Chapter II

Disappearance fantasy and death instinct

It is thought-provoking to note that discussion of the death instinct begins with Freud’s work, Beyond the pleasure principle¹.
It is even more thought-provoking to note that one of the fundamental passages which Freud takes as a starting point for his argument is the story of the child who «never cried during the mother’s absence»² but played the famous wooden reel and string game, which I want to examine carefully here.
As Freud tells the story:

«What he did was to hold the reel by the string and very skillfully throw it over the edge of his curtained cot, so that it disappeared into it, at the same time uttering his expressive "oh-oh-oh". He then pulled the reel out of the cot again by the string and hailed its reappearance with a joyful "da" (there).This, then, was the complete game, disappearance and return. As a rule one only witnessed the first act, which was repeated untiringly as a game in itself, though there is no doubt that the greater pleasure was attached to the second act»³.

The note at this point in the text seems fundamental to me:

«A further observation subsequently confirmed this interpretation fully. One day the child’s mother had been away for several hours and on her return was met with the words "Baby oh-oh-oh" which was at first incomprehensible. It soon turned out, however, that during this long period of solitude the child had found a method of making himself disappear. He had discovered his reflection in a full length mirror which did not quite reach to the ground, so that by crouching down he could make his mirror image "gone"».⁴

It seems to me to be perfectly relevant to speak in terms of a disappearance fantasy. The child, and Freud says so clearly, could not bear to be abandoned. We can explain why. Because the mother was Laius abandoning her son by sending him away with an unconscious fantasy of making him disappear. As the child saw it, the mother was imbued with a tendency to make him disappear, to eliminate him, and this was why he could not bear the separation; it was unbearable because his mother was black, with an unconscious intent of making him disappear. To which he reacted by making her disappear in his turn, assuming an active role. But which role? That of the absolutely destructive omnipotent fantasy of making disappear. And hence, as is clearly stated in the note, he made himself disappear.
He was afflicted with darkness, inner emptiness, the impossibility of suffering. He was non-existent internally. He had caused his own fundamental identification with his mother, projected onto the mother, to disappear. The other note is characteristic and dramatic:

«When this child was five and three-quarters, his mother died. Now that she was really "gone" (''oh-oh-oh''), the little boy showed no signs of grief.» (my italics).

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The sadomasochistic object relation and the disappearance fantasy against the object

Freud says:

«Identification, in fact, is ambivalent from the very first; it can turn into an expression of tenderness as easily as into a wish for someone’s removal. It behaves like a derivative of the first, oral phase of the organization of the libido, in which the object that we long for and prize is assimilated by eating and is in that way annihilated as such»⁵.

The child’s relation with its parents (and the analysand’s with the analyst) includes, as a basic factor of the inter-human relationship, the projection of internal situations of the self onto the outer object. The internal situations of the self, in turn, derive from identifications carried out on an ambivalent basis.
These two premises confirm the assumption of the foregoing pages, i.e. the concept that, for the subject (child, analysand), the outer object is imbued with aggressiveness, bent on harming him.
The relationship is, therefore, sadomasochistic.
The ever-present tendency to break free from this relationship dominates the life of the child and of the man whose object relations are based on projections of their own inner situations onto the external object. The sadism of the external object and one’s own corresponding masochistic dependence constitute an insoluble conflict in that, due to projection, the external object is also one’s own inner libidinal situation, the representation as well as the result of the present and previous libidinal relationship with the object⁶.
A severance from the external object for the purpose of resolving the human condition of masochistic dependence is represented, in the subject’s psyche, as the elimination (disappearance) of the object.
An unconscious "logic", linked with and derived from projection, takes form as thought in the subject’s mind and perfects the mechanism governing the object relation which, on a sadomasochistic basis, tends to produce (and often does) the result of non-relationship. This logic is the idea that the blame for one’s own masochistic situation lies with the outside object.
A concept of cause is thus formulated which is clearly derived from not seeing reality, given the phenomenon of projection in the object relation. The object relation, derived from a primary ambivalence whereby the loved object was also eliminated within oneself, i.e. eaten and then projected anew onto the object itself, is a relation founded on blindness with regard to reality. There is no distinction between what is and what has been projected, that is added to, reality. Blindness leads to the tendency to resolve one’s own situation of masochistic dependence (i.e. 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 disappearance fantasy against it means eliminating one’s own libidinal situation, which had realized the projected identification onto the object. The result is isolation, non-object-relation, darkness and inner emptiness. The child and the adult unconscious, if they are not completely blind, intuitively sense this, and this 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 this relationship.
I think that the infant’s "peek-a-boo" game and the child’s game of hide-and-seek refer to this dynamic. The game of making the object disappear fantastically, making it reappear and rejoicing at its reappearance, should be understood intuitively as a disappearance fantasy against the object, realization of autonomy-darkness-blindness, then overcoming the inner emptiness by making the object reappear.
But at the present time we are less interested in sadomasochistic relational situations, since they presuppose the existence and predominance of pleasure, than in those «...tendencies beyond the pleasure principle, that is, tendencies more primitive than it and independent of it»⁷.

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The 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 the instincts. The immediate conflict between the life and the death instincts. The Ego of the newborn infant deflects the death instinct, partly by projecting it and partly by transforming it into aggressiveness. He projects onto the breast that part of himself which contains the death instinct. At the same time, a relation is established with the ideal object. As the death instinct is projected outwards, so also is the libido projected in search of an object capable of satisfying the instinctive drive of the Ego towards the preservation of life⁸.

Observing reality, we can reason thusly: the baby is born out of the darkness and water of the intra-uterine 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...»⁹.

Faced with the constraint of coming into the outer world, faced with and upset by the bombardment of stimuli derived 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 upon. The tendency (fantasy-desire) to return to the 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 newborn situation.

The «restoration of an earlier state of things» thus obviously includes another realization in a different and diametrically opposed direction, that of rendering non-existent the presently experienced situation.
If we point out that the tendency-desire¹⁰ to re-establish a former stage can be realized only as a fantasy we can, and of course we must, conceptualize that the annulment of the presently experienced situation is also realized as a fantasy.
At this point, if we add the concept that fantasy is the mental expression of instinct, 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 the human being, a fantasy of annulment is realized, a fantasy of the non-existence of the presently experienced situation¹¹.

From this formulation of the death instinct as a fantasy of annulling, of rendering non-existent, I believe we can go so far as to derive the other term, i.e. disappearance. In using the term "disappearance", we are implicitly referring to a more specific formulation than that which the terms "fantasy of annulment" or of "non-existence" can afford.
To use the term "disappearance" is to suggest a connection with the faculty of seeing. The word has been chosen to reflect the understanding that the upsurge in the newborn infant of the death instinct and of the fantasy of "aggressiveness" against the new situation of being born expresses itself through the use of a readily available and omnipotent power, i.e. the power of creating darkness with the eyes. That is to say, through the use of the faculty of seeing in a negative sense: not in order to see but in order not to see.
While the use of the eyes to create darkness and to not see and, still more, to render the surrounding reality non-existent is easily observable 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:

a) his preceding situation - the intra-uterine environment - was characterized by darkness;
b) the only truly new situation, absolutely and completely non-existent before, is that of the light¹².

We have said, then, in point b) that light corresponds to a situation which was completely non-existent before.
Thus, the reason why the death instinct is realized as disappearance fantasy is that, within the context of re-establishing the preceding stage, this preceding stage is specifically characterized by the lack of an object relation wherein the eyes are stimulated. The newborn child, in his reaction of «passing from a passive to an active role», annuls the aggressive reality which upsets him and realizes a fantasized omnipotence whereby the surrounding darkness of the intra-uterine situation becomes a possibility of determining a specific reality outside the self.

I should like to emphasize the implications of this reasoning. The specific "reality" which the newborn infant determines is a non-reality, a non-existence of something¹³, a reality of annulment, of darkness, of disappearance. The annulment of the light makes the 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 the death instinct, within this passage from a situation of the existence of a reality of darkness in the intra-uterine environment to a situation of not accepting the extra-uterine reality and fantastically determining another "reality".
The "aggressive" drive¹⁴ against the light takes shape as a psychical realization of creating darkness, a concept which includes that of rendering light itself non-existent, annulling it. Whereas darkness was an external reality in the preceding situation, in the new situation of "seeing the light" darkness is a fantasy of "aggressiveness" against reality itself.
We thus formulate the death instinct and its related mental expression, i.e. 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 that situation which is absolutely opposed to the intra-uterine one is the presence of light (the absolute novelty is light), we say that this annulling of reality and rendering it non-existent, this fantasized determination of the opposite (contrary) of that which is in reality, assumes the character of a specific fantasy of making the light disappear, of creating darkness.
We can therefore define the reaction of "aggressiveness" against the new situation of being born as the upsurge of the death instinct which is expressed mentally as disappearance fantasy. We can hypothesize that the baby is born with the disappearance fantasy, the fantasy of making the stimulating environment (external object) disappear and of making his born self disappear, of annulling, and of annulling himself as a living being, desiring and fantasizing a return to the darkness and the water of the intra-uterine stage.
It may thus be hypothesized that man’s first fantasy is the disappearance fantasy.

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Might the disappearance fantasy be the memory trace of the preceding stage?

The above phrase, «the surrounding darkness of the intra-uterine situation becomes a possibility of determining a specific "reality" outside the self», suggests certain considerations which I feel ought not to be overlooked.
The verb "becomes", in particular, might make us think that the newborn child perceives the intra-uterine darkness and that he then makes of this perception a possible means of modifying reality in the sense opposed to what it is. In this case it would be a question of a memory trace and would imply introjection of the intra-uterine darkness and projection of the preceding introjection onto the light. We thus have to clarify the problem of perception-introjection of the intra-uterine darkness.
The first consideration that comes to mind is that the perception of darkness must take place through the eyes since darkness, although it is the opposite of light, still concerns visual perception. We cannot conceive of a dynamic of relationship with darkness through the use of other senses (skin, ears, mouth, smell).
But in the intra-uterine environment the dynamics of the object relation eyes-external object does not exist. The eyes do not function. The newborn infant is physically blind and his blindness, in the sense of an 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 fetus. In fact, there is no outer light to excite the eyes of the fetus. We have, then, external darkness and blindness of the fetus. Since the fetus has no visual receptivity, there can be neither perception nor introjection of darkness.
We can also consider that darkness is an absence of light. A non-existence cannot be perceived and introjected. In other words, perception and introjection imply an object relation which, in the intra-uterine environment, does not exist insofar as perceiving with the eyes is concerned. No object relation, therefore, and no perception-introjection of darkness¹⁵.
The existing external reality does not establish an object relation with the fetus. Or, to put it even more precisely, the fetus 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 the 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 appears in the memory of a situation of visual non object relation. But even in this case we cannot speak of memory trace because a non-relation cannot give rise to a memory since there is no perception in a non-relation.
We shall see in the following pages that the memory trace concerns the libidinal relation with the external object, in which there is perception and receptivity, and subsequently, at birth, the creation of an internal psychical situation, one of intuition and perception of a libidinal reality (the breast) on the outside.
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 is not in fact, since the impulse 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, i.e. destructiveness occurs only when the death impulse 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 creating a new situation, precisely through annulment, by rendering non-existent a presently lived situation of one’s own.

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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 relation.
Here I would like to stress that the relationship with the atmosphere, light, cold, air, is to be regarded as an object relationship. But in this case we must accept that the fetus also has an object relation 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 relationship becomes excessively stimulating and kindles extreme 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, against cold, inanimate light (moonlight).
The amniotic fluid within the mother’s womb was not inanimate (or was so only relatively) in that it provided warmth and homeostasis¹⁶. In the mother’s womb 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 in the case of a simple phenomenon of tactile stimulation;
b) that the dynamics of perceptive-receptive phenomena implicit in the concept first object relation can operate also through the skin.

In this latter case we would need to study the perceptive-receptive dynamics 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 storm-free sea. This idea is acceptable. It would not contradict man’s dreams, and would indeed find ample confirmation in the oniric symbolism of the unconscious-sea and in theories of a primordial marine state of the human species.
But even if we look at it from this standpoint and go so far as to regard the baby’s reaction of fantasizing (can it be considered a fantasy?) the earlier calm within the amniotic fluid at every perturbation, however minor, as signs of a proto-death instinct, our original point still holds.
In any case it must be considered that the «tendency-instinct to reproduce, restore the earlier state of things» is to be situated at the moment of birth. It is at this moment that the drive-fantasy of not being, of not being born, of being in the darkness of the intra-uterine situation, is to be situated. This is so particularly because only at that moment can we imagine a tendency to return to the preceding stage by creating darkness, by rendering the eyes not stimulated or hurt by the light. It is only at that moment that one can imagine a complete realization of the disappearance fantasy, of making the surroundings and oneself disappear, of wholly annulling being alive in the sense of not seeing, of creating darkness.
It will be this, then, that man will search for and struggle against all his life. The tendency to return to darkness, to not seeing, to not knowing. And 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. This tendency will terrify him and he will struggle to oppose it and 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, we must also say that the baby in the womb 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)¹⁷.
This point, in my view, must be emphasized. In a situation of physical blindness, the child can sense the existence-presence of the object through the object’s qualities. The baby makes uses of his possibilities, which we must consider libidinal, to perceive the qualities and characteristics of the object and is aware of its existence.
This point will be taken up again in relation to adult, mature communication on the basis of intuition and verbal communication. The listener, in this situation, does not limit himself to reception of the words (objects-images) but grasps the hidden meaning; that is, he does not limit himself to a vision of the "physical reality" of the object but grasps the sense of the communication. This is the stance of the analyst who realizes an inner image on the basis of a verbal communication and then transforms it into a verbal communication directed towards (investing) the object¹⁸.

As we earlier linked the concept of the death instinct as a tendency to return to the preceding earlier 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 return to the preceding stage. This latter concept implies that of tendency towards. A tendency towards which is the verbalization of a libidinal realization. Because, as we have said, the death instinct, in and of itself, is a pushing away from and of the object.
We must therefore accept that, at birth, the baby has already realized a tactile libidinal relationship with the amniotic fluid and that, thanks to the valid remnant of this tactile-libidinal relationship, the disappearance fantasy can be mixed with a possibility of taking the intra-uterine self back into oneself. Of recreating the fetal self for what it possessed of libido-touch-pleasure.
And this is most likely so. It is more real to imagine a situation wherein not even the most complete realization of the disappearance fantasy is absolute in the sense of death instinct in its pure state. We can believe that there is never a moment in human life in which the death instinct is total and absolute.
Thanks to the earlier realization of the intra-uterine libidinal self and the associated libidinal drive 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 of the development of the life of the psyche, of the possibility of fantasy and later of thought and speech. We conceptualize the creation of the image (memory trace) as the fusion of the death instinct with the libido.
The realization of the object relation with the amniotic fluid is one in which the existence of the object is realized through the medium of the sexual instinct. At birth, the death instinct as a fantasy of the non-existence of the new self - born and in relationship with the light - leads to the fantasy of the existence of the intra-uterine object as its image. As a memory or memory trace. The unconscious calm sea. The death instinct as a 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 intra-uterine environment¹⁹.

We have already discussed the question of the memory trace of physical intra-uterine darkness on pp. 106 ff. With his fantasy of making the external light disappear, the newborn infant creates around himself the darkness of the preceding situation in which he perceived the existence of the object in a situation of non-existence of light, through his libidinal relation with the object.
The baby’s refusal and 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 of the possibility of seeing beyond physical reality itself. In fact the child sees (understands intutively) 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, i.e. 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 lay 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 postnatal situation of being out in the air and the light he would see physical reality as it is but would be completely mistaken about the significance of his coming into the world.

Nor is this all. The internal libidinal situation will enable the child²⁰, 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. 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 become a transformer of living objects into dead internal objects. Blind libido which leads to a situation diametrically opposed to the intra-uterine one in which the baby realized an existence-presence of the object through a direct libidinal rapport with the object (the amniotic fluid).
It is after birth, i.e. in the relationship with the breast, that a state of blindness is established in which the opposite situation prevails: a libido and a libidinal relationship which result in introjection of the object causing it to disappear inside the self and become black, resulting in inner emptiness, in the object made black, bad, dead.

This reflection leads to another. The baby immersed in the amniotic fluid has a rapport-contact with the external object-amniotic fluid in which he realizes receptivity without avidity and without looking at the object. He realizes the presence of the object through reception-perception of the qualities (warmth, homeostasis) of the object. He thus develops the possibility of perceiving the existence of the object through his sexual instinct.
Then, at birth, the disappearance fantasy against the inanimate world is accompanied by the creation of a libidinal and psychical (visual) self. The hope-intuition that a breast exists. Still later, within the dynamics of the relationship with this breast, the disappearance fantasy enacted against it leads to a contact-relation in the opposite sense. A contact-relation which, 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 in its pure state as death instinct. We believe that, with the upsurge of the disappearance fantasy, the infant only transforms his libidinal possibilities. This transformation becomes the possibility of sensing and introjecting the qualities of the object. If there were no libidinal participation, we might well think that the child would not even take the breast.
This conception leads also to the reflection that the incomplete annulment of the libidinal self, the greater or lesser residue of libido, plays a part in the realization and development of the child’s libidinal possibilities when he does take the breast. As we have suggested, he will intuit the goodness and warmth of the breast and, if what he finds corresponds to this intuition, he will recognize them and will be able to establish once again an evolutive rapport with the object. If he does not find correspondence he will repeat the disappearance fantasy-death instinct.

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The memory trace of the intra-uterine situation as a libidinal possibility which becomes desire

Bion’s concept of the "presentiment that a breast exists"²¹ has no validity in the context of the ideas expressed above. We turn to this concept in order to deepen our discussion of the dynamics of the two instincts at birth and of how the first realization of physical relationship with the (breast) object may take place. We do, in fact, have two fundamental concepts:

1. The concept of vitality.
2. The concept of fantasy.

Vitality is the realization of a libidinal self on the part of the fetus in the womb. Having rapport with the object (amniotic fluid) through his sexual instinct, the fetus realizes the existence of the object through the perception of its qualities.
Fantasy is the realization of the death instinct which, in its quality of fantasy of the non-existence of the post-natal situation, brings the intra-uterine self, that is the self in relation with the object, into existence in the memory trace (formation of the memory-image).
In other words, that which no longer is in reality, the rapport with the amniotic fluid, is created as an internal image of the object (the unconscious calm sea) by the fantasy of existence²². What was outside before, the amniotic fluid, takes form within the newborn child as a memory trace of the lost object, a memory trace which implies both the image of the object and the possibility of an object relation.
At this point a question arises. Can the newborn child put this memory trace back outside himself? I mean, can we raise the problem of the beginning of the mechanism of projection and introjection? The memory trace realized within the self is put outside the self. Why? And how? Projection implies introjection. So we would have to think that the creation of the memory trace, rendering existent within the self an object which is no longer present in reality, includes the introjection of an image from the outside: i.e. an oral-visual relation with the object.
But obviously this cannot be so. The rapport with the amniotic fluid is not a visual relation just as it is not an introjective relation; it is, rather, as we have said, a direct relation of the skin with the amniotic fluid and hence a relation of cutaneous, not oral, receptivity. Instead of the projection of an image or a memory, therefore, we have to conceptualize the possibility of an object relation and a libidinal investment of the object. The concept is that of hoping that there will be an object with which to establish an object relation.

It is in the physical relationship with the object that the mechanism of introjection followed by projection enters into play²³. The mouth (oral libido) introjects the physical breast object which, fusing with the memory trace existing in the newborn child, is then projected together with the memory trace itself.
As a result of this, after the first contact, the breast is a fecal image and object. The basic sadomasochistic relation 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 disappearance fantasy at birth is unsuccessful in destroying the libidinal self which, on the contrary, successfully transforms the disappearance fantasy into 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 of the direct relation with the object, that motivates the baby to take the breast that is offered to him instead of passively experiencing introduction of the milk.
Not exactly a «presentiment that a breast exists», then, which would suggest a preformed (albeit indefinite) image of the breast. The image of the unconscious calm sea which we have evoked might lead to confusion. But we insist on the concept that the image of the unconscious calm sea is a phenomenon which occurs at birth. The fetus, instead, realizes a primordial internal possibility of libido and object relation through the medium of the qualities of the object.
The concept of projection into the external environment of an internal image at birth should not be taken into consideration. The mechanism of introjection and projection begins to operate after the upsurge of the death instinct which provokes the newborn infant’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 the libidinal possibility of post-natal tending towards the object. Memory trace of the qualities of the object (amniotic fluid and intra-uterine environment). The conceptualization is directed towards identifying 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 baby is blind in the womb) but from a postnatal internal creation which cannot be projected to form, on the outside, an "idea of the breast"²⁴.
It is a realization of receptivity and of possibility, of libido. It is this realization which constitutes the "presentiment". A realization of libido or tending towards. The disappearance fantasy-death instinct at birth, a direct drive against (to render non existent) (concept of aggressivity) is transformed (to bring into existence) by this libidinal self (the material experience of direct rapport with the amniotic fluid). It is controlled, checked in its absolute extreme of removing the object, and takes form as the possibility of moving the object just far enough away to be able to realize and maintain a relation with it. The possibility, in other words, of discerning the object which, in turn, makes relationship possible and hence identification from it. A proper distance makes it possible to have an exchange with the object, to be at the same time similar and autonomous. That the words "to identify oneself" mean, at the same time, to be like and to differentiate oneself from the other is certainly significant²⁵.

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The disappearance fantasy as creative realization of the death instinct

We shall stop now to consider that the disappearance fantasy-death instinct as a pure phenomenon is not a tendency towards, a desire for. That is, it does not imply an object relation or a tendency towards object relation. Rather, it constitutes a break with, an annulment of the other and of the self. Thus annulment and disappearance of the relationship as well, whatever the object may be, air, breast.
We stress this concept because it underlies our consideration of the development of images and of thought as loss of the presently experienced situation and its realization respectively as image and as verbal thought²⁶.
Thus the baby loses the real situation of rapport with the amniotic fluid and, if he has sufficient libido, the disappearance fantasy against the new situation of being born is transformed into fantasy and the memory trace of the preceding situation. Just as the loss of the physical breast object at weaning will, if the child has developed sufficient libido in breast feeding, give rise to a memory trace of the breast and an internal realization of the image as a total object. Thus also if there is sufficient libido verbal thought will develop with the disappearance of the images and of the inner fantasy world.
If there is insufficient libido, the disappearance fantasy will assume its aspect of annulment, death instinct, total loss with emptiness and inner darkness, with the many and varied consequences of "neurotic" realizations, exhibitionism, depression, masochism, search for lost physical objects.
The freudian concept of the death instinct as the tendency to return to the inorganic state links up with the concept of the disappearance fantasy when the fantasy is considered in its pure state, that is without fusion with the libido. In fact, without libido the death instinct-disappearance fantasy²⁷ renders reality non-existent. There is no possibility of memory trace, no possibility of recreating vitality (intuition) within the self.
Relationship with the breast would be impossible without the drive of intuition and without desire. The tendency to death and physical undoing would be realized in full.

The two phrases:

a) development of images and thought as loss of the presently experienced situation;
b) search for lost physical objects,

lead us to further considerations about what may constitute a dynamic of evolution of the individual.
We have discovered libidinal participation in the conceptualization of inner fantasy as a "tendency towards". In this tendency we have also discovered a desire for. Now, vice versa, we find that development, evolution, is linked to pushing away a previously experienced situation, to its loss. In this case the intervention of the death instinct must be considered. It should thus be considered (even though this seems paradoxical) that the death instinct is a stimulus to evolution.
The baby who abandons the physical breast and his relation with it pushes the physical object away from himself, separates himself from it. He can realize its image within himself. Thanks to his libidinal possibilities he can change his relation with the object. From a relation with the external object to a relation with the inner image of the object. The expression of the drive-death instinct in the relationship with the physical object leads to a fuller psychic realization. Here there will be no search for lost physical objects because there has been no realization of destroying them.
Should the death instinct be realized as annulment of the external object, on the contrary, the search for and recovery of the eliminated object on the outside becomes essential.
This discourse highlights two characteristics of the death instinct drive:

a) its character of annulment, disappearance, rendering the external object non-existent;
b) its direction against the external object, from the inside to the outside.

The latter case involves the realization of the loss of the outer object as a result of having annulled it, made it disappear; the realization of oneself as destructive, determining the non-existence of the other, and, correspondingly, the annulment of oneself as a psychic being. Within the dynamics of this phenomenon, not being born, going back into the womb, corresponds to a total annulment of the self. In this drive-fantasy of annulment of the self experiencing a present situation, there is no possibility of realizing the discovery of a different self, endowed with libidinal possibilities of relating to the object. In other words, absolute blindness. Psychical blindness in the sense of the impossibility of an object relation, of seeing-perceiving the qualities of the object.
This consideration leads us to think that the loss, in the case of a disappearance fantasy with libidinal participation, concerns not so much the external object as one’s own inner situation of relationship with the object. In this case, one’s own inner situation of relationship is transformed into another (more evolved) situation of relationship with the object²⁸.

As we have said, the passage is from the direct physical relation with the breast to the image of the breast, with the image of the mother-breast and father-breast.
In other words, abandoning the object is death instinct when it is related to a drive to annul which is directed against the object; when there is libidinal participation, instead, abandoning the object is disappearance fantasy directed against an internal situation of object relation of one’s own, transforming it into another, more evolved relation.

To clarify this. The death instinct includes:

a) a tendency to go back to the preceding state;
b) a loss of the presently experienced situation.

The possibility of losing the presently experienced situation implies a concept of tendency towards, and hence libidinal participation. At birth, the loss of the presently experienced situation, determined by the disappearance fantasy directed at annulling being born and the corresponding relation with the surrounding atmosphere, implies a tending towards the preceding situation. Linked to the fantasy of making the present situation disappear, this tending towards results in a fantasy-image or memory trace and, therefore, to recovering the intra-uterine libidinal self as the baby’s internal libidinal possibility of object relation, a possibility which will then be expressed in his relation with the breast.
On the contrary, the disappearance fantasy as death instinct without libidinal participation leads to inner death; the realization of the image, that is psychic realization, is lacking. The disappearance fantasy does not include the memory of. Since there is no psychic realization, there is no evolution.
When the baby breaks away from the presently experienced situation (e.g. abandons the breast) with the disappearance fantasy, instead, the tendency to go back to the preceding stage should be interpreted as a tendency towards the realization of a self without the presently experienced object relation. And indeed this is what happens. When the baby is weaned he goes back to the state in which he had no relation with the breast, for example to the immediate post-natal situation.
Both babies, the newly born and the newly weaned, are in a situation of having no relationship with the breast. But we obviously cannot regard the life situation of the two as identical. Apart from differences in physical development, what we are trying to understand are the psychic differences.
Following our reasoning, the dynamics of the baby’s separation from the breast at the time of weaning ought to be a creative act of the child himself (which the mother facilitates by tending to propose herself as a total object without attacking the baby’s partial drive) who abandons his own partial drive and integrates it into interest in the mother as a whole object.
In this way, the baby operates a disappearance fantasy aimed at his own internal situation of relationship with the object, that is aimed at himself experienced as a sucking mouth. The idea of aggressiveness and being against disappears in the context of this internal process. A disappearance fantasy drive directed against the disappointing breast, instead, would result in inner emptiness and blindness since, as we know, the frustrating, "aggressive" breast is also the projection of the baby’s identification with the breast.
The situation of the child at birth and not yet in relation with the breast, instead, is that of the disappearance fantasy operated against the external object (air, light).
At this point we must consider the hypothesis that the inanimate external object represents the projection of an inanimate internal situation of the newborn child. We cannot accept this possibility since the concept of projection is linked to that of introjection. We are unable to accept the concept of introjection of an inanimate object for three reasons:

1. The concept of introjection would imply that the fetus in the womb had introjected the "inanimateness" of the amniotic fluid. We find it difficult to accept the amniotic fluid as "inanimate" because it is human and animate in that it is an intrinsic part of the mother’s vital situation.
2. The concept of introjection would imply an avid, greedy libido, as well as an activity of oral relationship which is inconceivable within the intra-uterine situation. The fetus has a cutaneous, not an oral relationship with the amniotic fluid.
3. The conception of vitality and object relation arising by means of introjection would lead us to conceive of the human being as an undifferentiated matrix upon which the outer object imprints traits which will mark the individual for all his life; the concept of man formulated outlined by Freud which we reject²⁹.

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Death instinct and knowledge.
Evolution and race towards death

We will now focus on certain considerations deriving from the foregoing discussion.
In the intra-uterine situation of the human being, we conceive the upsurge of a sexual instinct in the fetus which makes it possible to realize a relation with the external object (amniotic fluid). Moreover, this upsurge comes about as a result of the very existence of this relationship.
The upsurge of the death instinct in the infant at birth is analogous: the impulse to annul the external object and the self in relationship with the external object (light, air). This impulse (instinct) also arises inside the newborn child. But here, too, as for the sexual instinct, its upsurge in the newborn child is intimately related to the existence of the outer object or, better still, to the existence of relation-contact with the external object. In both cases, we do not know whether it is the one (external object) which determines the other (instinct) or whether instinct arises autonomously internally. We find it difficult to conceive of an autonomous internal ursurge of instinct independently of the existence of a relation with the object. Even in the conceptualization of the death instinct as non-relationship with the object, the fact is that this non-relation takes place within the context of a relation with the object.
Internal upsurge of the instinct and relation with the object. Is it the one which determines the other or is it the other way around? We do not know, and in a sense we do not care to know.
We are not concerned with concepts of cause or of "logical" exactitude, nor do we wish to be. We do not wish to because psychoanalysis is not mathematics: «The field of inquiry of psychoanalysis excludes kinds of communications providing information about a problem in the absence of the problem itself»³⁰.
To put it another way, in order to know, and since our search for knowledge is not abstracted from the object of study but, on the contrary, implies a relationship with this object, we prefer to focus on the creative rather than the logical possibilities of the human being. Not logical deductions, which are not grounded in data drawn from real experience, so much as creative intuition of thought within the actual context of being in and experiencing an interhuman relation.
Like when I find myself obliged to interpret... the enigma of the Sphinx. The patient, receiving the interpretation of his oral drive to devour the physical object, says: «The analyst (I, the patient, in analysis) doesn’t want my inner breast-sucking and devouring baby. Therefore he doesn’t love me (I don’t love myself) because he doesn’t want me (I don’t want myself) to be like this. This voracious baby has to disappear (die)». And it frequently happens in analytical practice that, if the interpretation is not given very carefully, patients make their libidinal selves disappear, annul them, and then become indifferent and exhibitionistic. In appearance "they are much better". I have never been able to explain this "logically". The analyst (or, more accurately, the situation of analytical relationship) tends to make the little baby disappear in order to have a bigger, more evolved one. «But then you (I) don’t accept me and don’t love me for what I am», says the patient. «No», says the analyst. «I accept you as you are, but... I don’t accept you as you are».

In fact, it is not a logical discourse. If the attitude is to accept and preserve the object just as it is, the relation with the object is a relation with an inanimate object. Someone who possesses a beautiful statue does not want anyone to change it. But this is not libido. A parent (analyst) who accepts and loves the child tends at the same time to change him (or, to be more exact, to accept changes which occur) in an evolutive direction. "Logically", however, this implies a rejection of the child’s present being. But nobody thinks that a parent who is happy about a change in the child (his first steps, his first words) is rejecting the child, or doesn’t want him, or doesn’t accept him as he is. I truly think that we will never find the answer in terms of "logic".
Moreover, one of the major problems barring the patient’s way to a proper analytical evolution hides behind this "logic"³¹.
An ever-present and always unconscious thought of the patient’s is the following: the analyst has accepted (wanted) me sick, as a small child. How can the same analyst accept me evolved, different?
We are faced with the projection onto the analyst of a static realization of the patient’s, that is of a realization carried out with scare libido resulting in the paralysis of the presently experienced self, in a patient-statue. The patient had undoubtedly directed a disappearance fantasy in the sense of death instinct against the external object (mother-father). He has made the mother (father) disappear, or at the very least has paralyzed her, making her into an inanimate object, and has thus made himself inanimate, statue-like. The projection of this realization onto the analyst results in his experiencing the analyst as "logical", cold and distant, and in blocking his own evolution. It would always be the analyst-mother (or father) talking to her "baby" even when the baby is twenty years old³².

It is for just this reason that we prefer a creative and intuitive human realization wherein, instead of explaining logically how the phenomenon occurs, we attempt to place the discourse on a level of communication where the component of intuition can play a fundamental role; and many things become obvious without need of logical explanation.
Then it also becomes obvious that the "disappearance" of the little baby, of the Pinocchio in man, is not death but, on the contrary, a dynamics of evolution and creativity. The suckling child has disappeared forever (died?) to give way to the little boy, it is true, but the concept of disappearance here is obviously not one of destruction, annulment, return to the inorganic state, but rather of evolution and creativity. So it is, then, that the child dies (disappears) to give way to the adolescent just as the adolescent dies to give way to the adult and the adult to give way the old man (the enigma of the Sphinx)³³.
But looking at it this way it is also obvious (and here the point is dramatic, apparently insoluble) that evolution-creativity of an ever more evolved being (in the sense of an indefinite plus, as alluded to before) leads to death, to the disappearance of the living being himself, to his return to the inorganic state.
The successive, repeated, undoubtedly vital disappearance of the present self in favour of a better one has as its result (scope?) death, non-being. Is death a question of result, i.e. of the exhaustion of libidinal possibilities with the result that the fantasy of making the presently experienced self disappear increasingly assumes the characteristics of death instinct directed at annulling libido and vitality? Perhaps. The disappearance fantasy without libido is no longer fantasy-image, i.e., psychic realization.
But perhaps death is also the scope. A scope contested by the libido which transforms the death instinct into a disappearance fantasy directed towards the present personal inner situation of the being and thereby hinders, so long as it remains active, the scope of the death instinct. A scope which will be fulfilled, will triumph when, in old age, the libido is no longer active.
Or perhaps the discussion should be focussed on the physical being of man, on the anatomical-physiological substratum of the human being. This is what dies, what exhausts its possibilities of functioning, whereas psychic realizations, thought, remain - there is no way in which they can be annulled. They cannot be annulled because the death instinct, which is a psychic realization, fused with libido, cannot take on again the characteristics of annulment, of non-being, darkness. Creation, history remains.
To return to the discussion of knowledge, we would like to emphasize the concept that knowledge implies separation from the presently experienced situation. It is this "death" of the presently experienced self which leads to knowledge. The disappearance fantasy directed towards one’s own present and personal situation of object relation results in a psychic realization. The death instinct is deviated from directing itself against the external object and becomes fantasy-image and then thought, or creativity, causing a personal inner object relation situation to disappear with the result (scope) of creating a more evolved human self.
This is because the libido, breaking away from the object, is contained within the self and serves as an energy base for transforming the death instinct into disappearance fantasy directed towards the very libido contained within the self. With the containment of the libido within the self, the death instinct is also contained and acts to modify a present situation making it disappear to give way to a new one.

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A reflection on the concept of identification

Following on from the ideas expressed in the preceding pages, to make disappear implies the concept of pushing away from oneself, of establishing a distance from the object (the fantasy of people leaving on a train who push the object away until it disappears over the horizon). It implies, that is, the opposite of an aggressive relationship with the object in the sense of taking while inflicting harm, striking, biting. In this latter case the concept is not one of annulling the object and the object relation but of transforming the object in the object relation.
We are interested here in making it clear that the concept of aggressiveness is inadequate to describe the death instinct and may be misleading in studying the dynamics of the object relation and seeking to understand human psychic realizations.
There is a form of aggressiveness, expressed as disappearance fantasy, which aims at annulling the object; and there is another form which operates within the dynamics of the object relation and in which the object (and oneself) are modified. In this latter case, there is an economy of libido which links itself to the object. The introjection of the object also includes aggressiveness in the form of disappearance of the object, but in this case the disappearance consists in fantasizing that one puts the object inside oneself.
In the disappearance fantasy of making the object disappear outside oneself, pushing it away from oneself, the concept of introjection is not involved.
This could lead us to reflect on the phenomenon of the object relation and the psychic realizations which occur within this context, and to clarify the concept of identification with the object³⁴.
Within the context of an object relation, the subject can identify himself with the object by introjection, by eating the object and making it disappear inside himself; as part of the dynamics of this relation he projects it, that is, he reconstitutes it outside himself, although in an altered and modified form. In a dynamic of this sort, the object relation is preserved.
On the contrary, in an object relation where the subject directs the disappearance fantasy against the object in order to annul it and renders the object relation itself non-existent along with the disappearance of the object, there is neither introjection nor projection nor does the dynamics of the object relation operate, because there is no libidinal economy.
There is, however, another phenomenon which can lead to confusion if it is not examined carefully. This is the phenomenon wherein the subject enacting the disappearance fantasy against the object sets in motion a dynamics of aggressiveness directed against aggressiveness. The subject makes himself more aggressive than the sadistic object. We might speak of identification with the aggressor, but I maintain this is just what makes the term identification misleading.
Let us reserve the term identification, according to the freudian conception, for an object relation situation based on introjection and projection³⁵. In the case of non-relation with the object, I prefer to conceive a dynamic process of making oneself equal to and more aggressive than the sadistic object³⁶.
We have stressed the sado-masochistic relationship in the preceding pages since it is precisely within this relationship, when it is heavily imbued with aggressiveness, that the disappearance fantasy against the object and the annulment of the object relation erupt.
We have stressed this because the disappearance fantasy against the object, the ultimate realization of aggressiveness and non-being, is intimately related to the intensity of sadism attributed to the object. And because we want to emphasize that the disappearance fantasy against the light at birth can also be considered a reaction to a relationship with an aggressive object which attacks the newborn child, disturbing his homeostasis. A reaction against an external light object which tries to impose itself, which violently invests the newborn child and determines the reaction which will lead the child to blindness with regard to the annulled object, to non-human nature³⁷.
The newborn infant, in attacking the light-object does not identify with it because he does not introject it. On the contrary he makes himself more aggressive (indifferent) by annulling the light and creating darkness outside and around himself. By making himself as or more aggressive than the object, i.e. by actuating a dynamic of greater or lesser aggressiveness, he becomes the exact opposite of the object itself³⁸.
The struggle with the object based on aggressiveness leads one to become as or more aggressive than the object, with the result of being different, alienated and distant from the object.

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Post-natal blindness and the first contact with the breast. Greed

Death instinct. The baby is born with death instinct. Of course. But not in the usual meaning of the term as to destroy, to attack. The concept of aggressiveness in its usual acceptation should be applied, as we have seen in the preceding paragraph, to the context of an object relation wherein the object is introjected and hence made to disappear within the self.
But the introjection of the breast is only a partial dynamics within the context of the interhuman relationship and is not death instinct, although it is imbued with death instinct. Post-natal psychic reality is much more complex, it is unacceptable to reduce it to a simplistic, generic "aggressiveness".
When the child takes the breast and discovers the pleasure of the object relation, he has his first satisfaction of desire. The desire for human rapport, for sucking, emptying. At the same time, he realizes his reality as a sexed human being, the reality of being in relation with another person.
Unfortunately, however, he also satisfies anger. He "eats", "devours", introjects the breast whenever he suffers a disappointment; especially if the mother-breast obstructs the fulfillment of his desire. The experience is a confused one. The first physical relation with the breast includes the dynamics and the concept of greed.
The infant, after the first feeding, is also Saturn.
We can orient ourselves with regard to this situation. We can understand why it is that then³⁹when we are in relation with the conscious or unconscious psyche of others, we are faced with Saturn. A Saturn who is also anxiety-ridden about this sexuality made up of both desire and rage, tending to suck but also to bite and eat the penis-breast of the analyst. Saturn, who cannot even manage to be Saturn and annuls, makes disappear his anxiety-ridden, sexed self.
This is because the baby becomes increasingly blind. He becomes increasingly blind when he enacts and reenacts the disappearance fantasy. When he rediscovers the death instinct within himself, the fantasy-tendency to return to the darkness of the intra-uterine situation. He becomes blind when he does not introject the images and qualities of the mother-object. Images which, apart from the retinal physiological aspect, are the mother’s love, attention, understanding, "care", her human qualities.
If he does not introject the mother’s qualities, if he does not satisfy his desire but becomes greedy and introjects the breast (the object), he becomes blind and deaf. Once again he realizes the disappearance fantasy but, unlike the situation at birth, this time he directs it against the breast he has "eaten", that is introjected and projected, and thus he annuls his seeing self. He causes to disappear that self which, as we have said, had the capacity for life, capacity for psychic life in the sense of realizing the existence of the object (the first nucleus of psychic seeing without physical vision of the object).
After the first feeding, the baby is thus also a blind devourer. He is split. The fundamental split between two tendencies. Seeing and not seeing, negating. Eating in the sense of introjecting and projecting objects.
The two tendencies have neither the same matrix nor the same significance. The death instinct tendency, which has its matrix in looking-seeing, is not a desire (reserving for this word the sense of attraction towards, desire for). Rather, it is a reaction of annulment, of negation of the present state, a tendency to make disappear the hic et nunc of the present being.
Attraction towards, desire for, implies the concept of libido tending towards union with the object.

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Splitting: the physical object and the psychic object

We were saying that the newborn child becomes split, at grips with two types of instincts-tendencies. In Freud’s words «...those which bring life to death⁴⁰ and those, the sex instincts, which seek incessantly to renew life».
The newborn child who becomes a blind devourer can follow only one path to retrieve his "sight", that is the possibility of realizing images and building a psychic life: the path of the object relation, the path which satisfies desire through the medium of mouth-skin-smell.
The libido which enables desire to be satisfied is that which became unconscious calm sea at birth. It is this libido which, despite (and because of) the disappearance fantasy at birth, makes the object relation possible. It is libido which can, and in the future will be able to, neutralize the disappearance fantasy-death instinct⁴¹.
But if desire is deluded by the other person, the infant becomes split: the breast is eaten; it becomes dead matter, inanimate, feces. Desire is transformed into greed. The disappearance fantasy is no longer neutralized; in fact it repeats its operation against the other person who has been introjected and projected.
But this will not be the only experience. To the extent that libido, relationship, the satisfaction of desire neutralizes the disappearance fantasy, the child will "see" instead of progressing towards blindness. He will absorb the qualities of the mother-breast; he will absorb the unconscious, the image of the mother. Then he will increasingly be able to sense intuitively and with each successive feeding the object with which he is in relationship will be less and less feces or inanimate matter, less and less a partial object and more and more a human totality. He will be increasingly able to have relationships not with the object, but with its human qualities; the breast will not be feces-inanimate object but object-goodness, object-warmth, object-pleasure. The child will be less and less coprophagic and will "see" more and more.
To the extent to which the disappearance fantasy at the end of feeding is neutralized by the libido, instead of progressing towards blindness, the child will increasingly augment his possibility of dreaming and remembering. Realizing the image-memory, of the mother-breast and desiring it anew, tending towards it.
The opposite will occur at every feeding where the process that is repeated is one of seeing-desiring, feeding, disappointment of desire, introjection-eating-projection of the object, end-of-feeding disappearance fantasy against the other person, outer and inner darkness. Then there will be annulment of the other person and of the self. The child will augment the coprophagic state associated with having eaten the object with closed eyes, in a state of blindness and hence rendered it feces, inanimate.

Good object and bad object. The baby has the good object inside himself, the images-qualities of the object, the memory of the experience. He has inside himself the bad object, which is fecal not so much because of the color of the feces (which are not actually black but which are often dreamed of as such), but because the physical object, once introjected, disappears inside the self. That is, it becomes black; it has the characteristics of aggressiveness, of a bad object tending to attack the subject in the sense of negating him, hating him. And the child eliminates it, frees himself of it, defecates it⁴².
In this continual alternation between looking-loving and introjecting-projecting-making disappear, the baby ought to ovecome splitting and develop the integration of curiosity-libido, or the eyes-mouth triangle⁴³.
When the child has not achieved this integration and developed the triangle, the act of weaning can lead to a total disappearance fantasy and to indifference in human relationships. The possibility of overcoming the weaning "trauma" will depend on the extent to which the child has developed his visual-imaginative capacities. The slimmer these are, the more the child will find himself split, the more he will feel empty, dark, and will be subject to intense envy and greed. The disappearance fantasy and indifference will offer the only "solution" to the sadomasochistic relationship of introjection and projection. Because of his greed, the subject will always perceive others as aggressive, and he will be greedy because he will be unable to realize the qualities-images and will always tend towards physical introjection, towards taking rather than taking in (learning)⁴⁴.

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The death instinct and the realization of a psychic life

In treating the concept of the death instinct as disappearance fantasy, we have reflected on its ideal dynamic process of development. In order to constitute itself as a drive component of psychic evolution, it must be situated within the framework of two phenomena:

a) reintegration of the projection of one’s identification with the object and hence recovery of all of one’s libidinal possibilities, resulting in a phenomenon wherein:
b) the disappearance fantasy is directed towards one’s own internal situation of relationship with the object and not against the object.

Thanks to these reintegrated libidinal possibilities, the death instinct, operating as a disappearance fantasy against one’s own partial drives of object relation, establishes itself as the matrix of psychic evolution making use of these very sexual drives, which are no longer bound to the physical object.
Here we may recall our earlier remarks on evolution viewed as loss of a presently experienced situation. We had said, in fact, that the death instinct as disappearance fantasy operates to determine the "disappearance" of personal situations of relationship with the object. And it therefore operates to, as we might put it, annul the libidinal relationships with the object. This is possible if there is an intervention by the libido. There would seem to be a paradox in that the libido would allow the death instinct-disappearance fantasy to destroy libido; but in fact what is being "destroyed" is a particular mode of being of the libido, in the sense that the presently experienced libido (e.g. libido bound to physical gratification) disappears and is replaced by a different libido (such as that interested in the image of the object).
This means that we must accept continuing, repeated deaths-disappearances of ourselves in any given and present situation of life and object relation.
It is perhaps here, in this impossibility of stopping, that our race towards death resides. We cannot achieve a static, still, immobile situation, for that would be death. And so we advance without pause in a race towards death.

«The analysis of the transference neuroses forced upon our notice the opposition between the "sexual instincts", which are directed towards an object, and certain other instincts, with which we were very insufficiently acquainted and which we described provisionally as the "Ego-instincts"»⁴⁵.
«Our argument had as its point of departure a sharp distinction between ego-instincts, which we equated with death instincts, and sexual instincts, which we equated with life instincts»⁴⁶.
«Now object-love itself presents us with a second example of a similar polarity - that between love (or affection) and hate (or aggressiveness)».
«Is it not plausible to suppose that this sadism is in fact a death instinct which, under the influence of the narcissistic libido, has been forced away from the ego and has consequently only emerged in relation to the object?»⁴⁷.

Let us pause to reflect on these quotations from Freud. Sadism (aggressiveness) is a situation of object relation, not of a break with the object such as occurs with the disappearance fantasy. Sadism (aggressiveness) operates when the object is also an identification of the subject projected outside onto the object itself. In a relational situation of this sort, the object is sadistic and the subject is masochistic. But the reverse is also true: the masochistic subject is also sadistic towards the object in that the subject continues to introject it aggressively, that is altering it increasingly more and more. This is because the libido is bound to the physical object and thus introjects it, making it disappear inside the self, rendering it black, aggressive, inanimate. The libido becomes imbued with the death instinct. «During the oral phase of the organization of the libido, the act of obtaining erotic mastery over an object coincides with that object’s destruction» (Freud).

In chapter VI of Beyond the pleasure principle, Freud also cites Plato’s myth of Androgenes and the myth of the world issuing forth from the Atman (the Ego)⁴⁸. We often find ourselves faced with the problem of having to help the patient in analysis recover his internal feminine situation; moreover the patient clearly demonstrates (in dreams and associations) the wish to recover this dimension while at the same time patently showing how anxious he would be should this inner realization of the feminine dimension take place. Freud:

«If we ask an analyst which psychic formations of his patients have proved most inaccessible to his influence the answer will be the desire for a penis in the woman and in the man the feminine position towards his own sex which indeed presupposes the loss of the penis»⁴⁹.

I was able to find the solution to this problem when I considered that the recovery of the feminine dimension was also a problem in women patients. It was, precisely the "desire for a penis", and for the male as well the feminine dimension meant the "desire for a penis".
The problem, for men as for women, lay in recovering their own affective situations. The libido, in a condition of psychic blindness due to repeated fantasies of disappearance, was blind and was experienced as greed for the physical object, for the analyst’s penis. It was therefore rejected since it would have led to a confusion between libido and death, i.e., to castrating the analyst and having a bad internal object, a stolen penis which had been made to disappear within the self and then put back into the analyst, making him bad or dead (an association: hitting him over the head with an iron bar).
Conversely, alienating and negating one’s own affective situation led to continual realizations of inconstancy, that is of breaking off object relations, and to continual manifestations of inner darkness, depression, exhibitionism.
The situation has improved now that I never let slip the opportunity to interpret the disappearance fantasy as the disappearance of the analyst-object and the realization of internal darkness. Now that I proceed, after this interpretation, to interpret the libidinal drive to take, which is experienced as eating the object. Because, I noticed, what happened was just this: the disappearance fantasy in the sense of the annulment of the object led to blindness. It led to the inability to have a psychic relationship with the object and to experiencing libidinal drives as greedy desires to eat the physical object. Greed (libido) came to be rejected as an internal situation of one’s own ("femininity").
The concept of re-establishing an earlier state, in the sense that Freud intended in his reference to the myth of Androgenes and the genesis of the world from the Atman, is to be understood, in my view, as a tendency to recover the image and the situation of the self before the enactment of the disappearance fantasy, at whatever age this may have occurred. Because the disappearance fantasy annuls the self in its present relation with the object in order to form the image of the earlier state of good rapport with the object. The past, it is said, is always better than the present!
Let us re-examine the concept that «Eros is something which exercises itsfunction from the very beginning and which opposes the "death instinct" as a "life instinct" from the time the living substance becomes animate».
This also our point regarding the way in which the disappearance fantasy is restrained in its quality of death instinct by the libidinal realizations. It is as if, paradoxically, evolution consisted in recovering the preceding state by annulling the presently experienced one. Precisely in this "return" the individual realizes an evolution in that Eros blocks the "return" from becoming regression and total annulment of the self. Where there is no opposition from Eros, the disappearance fantasy does, in fact, become death and, so far as evolution is concerned, the return remains exclusively regression.
The paradox, then, of evolution through the realization of inner death. The individual who realizes his own autonomy and "independence" at the various stages of his life through the disappearance fantasy as a death instinct drive directed against the object achieves isolation from objects, anaffectivity, the impossibility of having object relations. The 'break' with the object is not accompanied by a psychic realization apart from that of darkness and emptiness. It is at this point that the search for the earlier situation, which corresponds to the search for the libidinal self lost in the break from the object, may take place. The search for "femininity" and for the "desire for the penis-breast".
The patient who declares without a doubt that he has never been loved (breast-fed) speaks to us of this problem. He has never loved, he says. And it’s not true. It was the disappearance fantasies carried out against the object (at weaning or during masturbation) which caused the previously experienced libidinal self to disappear. In this instance of an existential search for an external object representing the libido we must, in fact, think in terms of a failed internal realization of libidinal possibilities. Indeed, in the break with the object, in separation, one’s own inner situation of potential for love can be lost. This happens when there is no realization of an inner memory of the lost situation (or, better still, the memory of the personal internal situation of libidinal rapport with the object) and therefore the libidinal potential is not realized. At the time of the break, the situation experienced up until then becomes the past. And it is sought after with nostalgia, as a life situation contrasting with the present death situation experienced after the break.
It is the same for both man and woman. Man seeks the "feminine position" of the desire for the penis (breast) and rejects it because it would lead to a realization of greedy and castrating libido and hence to self-castration, i.e. to the rejection of a libidinal realization of this sort. The woman rejects the desire for a penis-breast for the same reasons, that is because this would lead her to a realization of physical (fecal) masculinity and hence to castration or loss of the libido. The conflict is between need for and anxiety about desire.
Let us look again at the conclusion of sorts which Freud proposes in the last page of the work: «The pleasure principle seems actually to serve the death instincts». In fact, as we were saying, in order to become disappearance fantasy in the sense of psychic realization, the death instinct needs libidinal energy.

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No and pushing the object away without disappearance

Freud’s 1925 work Negation⁵⁰ allows us to develop our discussion to a point where the complete fusion of the instincts can be theorized. Let us look again at the concept of refusal:

«We realize that this is a rejection, by projection, of an idea that has just come up. (...) Thus the content of a repressed image or idea can make its way into consciousness, on condition that it is negated, negation is a way of taking cognizance of what is repressed (...). We can see how in this the intellectual function is separated from the affective process».

Again: «A negative judgement is the intellectual substitute for repression» and, in The two principles of mental functioning:

«In place of repression, which deprived the psychic drive of a share of the presentations at their source, inasmuch as these were painful, impartial judging appeared, whose duty it was to establish whether presentation was true or false, that is, in accordance with reality or not, and which made these decisions through the medium of memory traces of reality»⁵¹.

In Negation⁵²:

«The function of judgement is concerned in the main with two sorts of decisions. It affirms or disaffirms the possession by a thing of a particular attribute; and it asserts or disputes that a presentation has an existence in reality (...). Expressed in the language of the oldest - the oral - instinctual impulses, the judgement is: "I should like to eat this", or "I should like to spit it out"».
«The other sort of decision made by the function of judgement - as to the real existence of something of which there is a presentation (reality-testing) - is a concern if the definitive reality-ego, which develops out of the initial pleasure-ego».
«(...) all presentations originate from perceptions and are repetitions of them».
«But it is evident that a precondition for the setting up of reality-testing is that objects shall have been lost which once brought real satisfaction (...) negation - the successor to expulsion - belongs to the instinct of destruction».

The point of departure, then, is refusal, the idea of spitting out. The idea of pushing the object away from the self.
We have understood the disappearance fantasy as making the object disappear, pushing it away from oneself to the point where it disappears. The drive (instinct) involved is the death drive.
In refusing the object and the object relation, instead, the «symbol of negation» is brought into effect. We have considered that the instinct of death, of the annulment of the object, transforms itself into fantasy-image, that is, into a first internal image, into the re-evocation as a memory trace of the preceding object (state).
Just as the act of pushing away the object (the atmosphere) at birth results in the first internal fantasy, the unconscious calm sea, at the age of the formation of symbols this realization is symbolized in the verbalization "No". The object is pushed away, but is not made to disappear. There is no destruction of the object because there is creation of verbal thought. The disappearance fantasy is transformed into the symbolization of refusal, of the pushing away of the object. Refusal and pushing away are symbolized.
"No" can be regarded as a pure form of thought in that there is no formation of an internal image of the object. In fact, with "No" there is no break with the physical object. In the case of the verbal symbol "No", the drive (death instinct) appears to be transformed directly into verbal thought. Let us consider:

a) at birth, the formation of the first internal image, the memory trace of the intra-uterine state;
b) during breast feeding, the formation of the image of the breast at the end of each feeding, in relation to the break from the physical breast object;
c) at weaning, coinciding with the realization of the total object, the formation of symbols of the objects (mamma).

The "No" refers to the breast. The child often amuses himself by shaking his head "no" before he is able to verbalize⁵³. However, on reflection we may consider this manifestation of refusal as implying, so to speak, a general sense of relationship with the object.
In the other situations, at birth and during breast-feeding, the baby progresses to create an internal image of the object through separation from and the disappearance of the physical object. We can, instead, consider "No" as the verbal expression of refusal itself. That is, the symbolization of the disappearance fantasy itself as a drive.
"No" would thus be the verbalization of the death instinct. We know that the death instinct requires the intervention of the Eros drives in order to be fantasy, psychic realization, image and thought. The internal libidinal situation prevents the disappearance fantasy from being death instinct, total annulment of the object and of the self.
Where there is a physical break with the object such as in the case of weaning or a separation from someone, the disappearance fantasy directed towards the relationship with the object is transformed by the very libidinal bond with the object into an image of the object which may be conscious or unconscious, that is repressed.
The dynamic is different in the case of "No". It is obvious that one says "No" to the object without separating from it, or at least says "No" to the internal image of the object without annulling it. We thus note that "No" is refusal of the object or image of the object without separation from it. Refusal and pushing away the object without the object’s disappearance and annulment, indeed, pushing it away while at the same time maintaining the bond with it or with its image.
The dynamics of psychic formations which we have conceived were:

a) physical separation from the object, disappearance fantasy directed towards the relation with it and internal creation of a more or less repressed image of it;
b) separation from the image of the object and its transformation into a verbal symbol through a disappearance fantasy directed at the relation with the image of the object.

In the verbal "No" what we find instead is the symbolization of the verbalized drive expressionof the disappearance fantasy-death instinct directed towards the object or the object’s image. However, since we know that the death instinct-disappearance fantasy loses its destructiveness only when it is fused with libido, we are forced to conclude that, in the creation of this verbal symbol, the libidinal drives are not bound to an image of the object and the to object itself but are (not truly free but) directed towards the object.
In other words, we are obliged to conclude that in the verbalization of "No", the libidinal drives are able to manifest themselves as being directed towards the object. That is to say, in the verbal expression "No" the relation with the object would not derive its origin from an avid and greedy libido bent on introjecting the object or its image, but from mature genital libido directed towards, directed towards investing the object. "No" would be the first expression of the mature relation with the object in the sense of communicating verbal thought to the object without any intervention of introjection and projection which derive from the pleasure principle.
And in two successive paragraphs, Freud links the two poles of negation: annulling reality as psychotics do (that is the disappearance fantasy as death instinct), and the symbol of negation which, it should be noted, is created by means of the participation of the libido and is free from the pleasure principle, that is free from avid greedy libido:

«The general wish to negate, the negativism which is displayed by some psychotics, is probably to be regarded as a sign of a defusion of instincts that has taken place through a withdrawal of the libidinal components. But the performance of the function of judgement is not made possible until the creation of the symbol of negation has endorsed thinking with a first measure of freedom from the consequences of repression and, with it, from the compulsion of the pleasure principle»⁵⁴.

The concept of reality and judgement as an intellectual substitute for repression.
Judgement, or verbal thought, takes the place of repression. Repression, hence, is to be regarded in connection with the dynamics of introjection of the object⁵⁵. In other words, we link it to the object relation based on the expression of avid libido directed at the object. Avid libido together with the possibility of introjecting the images of the object, i.e. oral and cutaneous libido fused with the possibility of seeing. In this situation, the image of the introjected object is "repressed", that is deprived of libidinal drives of an introjective nature, which detach themselves from the image and are once again free to direct themselves towards the object in order to introject further images. When libidinal drives of an introjective nature are bound to the image, the phenomenon of projection takes place, i.e. the internal image is added onto the object itself.
The exercise of judgement is necessary to «assert or dispute that a presentation has an existence in reality». On the contrary, what is necessary is an investment of libido not introjective but rather directed towards the object (investing the object) in order to verbalize the projection onto the object of one’s own internal image of the object, thereby distinguishing the projection from external reality.
Spitting out or putting inside, the point which immediately follows this one, can thus not be understood as a situation of correspondence, of near equality of the vision of reality and reality itself. Where there is no correspondence there is refusal, which can be realized on the basis of the disappearance fantasy:

a) as annulment of the object (no libidinal participation);
b) as disappearance of the physical object with creation of an internal image (participation of introjective libido);
c) as "No", judgement, verbal thought (participation of genital libido investing the object).

Reality-testing (the reality principle) is fully accomplished in the third case, when the vision of the reality of the object is not disturbed by the emergence of introjective drives directed towards the object. That is, when neither material things nor the image of the object are "taken" from the object. In other words, when there is interest in the object, investing it with genital libido and verbal thought: «A pre-condition to the setting up of reality-testing⁵⁶ is that the objects⁵⁷ shall have been lost which once brought real satisfaction»⁵⁸.

(translation by Nora McKeon)

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Note

The page references refer to the latest published edition (Roma 2002¹⁰) [N.d.r]

1 This is completely false. It begins more than 10 years earlier with Adler and Stekel, and even earlier with Tokarskij and Mecnikov. Cfr. H. F. ELLENBERGER, La scoperta dell’inconscio, Boringhieri, Torino 1972, p. 306. (1976).
2 S. FREUD, Beyond the pleasure principle, Standard Edition, vol. XVIII, p. 15.
3 Ibid. (my italics).
4 Ibid.
5 S. FREUD, Group psychology and the analysis of the Ego, Standard Edition, vol. XVIII, p. 105.
6 «Identification is known to psychoanalysis as the earliest expression of an emotional tie with another person». S. FREUD, Group psychology and the analysis of the Ego, ibid.
7 S. FREUD, Beyond the pleasure principle, Standard Edition, vol. XVIII, p. 17.
8 From H. SEGAL, Introduzione all’opera di Melanie Klein, Martinelli, Florence 1968, p. 30. The mental chaos which reigns in the minds of these kind Ladies could not be better expressed than in these lines. The basic reason for this lies in the fact that they, like Freud, do not even suspect that there might be something "beyond" sadism. (1976).
9 S. FREUD, op. cit., p. 36.
10 I leave these two terms coupled in order to illustrate the process of the research. The possibility of distinguishing desire from the drive to annul and from the drive to invest sexually can exist only if the disappearance fantasy as investment is discovered. (1976).
11 The importance of the formulation of these theories can be highlighted by reminding the reader how an eminent, renowned and highly esteemed psychoanalyst (Lacan) preaches a return to Freud; and how in this "return" he attains lofty peaks of abstraction and mental disassociation by teaching us that schizophrenia is desirable for "human liberation". He does not know that to augur this "return" is to augur the annulment of present reality and to fall into that chaos wherein desire is annulment and vice versa, as it is also hatred, envy, greed... everything! The abstract Absolute. (1976).
12 All the other senses (taste, smell, touch, coenaesthesia) have been stimulated within the intra-uterine environment. We may have reservations about the sense of hearing and the hypothesis that the fetus perceives, "hears" sounds. But we shall see below how seeing is closely connected with listening. In fact, we shall always consider the two sides of the object relation as touch-smell-taste on the one hand and sight-hearing on the other.
13 See also the word "negation" which I do not use here since I consider it to have a more evolved psychical meaning, i.e., at the level of the partial relation (cfr. chapter on envy).
14 The concept of drive as investment in the relation with reality is fundamental, also because it is this dimension which, undiscovered, caused Freud and his followers to fail, remaining buried in the introjection-projection relationship, going around forever in the same circle. (1976).
15 An adult never experiences a situation of complete darkness. This can happen only in the case of physical blindness or artificial enclosure in an environment devoid of light stimulus. Even in this case we can consider the situation as absence of perception and of a visual object relation and not as the perception of "something" which is darkness.
16 We will come back to these concepts in the chapter Projection and intuition on p. 225 ff. when we examine the problem of intuition linked to vitality and the relationship with animate objects.
17 We shall subsequently clarify that the concept of "existence" is not the same as "image". We shall explicitly state it to be the libidinal realization of the self and of the object relation. We will differ in this sense from Bion in his concept of "the presentiment that a breast exists".
18 To proceed a little further, we can also note that when the patient is talking and the analyst is silent during the session, despite the lack of stimulation of the patient’s senses, we know he perceives the analyst to the extent that he invests him libidinally (empathy). Non-perception of the (external object) analyst occurs when the patient has an exhibitionistic stance (anxiety over the absence of the analyst).
19 «The first wishing seems to have been a hallucinatory cathecting of the memory of satisfaction. Such hallucinations, however, if they were no to be maintained to the point of exhaustion, proved to be inadequate to bring about the cessation of the need, or, accordingly, the pleasure attaching to satisfaction. A second activity - or, as we put it, the activity of a second system - became necessary, which would not allow the mnemic cathexis to proceed as far as perception and from there to bind the psychical forces; instead, it diverted the excitation arising from the need along a round about path which ultimately, by means of voluntary movement, altered the external world in such a way that it became possible to arrive at a real perception of the object of satisfaction. We have already outlined our schematic picture of the psychical apparatus up to this point; the two systems are the germ of what, in the fully developed apparatus, we have described as the Vcs and Pcs», S. FREUD, L’interpretazione dei sogni, Boringhieri, Torino 1966, p. 545.
[This note is completely gratuitous. It has nothing to do with the discovery and conceptualization of the unconscious calm sea which, I can now affirm, was never accomplished before this work. Freud, in particular, does not know birth and never found his way out of the most absolute confusion of desire, investment, greed, memory, and hallucination. An attentive observation of the confused Freudian diction suffices: «The first wishing (sic!) seems to have been a hallucinatory (sic!) cathecting (sic!) of the memory» (sic!)… (1976)].
20 We shall see, on pp 229-231 how the internal libidinal situation also undergoes a transformation at birth.
21 W.R. BION, Analisi degli schizofrenici e metodo psicoanalitico, Armando, Rome 1970, p. 171. In actual fact, the concept is M. Heidegger’s.
22 I say a "fantasy of existence" as much as the realization of the memory trace is a fantasy, or psychic activity. It is a seeing within oneself that which was first experienced as a libidinal relation, as intercourse with the object, and then, once lost, is created as a possibility and as a psychical activity.
23 Cfr. pp. 229-231, the concept of the transformation of the libido at birth.
24 How far from and opposed to the Heidegger-Bion concept this is can be clearly demonstrated by the two authors’ total ignorance of the separation-birth phenomenon. Their "presentiment" can be nothing other than a priori, an innate prenatal idea, i.e. spiritual and abstract soul, i.e. non-relation. The unconscious calm sea and sexual investment are based, rather, on materiality, on the relation with material reality (amniotic fluid) and the transformation of the relationship. (1976).
25 This is the radical contrast between the realization of identity and pseudo-being through identification and is also a good example of how the "learned" play with words in order to confuse the issue. Cfr. La marionetta e il burattino, cit.
26 And not annulment of the presently experienced situation (Hegel). With annulment there is indifference, abstract reason and ideological thought. With separation-memory and fantasy there is real thought and sexual investment.
27 Pious illusion. The freudian argument does not venture beyond the question of sadism. Freud had no intuition of the reality and the dynamics of envy and, therefore, even less so those of the disappearance fantasy. For this reason he is absolutely estranged from the possibility of investing psychoanalysis with a transformative dimension. Cfr. "Introduzione a Spitz" in the edition 1980 of: Bambino donna e trasformazione dell’uomo, Nuove Edizione Romane, Roma 2000⁵.
28 On this subject, it is possible to propose reflections regarding concepts of repression and negation; and also concepts of death drives against projected or non-projected identifications (objects) and against (towards) one’s own libidinal drive of object bond with the external object and with the inner image of the object to arrive at verbal thought and genital investment of the object.
29 An interesting working hypothesis might instead be afforded by the question: can an inanimate situation of the newborn child (indeed we may consider that in intra-uterine life the fetus has not attained full vitality) constitute the matrix of the death instinct which is expressed at birth as a fantasy of non-existence. In other words, an internal situation of non-existence (inanimate) which (it would not be projected) would transform itself into a drive to and fantasy of rendering the external object non-existent as a result of the upsurge of energy-instinct. The idea is drive investment and not projection. I refer the reader to pp. 116 ff. and the discussion of the problem of "projection" of the memory trace at birth.
30 W.R. BION, op. cit., pp. 226-227.
31 Nor shall we ever find it so long as logic is anaffective logic derived from the annulment and negation of the real relation with reality. We will find it when logic is sexual investment, not "reason" which is founded upon splitting body and soul-reason. Cfr. "Introduzione" a Spitz, cit.
32 Cfr. the concept of frustration in the first pages. Abstract, a priori frustration, which does not acknowledge the other’s reality (this is absence), and the real frustration of a seeing relationship with the other person.
33 This is the possibility of human transformation, of personal and social change so thoroughly negated by Freud and his followers. (1976).
34 This clarification has been made in the fourth chapter of La marionetta e il burattino, cit.
35 See notes on pp.76-78.
36 Cfr. the negation of negation.
37 This formulation of the death instinct as a "reaction" does not invalidatethe concept of the internal upsurge of instinct. I do not believe that the situation of the newborn child seeing the light and the upsurge of instinct can be conceived as a relationless situation. Human existence, from the zygote onwards, is always "in relation with". The object of the relation may be indifferent (aggressive), such as non-human reality, and the disappearance fantasy-death instinct is expressed against this object. This, however, does not imply a concept of causality but of a dynamic phenomenon. Nor does it imply a concept of a sadomasochistic relationship. Sadism and masochism refer to a dynamic relationship with introjected and projected objects. But what is operating in this case is a drive-fantasy dynamics rendering non-existent an inanimate, uncaring reality (air-light).
38 At birth, the disappearance fantasy against the inanimate leads man to be the exact opposite of the inanimate: the transformative human reality of the unconscious calm sea. After birth, the disappearance fantasy against human reality leads to the exact opposite of the transformative human reality: abstract indifference.
39 Cfr. then, p. 82.
40 I emphasize the wording: those which bring life to death.
41 We will see the concept of the transformation of the libido at birth on pp. 229-231.
42 See on p.116 the concept of fusion of the inner image with the introjected breast, the successive projection of the image and of the black breast, splitting, etc.
43 For a more detailed discussion of this triangle see the following chapter.
44 The dynamics of splitting at birth and at weaning is discussed in greater detail in Freud, Psicoanalisi della nascita e castrazione umana, Nuove Edizioni Romane, Rome 1995⁶, Chapt. IV.
45 S. FREUD, Beyond the pleasure principle, Standard Edition, Vol. XVIII, p. 50
46 Op. cit., p.53.
47 Op. cit., p. 54.
48 Op. cit., p. 57.
49 S. FREUD, Sommario di psicoanalisi, Editrice Universitaria, Florence, 1957, p. 82.
50 S. FREUD, Negation, Standard Edition, vol. XIX, pp. 235-236. Let us be quite clear: if it is radically criticized and rejected. Cfr. "Introduzione" a R. SPITZ, Il No e il Sì, cit.
51 C. MUSATTI, Freud con antologia freudiana, Boringhieri, Turin 1959, p. 122.
52 S. FREUD, Negation, Standard Edition, vol. XIX, pps. 236-239.
53 See R. SPITZ, Il No e il Sì, cit. Freud’s confusion of negation, projection and refusal is revealed in the Introduction.
54 S. FREUD, Negation, Standard Edition vol. XIX p. 239. Freud is actually very far from regarding "No" as a refusal based on the sexual investment of reality (frustration-interest). For him, negation is the result of splitting and is abstract domination of the unconscious by near-divine reason (derived from the split death instinct). Nor could it be otherwise given the fact that Freud completely lacks the most feeble intuition about birth (the unconscious calm sea) and human transformative potential, i.e. the human potential to transform the compulsion of the pleasure principle.
55 We also think that projective identification is linked to the dynamics of introjection of the physical object. Cfr. p. 222 and below.
56 For us, verbal thought.
57 For us, object and image of the object.
58 Here is the full sense of the differentiation from Freud. The sentence is literally the same for all: but for Freud it signifies annulment of the projected identification and realization of anaffective, abstract reason (Hegel: the negation of negation). For me it signifies transformation of greed and desire and the achievement of seeing sexual investment: separation as birth, of which Freud is completely unaware. (1976).

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