which he reacts implicitly. These reactions may either be simply unconscious, involving modifications of the patient’s inner structures, or also behavioural (acting-out). Such reactions result in a deficit of the Self, an aggressive internal realization, or the realization of a bad internal object which leads to a feeling of inferiority 4. [...] It was thus necessary to study these reactions, which can generally be subsumed within the broader issue of identification with the aggressor.
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The analysand’s reaction to the analyst’s absence
[...] The patient “identifies” with the analyst-aggressor. That is, he makes himself like the analyst, an external object imbued with aggressiveness, containing aggressiveness or being aggressiveness. 4 I shall cite a patient’s dream as an example. «She was returning to Rome on foot from her vacation. She stopped at a first station which was empty and abandoned. In a second station there were people. Here she found the bracelet and the chain she had been wearing around her neck, which she had lost. It took her five hours». I noticed that five months of analysis had gone by since the summer break. Five months of analytical work had been necessary to allow the patient to recover the possibility of a rapport with the analyst. The first station represented a period in which the patient had been absent due to a physical ailment. The second represented other holidays which the patient had agreed to accept in accordance with the contract and where, as a result, she recovered her sexuality-affectivity (the chain being the mouth and the bracelet the hand).
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At this stage I believe it is necessary to examine as deeply as possible the issue of the external aggressive (bad) object. In order to do so, we shall make use of the famous example cited by Freud in Beyond the Pleasure Principle: the case of the child who reverses his condition of abandoned object (that is subjected to something) by assuming the active role of making the object (wooden reel, mother) disappear and reappear. The assumption is that the child identifies with the aggressive mother who abandons him. That is, the child makes himself like the external aggressive object, becomes, realizes himself as, the object – and does what it does. But we cannot consider the external object (mother) who leaves the house, or the psychoanalyst who cannot keep his appointment, as being aggressive, imbued with aggressiveness, bad. Even more poignantly, in the case of death of the external object, we cannot regard it as intending to injure the other object, to produce the minus to which we alluded earlier. But for the child or patient, the external object that leaves or dies is aggressive. In order to explain this concept of bad external object, we must then resort to the concept of tension (anxiety) in the object-relationship, namely to the concept of the basic sado-masochistic object-relationship, which as we shall see later on encompasses the other one too.That is, within the context of the object-relationship, the external object is not experienced in terms of its reality, of what it actually is. The external object is always the projection (or at least also the projection) of one’s present or previous identification established on the grounds of ambivalence. By highlighting this concept we also highlight its consequence: every act by the external object-analyst, which is not an interpretation, is not reality, but the expression of an emotional drive of the analyst himself directed against the
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analysand. In particular, abandonment (cancellation of the session) is an aggressive act directed against the analysand. Returning to the concepts presented above, when a session is cancelled, in the place of the analyst there’s an aggressive external object that, by expressing an isolated death drive (loss of interest), allows the analysand, in turn, to express an isolated death drive against the aggressive object. That is, the analysand is unable to endure the aggressive act and reacts by assuming an active role. The phenomenon might be expressed in this way: «It is not I who am pushed away (made to disappear), it is I 5 who push away the object and make it disappear (and eventually reappear)». The identification does not take place with the real object (we may assume that the analyst who cancels a session does not want to push the patient away, make him disappear), but with a fantasized and, we must say, projected, unconscious image of the analyst. At this point, bearing in mind that the analysand’s relationship is with an altered image of the analyst, we introduce a well-known concept: the anxiety of losing the object. we may say immediately that this fear is not based on a real danger but on a genuine anguish [...]. what does the child or the neurotic person fear? They need the object for reassurance. of what? [...] we can infer that what the neurotic person (child, analysand) fears is not so much the absence of the object itself as much as the enactment by the external object of a drive to abandon him. But not even this tentative conclusion can explain the
F O O R P PY O C
5 The term ‘identification’ is not exact. I leave it for the moment, but will explain further on that the phenomenon we are examining here is one of “making oneself equal” to the fantasized aggressive object. That is, it should not be regarded as a dynamic of introjection of the object, but rather as an unconscious realization directed against the object.
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anguish. An aggressive behaviour by the external object cannot cause anguish. If we were to accept this, we would revert to the concept of real danger [...]. Hence, we can only conclude that what the child really fears is his own inner reaction to the fantastication of being attacked (abandoned, neglected). If, on the other hand, we reconsider the two concepts of reassuring physical presence and altered image of the object, we can note that although the external object is a sadistic image, its presence serves to neutralize another anguish. [...] The search for this other anguish, this other danger, the potential damage resulting from an internal realization of the subject in his relationship with the external object, leads us to the following formulation. Greater damage than the one caused by a sadomasochistic relationship with the object can only occur from the realization of a non-relationship with the object. Moreover, the non-relationship with the object is not caused by the external object moving away from the subject, since we already know that the child does not endure the event in a passive state but assumes an active role. The active role and the concept that the problem lies in the absence of the external object, must necessarily lead us to conclude that what the child fears is his own reaction against the menacing (sadistic) object, a reaction directed at making the sadistic object itself disappear. The physical presence of the object is a reality which enables the analysand to avoid realizing as true (omnipotent) the fantastication that it was he who caused the event: disappearance of the object. The analysand’s reaction in terms of his unconscious fantastication when confronted by the event “absence” must be regarded as an annulment drive. The external object (breast, mother, father or any other
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libidinal object) is gratifying so long as it does not allow the child to realize the annulment drive. It is aggressive when it does allow this, that is when it absents itself. In this moment the child is prey to his own fantasy of eliminating the object. He realizes himself as aggressive in toto in his mode of being. In that moment, the issue of ambivalence is surpassed and the elimination of the object is experienced as pure aggressiveness. His unconscious realization is that the absence, the disappearance of the object was due to him, to a drive of his. Reality, the absence of the object, has favoured the omnipotent realization of the unconscious annulment drive.
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II
Disappearance fantasy and death instinct
F O O R P PY O C
[...]
The sadomasochistic object-relationship and the disappearance fantasy against the object
[...] A child’s relationship with his parents (and the analysand’s relationship with the analyst) is characterized by the projection of internal states of the Self onto the outer object. The internal states of the Self, in turn, derive from identifications carried out on an ambivalent basis. These two premises confirm the assumption stated in the previous pages: the concept that, according to the subject (child, analysand), the outer object is imbued with aggressiveness and a tendency to harm him. The relationship is, therefore, sadomasochistic. The ever-present tendency to break free from this relationship dominates the life of the child and the man whose object-relationships are based on projections of inner situations onto the external object. The external object’s sadism and the corresponding masochistic dependence constitute an unresolvable conflict because, due to projection, the external object is also one’s own inner libidinal state, the rep35
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resentation as well as the result of the present and past libidinal relationship with the object. The separation from the external object in order to resolve the human condition of masochistic dependence becomes, in the subject’s psyche, the elimination (disappearance) of the object itself. An unconscious “logic”, linked with and derived from projection, takes the form of thought in the subject’s mind [...]. This logic is the idea that the fault for one’s own masochistic state lies in the external object. A concept of cause is thus formulated, which is clearly derived from not seeing reality, given the phenomenon of projection in the relationship with the object. This relationship is founded on blindness towards reality given that it is derived from a primary ambivalence whereby the loved object was also eliminated within oneself (eaten and then projected anew onto the object itself). There is no distinction between what is and what has been projected (added to) reality. Blindness leads to the tendency to resolve one’s own situation of masochistic dependence (castration) by increasing this very blindness through the elimination of the external object. To cause the disappearance of the sadistic object (the “cause” of one’s own masochistic or castrated state) is the “logical” thought which ensues. Achieving autonomy from the object by exercising the annulment drive against it leads to eliminating one’s own libidinal situation, the one that had realized the identification projected onto the object. The result is isolation, nonobject-relationship, darkness and inner emptiness. The child and the adult’s unconscious, if they are not completely blind, intuit this, and such a situation, which derives from non-blindness, takes the form of a conflict, a continual struggle between the need for the masochistic relationship and the tendency to break with it.
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I think that infant’s “peek-a-boo” game and children’s hide-and-seek refer to this dynamic. The game of making the object imaginatively disappear, making it reappear and thus rejoicing, should be intuitively understood as disappearance fantasy against the object, realization of autonomy-darkness-blindness, and overcoming inner emptiness by making the object reappear. [...]
F O O R P PY O C Death instinct as fantasy
Melanie Klein says that man is born with the death instinct and that from the very beginning he is exposed to the innate polarity of instincts [...]. observing reality, we can reason in this way: the baby is born out of the darkness and water of the intrauterine situation. He comes (it would appear logical!) from a preceding stage: «It seems, then, that an instinct is an urge inherent in organic life to restore an earlier state of things which the living entity has been obliged to abandon under the pressure of external disturbing forces...»1.
Faced with the constraint of coming into the outer world, faced with and upset by the bombardment of stimuli deriving from the new situation, the baby will react by desiring and fantasizing a return to the preceding stage. But at this point I think the conceptualization must be improved. The tendency (fantasy-desire) to return to the 1
S. Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Standard Edition, vol. xVIII, p.
36.
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preceding stage cannot be formulated solely in these terms: we must concurrently conceptualize an annulment, a disappearance of the present situation. we thus have two concepts: 1. Fantasy-desire (to return to the preceding stage). 2. Annulment, disappearance of the neonatal situation. The «restoration of an earlier state of things» thus obviously includes another realization that goes in a different, if not diametrically opposed, direction: to render non-existent the presently experienced situation. If we highlight that the tendency-desire2 to re-establish a former state can be realized only as a fantasy, then we can, and of course must, conceptualize that the annulment of the presently experienced situation is also realized as a fantasy. If we now add the concept that fantasy is the mental expression of instinct, then we can state that, at birth, within the context of the tendency to return to the preceding stage, that is within the context of the upsurge of the death instinct in human beings, a fantasy of annulment is realized, a fantasy of the non-existence of the presently experienced situation. I believe that from this formulation of death instinct as drive to annull, to render non-existent, we can go so far as to derive the other term, disappearance. By using the term ‘disappearance’ we implicitly refer to an expression that is more specific than the terms ‘annulment fantasy’ or ‘nonexistence fantasy’. The use of the term “disappearance” suggests a connection with the faculty of seeing. The word has been chosen to reflect the understanding that the upsurge in the newborn of death instinct and “aggressiveness” fantasy against
F O O R P PY O C
2 I keep these two terms paired in order to illustrate the research process [...].
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the new situation of being born, expresses itself through the use of a readily available and omnipotent power, that of creating darkness with the eyes [...]. while the use of the eyes to create darkness, to not see and, even more, to render the surrounding reality non-existent, can be easily observed in a child who turns his head or closes his eyes when faced with a person who causes him anxiety, in the newborn infant it can only be inferred by intuition. Following the indication afforded by the child’s method of rendering reality non-existent by creating darkness around him, we reflect on the newborn infant and consider that:
F O O R P PY O C
a. his preceding situation – the intra-uterine environment – was characterized by darkness; b. the truly new situation, absolutely and completely non-existent before, is solely that of light.
we have said then, in point b), that light corresponds to the situation that was completely non-existent before. Therefore, the reason for which death instinct is realized as disappearance fantasy is that, within the context of reestablishing the preceding stage, this preceding stage is specifically characterized by the lack of an object-relationship in which the eyes are stimulated. The newborn baby, in his reaction of «going from a passive to an active role», annuls the aggressive reality that upsets him and realizes a fantasized omnipotence whereby the surrounding darkness of the intrauterine situation becomes a possibility of determining a specific reality outside the Self. I would like to emphasize the implications of this reasoning. The specific “reality” that the newborn infant deter39
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mines is a non-reality, a non-existence of something, a reality of annulment, darkness, disappearance.The annulment of light makes darkness a result of the non-existence of this very light. Darkness is thus no longer a reality but an annulment of an existing reality (light). I believe that we can situate the concept of instinct, specifically death instinct, within this passage from a situation of existence of the reality of darkness in the intrauterine environment, to a situation of not accepting the extra-uterine reality and fantastically determining another “reality”. The “aggressive” drive against light takes the shape of a psychical realization of creating darkness, a concept which includes that of rendering light itself non-existent by annulling it. whereas darkness was an external reality in the preceding situation, in the new situation of “coming to light” darkness is a fantasy of “aggressiveness” against reality itself. we thus formulate death instinct and its related mental expression - the fantasy of annulling existing reality - as a fantasy of determining the absolute opposite of actual reality. And since we have also pointed out that the situation which is absolutely opposed to the intrauterine one is the presence of light (the absolute novelty is light), we say that this annulling reality and rendering it non-existent, this fantasized determination of the opposite (contrary) of what actually is, assumes the character of a specific fantasy of making light disappear, of creating darkness. we can therefore define the reaction of “aggressiveness” against the new situation of being born as the upsurge of death instinct in its mental expression of disappearance fantasy. we can hypothesize that the baby is born with the disappearance fantasy, the fantasy of making both the stimulating environment (external object) and his born self
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disappear, the fantasy of annulling, and of annulling himself as a living being, desiring and fantasizing a return to the darkness and water of the intrauterine stage. It may thus be hypothesized that man’s first fantasy is the disappearance fantasy.
Might the disappearance fantasy be the memory trace of the preceding stage?
F O O R P PY O C
[...] As a hypothesis we might think that the newborn child has perceived the intrauterine darkness and that he then makes of this perception a possible means of modifying reality in a sense opposed to what it actually is. In this case it would be a question of a memory trace, with the implication of an introjection of intrauterine darkness and a projection onto light of the preceding introjection [...]. The first consideration that comes to mind is that the perception of darkness must occur through the eyes since darkness, despite being the opposite of light, still concerns visual perception. we cannot conceive of a relationship with darkness through other senses (skin, ears, mouth, smell). But in the intrauterine environment the dynamics of the object-relationship eyes-external object does not exist. The eyes do not function. The foetus is physically blind and this blindness, meaning the absence of physical activity, corresponds to the fact that there is no external stimulus (which could only be light) that could engage the physical visual activity of the foetus. In fact, there is no outer light to excite the eyes of the foetus. we have, then, external darkness and blindness of the foetus. Since the foetus has no visual receptivity, there can be neither perception nor introjection of darkness. 41
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we can also consider that darkness is absence of light. A non-existence cannot actually be perceived and introjected. In other words, perception and introjection imply an objectrelation which, in the intrauterine environment, does not exist insofar as perceiving with the eyes is concerned. No visual object relation, therefore, and no perception-introjection of darkness. The existing external reality does not establish an object-relation with the foetus. or, to put it even more precisely, the foetus does not establish an object-relation with the surrounding darkness. The disappearance fantasy at birth, the creation of darkness around oneself, is thus not the projection of a previously introjected memory trace upon light. But before drawing this conclusion and postulating the disappearance fantasy at birth as a totally new situation of the newborn infant, we must still consider the possibility that a memory trace (although certainly not deriving from a perception of darkness), might instead derive from another element of the situation preceding birth. we must consider the possibility that the memory trace might appear in the recollection of a situation of visual non-object relation. But even in this case we cannot speak of a memory trace because a non-relation cannot give rise to a memory, since there is no perception in a non-relation. [...] The disappearance fantasy at birth is hence to be understood as the creation of a fantasized reality outside of the Self. we thus introduce the concept of creativity in the death instinct. This may seem paradoxical but it is not, since the drive to render a reality non-existent is not necessarily “destructive” from a conceptual standpoint. we shall see in the following pages that destructiveness is linked solely to the direction of the disappearance fantasy,
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that is: destructiveness occurs only when the death drive is split from sexuality and directed against the outer object. when, instead, it is contained within the Self, it assumes its full creative sense of making a new situation, precisely through annulment, by rendering non-existent a presently lived situation of one’s own.
F O O R P PY O C The memory trace of the preceding stage
The disappearance fantasy-death instinct, then, annuls, causes to disappear, renders non-existent the object and the object-relationship. Here I would like to stress that the relationship with the atmosphere, the light, the cold, the air, must be regarded as an object-relationship. But in this case we must accept that the foetus has an object-relation also in the intra-uterine situation: with the amniotic fluid. Let us reflect on the change that occurs in the object-relation, in that the object with which the child is in relation becomes excessively stimulating and causes excessive tension. That is, the object becomes excessively inanimate. This consideration leads us to specify that the death instinct is expressed against a cold, inanimate object [...]. The amniotic fluid within the mother’s womb was not inanimate (or was so only relatively) in that it provided warmth and homeostasis. In the mother’s uterus the skin, rather than the mouth, is the erogenous zone of the first object-relation. Furthermore, we must reflect: a. that the object-relation is to be considered as such even due to a simple phenomenon of tactile stimulation; 43
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b. that the dynamics of perceptive-receptive phenomena implicit in the concept of first object-relation can also occur through the skin. In this second case we would need to study the perceptive-receptive dynamics that occur with the amniotic fluid, and this would introduce the idea of a prenatal realization of an unconscious fantasy of the self as a calm and stormfree sea. This idea is not acceptable, even if it doesn’t contradict human dreams, and in fact it is widely confirmed by the oniric symbolism of the sea-as-unconscius and by the theories of a primordial marine state of the human species. But even if we look at the issue from this perspective and go so far as to regard the reaction of the foetus to the slightest perturbation in the amniotic fluid as the sign of a protodeath instinct, the fact is that a foetus cannot create images fantasizing the calm preceding this perturbation. Consequently, our original point still holds. In any case, the «tendency-instinct to reproduce, restore the earlier state of things» must be situated at birth. It is at this moment that the drive-fantasy of not being, of not being born, of being in the darkness of the intrauterine situation, takes place. This is so particularly because only at that very moment can we imagine a tendency to return to the preceding stage by creating darkness, by rendering the eyes not stimulated or hurt by light [...]. It is precisely this tendency that man will search and struggle against all his life. The tendency to return to darkness, to not seeing, to not knowing. He will always seek tranquillity, relaxation, withdrawal from stimuli, physical homeostasis. But his greatest conflict will come from the tendency to return to darkness, to close his eyes, turn his head, ignore, make disappear, annul. Make himself blind, not see. And this tendency will terrify him, he will struggle to
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oppose it and he will succeed to the extent that he fuses it with libido-pleasure. If we accept that the unconscious-calm-sea is the perception of the “calm” of the amniotic fluid, then we must also say that the foetus in the uterus had, through the medium of the skin, the capacity to be aware of the existence of the object by perceiving the object’s qualities (calm, warmth).
F O O R P PY O C
In my opinion this point must be emphasized. In a situation of physical blindness, the foetus can sense the existence-presence of the object through the object’s qualities. The foetus makes use of its possibilities, which we must consider libidinal, to perceive the qualities and characteristics of the object, and thus becomes aware of its existence. [...] Just like we previously linked the concept of death instinct, as a tendency to return to the preceding state, with the concept of annulment of the present state, so must we now join the concept of annulment of the present state to the concept of returning to the preceding state. This latter concept implies that of tendency towards, which is the verbalization of a libidinal realization. In fact, as we have said, the death instinct, in and of itself, involves removing the object and moving away from it. we must therefore accept that, at birth, the baby has already realized a tactile sensitive relationship with the amniotic fluid and that, thanks to the valid remnant of this tactile-libidinal realization, the disappearance fantasy can be combined with a possibility of taking back into oneself the intrauterine reality of the foetus for what it possessed of libido-touch-pleasure. [...] Thanks to the earlier realization of the intra-uterine li45
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bidinal self and the associated libidinal charge which functions as energy, the disappearance fantasy as annulment of the self and of the object transforms itself into an inner realization of an image: the memory trace of the intra-uterine environment. It thus transpires that the death instinct, thanks to the existence of this libidinal situation, constitutes the matrix for the development of psychical life, of the possibility of fantasy and, later, of verbal thought and speech. we thus conceptualize the creation of the image (memory trace) as the fusion of death instinct with libido. The realization of the object-relationship with the amniotic fluid is one in which the existence of the object is realized through a biological sensitivity. At birth, the death instinct as a fantasy of the non-existence of the new Self – which is born and in relationship with light – leads to a fantasy of the existence of the intrauterine object as its image. As a memory or mnemonic trace. Unconscious-calm-sea. The death instinct as fantasy thus includes two creations: the fantasy of the non-existence of the born Self and the fantasy of the existence, in image, of the intrauterine environment.
F O O R P PY O C
we have already discussed the issue of the memory trace of the physical intrauterine darkness. with his disappearance fantasy against external light, the newborn infant creates around himself the darkness of the preceding state in which he perceived the existence of the object in a situation of non-existence of light, through his libidinal relation with the object itself. The baby’s annulment of the inanimate (and hence “aggressive”) object and of his own relationship with it leads him to an inner seeing, to the internal conception of a memory trace. In other words, the abolition of the relationship with the physical inanimate object is the matrix for the pos46
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sibility of seeing beyond physical reality itself. In fact, the child sees (understands intuitively) correctly when, after the turbulence of birth, he seeks the gratifying breast (the concept of hope). Should he limit himself to seeing only the “reality” of the situation experienced immediately at birth, which is his relationship with inanimate objects, he would be mistaken about the significance of his coming into the world, that is he would be misled into thinking that the meaning of his being in the world lies in the relation with inanimate objects and not in the inter-human relationship. Should he limit himself to seeing the physical reality of the immediate neonatal situation of being out in the air and in the light, he would see physical reality exactly, but he would be completely mistaken about the significance of his coming into the world.
F O O R P PY O C
Nor is this all. The internal libidinal situation will enable the child, in his subsequent relation with the breast, to not be a blind devourer but rather to intuit the images and qualities (warmth, goodness, energy) of the breast itself. with his psychical life of seeing-intuiting qualities, the newborn infant thus opposes the libidinal dynamic of eating the physical object. operating alone, this dynamic would lead to a loss of libido which, in a state of psychical blindness, would transform living objects into dead internal objects [...]. After birth, namely in the relationship with the breast, there is not that state of blindness in which libido and libidinal relationship lead to an introjection of the object for which it disappears inside oneself, becoming black; in other words, leading to internal emptiness, an object made black, bad, dead.
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This reflection leads to another one. The foetus immersed in the amniotic fluid is in relationship-contact with the external object-amniotic fluid and realizes sensitivity without avidity and without looking at the object. It realizes the presence of the object through the reception-perception of the qualities (warmth, homeostasis) of the object. That is, it develops the possibility of perceiving the existence of the object through its biological sensitivity. Then, at birth, the disappearance fantasy against the inanimate world is accompanied by the creation of a libidinal and psychical (visual) Self. The intuition-hope that a breast exists. Still later, within the dynamics of the relationship with this breast, the disappearance fantasy against it leads to a contact-relationship in the opposite sense. A contact-relationship that, by devouring the physical breast-object, leads to darkness and inner emptiness. Leads to the negation of the very libido which enters into relationship with the object or, at the very least, to a confusion between love and death. However, we repeat that we cannot consider the disappearance fantasy purely as death instinct. we believe that, with the emergence of the disappearance fantasy, the infant only transforms his libidinal possibilities. This transformation becomes the possibility of intuiting and introjecting the qualities of the object. If there were no libidinal participation, then we might well think that the child would not even take the breast. [...]
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The memory trace of the intrauterine situation as a libidinal possibility which becomes desire Bion’s concept of “presentiment that a breast exists” has no validity in the context of the ideas expressed above. we turn to it in order to analyse more deeply the dynamics of the two instincts at birth and how the first realization of physical relationship with the object (breast) may take place. we do, in fact, have two fundamental concepts:
F O O R P PY O C 1. The concept of vitality. 2. The concept of fantasy.
Vitality is the biological reaction on the part of the foetus in the uterus. when it is in relationship with the object (amniotic fluid) via its biological sensibility, the foetus realizes the existence of the object by sensing the object’s qualities. Fantasy is the realization of the death instinct, which in turn is a fantasy of the non-existence of the world outside oneself, and as such brings into existence in the memory trace (capability to imagine) the intrauterine self, that is the self in relationship with an object. In other words, the relationship with the amniotic fluid, which is no longer a reality, is created as an internal image of the object (the unconscious-calm-sea) by the fantasy of existence. what was outside before, the amniotic fluid, takes form within the newborn as a memory trace of the lost object, a memory trace which includes both the image of the object and the possibility of an object-relationship. At this point a question arises. Can the newborn put this memory trace back outside himself? That is: can we raise the problem of how projective and introjective dynamics begin? The memory trace realized within the Self is put outside of the Self. why? And how? Projection implies introjec49
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tion. So we would have to think that the creation of the memory trace, that is to render existent within the Self an object which is no longer present in reality, includes the introjection of an outside image, i.e. an oral-visual relationship with the object. But obviously this cannot be so. The relationship with the amniotic fluid is neither a visual nor an introjective one; it is, rather, as we have said, a direct relationship of the skin with the amniotic fluid and hence a relationship of cutaneous, and not oral, receptivity. Therefore, instead of the projection of an image or a recollection, we have to conceptualize the possibility of an object relationship and a libidinal investment of the object. The concept of hope for an object with which to establish an object-relationship.
F O O R P PY O C
It is in the physical relationship with the object that the introjective and then projective dynamics come into play. The mouth (oral libido) introjects the physical breast object which, fused with the memory trace existing in the newborn, is then projected together with the memory trace itself. As a result, after the first contact the breast is both a fecal image and object. The basic sadomasochistic relationship on which we have insisted is thus established, the phenomenon of the splitting into good breast (breast-image) and bad breast (black breast). Into psychical and physical object, etc. The death instinct at birth is unsuccessful in destroying this libidinal Self which, on the contrary, successfully transforms it in disappearance fantasy as a memory trace of the intra-uterine situation. In our view, it is this libidinal realization of the Self, in the sense of an internal libidinal possibility independent from the direct relation with the object, that motivates the baby to take the breast that is offered to him instead of passively experiencing the intake of milk. 50
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Not exactly a «presentiment that a breast exists», then, which would suggest a preformed (albeit indefinite) image of the breast. The image of unconscious-calm-sea which we have evoked might lead to confusion. But we insist on the concept that the image of unconscious-calm-sea is a phenomenon that occurs at birth. The foetus, instead, realizes a primordial internal possibility of libido and object-relationship via the qualities of the object. The concept of projection into the external environment of an internal image should not be taken into consideration at birth. The mechanism of introjection and projection begins to operate after the emergence of the death instinct which provokes the newborn’s first fantasy and the concurrent transformation of libido from the inner realization of libidinal possibilities into libido which invests human reality with interest (intuition) and which desires. And thus the concept of desire emerges. Desire as libidinal possibility of neonatal tendency towards the object. Memory trace of the qualities of the object (amniotic fluid and intra-uterine environment). The conceptualization is directed towards highlighting the existence of a drive-realization (sexual investment) and attraction towards (desire) and not towards images or objects or ideas projected onto the breast. The memory trace of the preceding object does not derive from the introjection of an image (the foetus is blind in the uterus) but from a neonatal internal creation which cannot be projected to develop, on the outside, an “idea of breast”. It is a realization of receptivity and possibility, a realization of libido. It is this realization which constitutes the “presentiment”. A realization of libido that is tending towards. The disappearance fantasy-death instinct at birth, a drive directed against (to render non-existent) is transformed (to bring into existence) by this libidinal self (the
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material experience of a direct relationship with the amniotic fluid). It is in a way controlled, held back in its absolute extreme of removing the object, and becomes the possibility of distancing the object just enough to be able to realize and maintain a relationship with it. In other words, it becomes a possibility of discerning the object which, in turn, makes the relationship possible and hence an identification from it. A proper distance allows an exchange with the object, the possibility to be at once similar and autonomous. It is quite significant that the expression “to identify oneself” means to be like the other as well as to differentiate oneself from them.
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