TRAUMATISED AND NON-TRAUMATISED

STATES OF THE PERSONALITY

TRAUMATISED AND
NON-TRAUMATISED
STATES OF THE
PERSONALITY
A Clinical Understanding
Using Bion’s Approach

Rafael E. López-Corvo
First published in 2014 by
Karnac Books Ltd
118 Finchley Road
London NW3 5HT

Copyright © 2014 by Rafael E. López-Corvo

The right of Rafael E. López-Corvo to be identified as the author of this work

has been asserted in accordance with §§ 77 and 78 of the Copyright Design and
Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored

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mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

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ISBN-13: 978-1-78220-137-3

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To my daughter Vanessa Helena López-Corvo
who already has taken a similar path
and
my granddaughter Isabel Elena López-Bryce,
still too young to decide
CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xi

ABOUT THE AUTHOR xiii

PREFACE xv

INTRODUCTION xxiii

CHAPTER ONE
“Evicted from life”: time distortion between pre-conceptual and
conceptual traumas 1

CHAPTER TWO
The mark of Cain: ego and superego narcissistic identifications
with pre-conceptual traumas 23

CHAPTER THREE
The conceptualisation of pre-conceptual traumas 35

vii
viii CONTENTS

CHAPTER FOUR
The unconscious: the messenger of truth from Bion’s
perspective of container–contained interaction 55

CHAPTER FIVE
Transformation of pre-conceptual traumas: heteromorphic or
homeomorphic symbolisations 69

CHAPTER SIX
“Deferred action” (“après coup”) and the emotional interaction
between pre-conceptual and conceptual traumas 87

CHAPTER SEVEN
Pre-conceptual traumas as the tyrannical presence of absences 95

CHAPTER EIGHT
Negative and positive links as a form of communication in the
traumatised and non-traumatised states (TS N-TS) 109

CHAPTER NINE
The traumatised ego and the traumatising superego 131

CHAPTER TEN
Acting out pre-conceptual traumas: interruption of therapy and
“catastrophic change” 145

CHAPTER ELEVEN
Pre-conceptual traumas: inflicted by chance and repeated by
compulsion 157

CHAPTER TWELVE
The world of sigma (∑) 175

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The triangle’s entrapment: pre-conceptual traumas and
the oedipal condition 197
 CONTENTS ix

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
All pregnancies are twins: one baby in the uterus and one
baby in the mind—pre-conceptual traumas and infertility 213

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Children from the claustrum: pre-conceptual traumas
and addiction 229

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Pre-conceptual traumas and somatic pathology: the
body’s attempt to dream a repetitious undreamed dream 247

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Pre-conceptual traumas and totalitarianism 269
Anamilagros Pérez Morazzani and Rafael E. López-Corvo

NOTES 287

REFERENCES 303

INDEX 311
ACKNOWL EDGEMENTS

I am in debt to my wife Anamilagros Pérez-Morazzani, who

co-participated in the elaboration of the last chapter on “Totalitarianism”.
To my friends Patricia Csank, Daniel Benveniste, and Joanne Docherty,
who patiently read the whole manuscript and provided innumer-
able and valuable suggestions; to Lucía Morabito Gomez, who kindly
reviewed several chapters, and in a similar vein, to my friends Jim
Grotstein, Mary Morris, and Judith Eekhoff. I am also extremely grateful
to Oliver Rathbone, my editor, and to all of my patients who anony-
mously have provided the main essence of this book.

Publication acknowledgement
I would like to express my thanks to The Guilford Press for their per-
mission to reproduce a series of aspects present in several chapters of
this book that were previously published in The Psychoanalytic Review,
99 (6), December 2012; as well as Chapter One, which was originally
published in No. 100, (2), April 2013 of the same journal.

xi
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rafael E. López-Corvo is a training and supervising psychoanalyst

of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) as well
as the Venezuelan and Canadian Psychoanalytic Societies. He is
former associate professor of McGill University, Montreal, Canada.
He is also a former member of the editorial board of the Interna-
tional Journal of Psycho-Analysis. He maintains a private practice
of psychoanalysis in Toronto, Canada. Previous works include Self-
Envy, Therapy and the Divided Inner World (Jason Aronson, 1995), The
Dictionary of the Work of W. R. Bion (2004), Wild Thoughts Searching for
a Thinker: A Clinical Application of W. R. Bion’s Theories (2006), and The
Woman Within: A Psychoanalytic Essay on Femininity (2009), the last three
published by Karnac.

xiii
PREFACE

Custom is the King of All

—Pindar

Oh rose thou art sick!

The invisible worm,
that flies in the night,
in the howling storm,

Has found out thy bed

of Crimson joy;
and his dark secret love
does thy life destroy.

—William Blake

Using contributions made by Wilfred Bion, I am going to consider

the existence of two different forms of trauma, “pre-conceptuals” and
“conceptuals”, the former being universal, the latter accidental. Pre-
conceptual traumas represent “pre-conceptions” that fatalistically take
place during the first years of life, when there is not a mind capable
xv
xvi P R E FA C E

of containing and endowing them with a sensible meaning; after all,

we are all born out of “ordinary” people! “Conceptual traumas”, on
the other hand, occur at an older age, at a time when there is already
a mind capable of containing the traumatic fact, but fail to provide
an adequate meaning. “Conceptual traumas” have been largely con-
sidered by numerous researchers as “post-traumatic stress disorders
(PTSD)”. There is a continuous interaction between these two forms of
trauma, where unconsciously conceptual traumas always evoke pre-
conceptuals and constantly override conceptuals.
Explicitly Bion said little about trauma; however, implicitly, the con-
cept is in most of his contributions. A statement he once made, which I
often use in this book, points very clearly in this direction:

… in the analysis we are confronted not so much with a static situ-

ation that permits leisurely study, but with a catastrophe that remains
at one and the same moment actively vital and yet incapable of resolution
into quiescence. (1967, p. 101, my italics)

Originally, Bion’s main contributions were about group dynamics;

afterwards, when he became a psychoanalyst, he worked mostly with
schizophrenic patients, as was the fashion at that time. We could specu-
late that there was an implicit correlation in some of Bion’s fields of
inquiry, from the time he procured his original discoveries on group
dynamics, to the time he became a psychoanalyst and produced his
innovative enquiries about the mind of the individual. It is quite prob-
able that his early interest in the psychology of groups was an intuitive
attempt to provide meaning to his own existential experience. On this
subject I have previously stated:

Bion grew up among groups, very large groups. From the age of
eight at the boarding school, and afterward, at the age of eighteen
when enlisted to fight in War World I, he was able to empirically
observe and existentially suffer the social behaviour and the imme-
diateness of anonymous multitudes. (López-Corvo, 2003, p. 5)

From his work on groups (1943, 1946, 1948 and 1952), Bion attained not
only a new and remarkable understanding of group dynamics, but also
a well earned international reputation. He established that any type of
ongoing group will be ruled by two disparate forces: one determined
 P R E FA C E xvii

by the “purpose” that originated in the creation of the group—whatever

that might be—and the other a series of “powerful emotions” running
parallel, which could surface at any time and take over, adulterating
the “original purpose” of the group. He referred to the “original pur-
pose” as the “sophisticated or working group (W)”, while the “parallel
emotions” he named the “basic assumptions (ba)”. He distinguished
three different kinds of “basic assumptions (ba)” depending on which
type of emotions dominated the group: i) “dependence ba (Dba)”;
ii) “fight and flight ba (Fba)”; and “pairing ba (Pba)”. Only one ba will
dominate the group at a given time, while the other two will remain
hidden inside a special “virtual space” he referred to as the “proto-
mental system (pm)”, and described as a

… system or matrix where differentiation of physical and mental

states began. It contains precursors for emotions present in all basic
assumptions including those that remain latent. When any of the
basic assumptions became manifest and its feelings predominate
in the group, the others that remain latent stay contained within
the proto-mental system; for instance, if fight-flight is manifest,
dependent and pairing emotions will be latent. (López-Corvo,
2003, p. 105)

After his analytic training Bion never explicitly referred again to these
concepts, although we could presume they evolved into other ideas.
The interaction between the “working group” and the “basic assump-
tions”, for instance, became represented within individual psychol-
ogy as the “non-psychotic” and “psychotic parts of the personality”
respectively. Also, it could be deduced that the “basic assumptions”
corresponded to those emotions originating from different points of
fixation: “dependent ba” was equivalent to the oral stage, “fight and
fly” to anal, and “pairing” to genital. However, following the line of
thought of this book, I prefer to consider that these basic assumptions
represented emotions elicited by pre-conceptual traumas that took place
around the same time these specific sexual developmental stages (oral,
anal, and genital) were occurring. The “proto-mental system” became
equivalent to what Bion later referred to as the “beta space”, a primitive
space he extended back to intrauterine life.
According to Meltzer (1986), Bion’s creativity increased signifi-
cantly after Mrs Klein’s death in 1960, perhaps indicating that he was
xviii P R E FA C E

submitting his originality to the ideas of his analyst and teacher. The
old concept of the “double” was used by Bion, under the scheme of
the “imaginary twin”, to defend Klein’s notion of an early pre-genital
Oedipus and to graduate from the Psychoanalytic Institute in 1950. After
this work he produced comprehensive clinical research on psychoses,
as well as an epistemological conceptualisation of thinking. Of all these
papers, the article on “Differentiation of the psychotic from the non-
psychotic personalities” (1957) could now be conceived of as a mile-
stone for understanding the phenomenology of the working mind.
We could question what induced Bion not to consider such dichot-
omy of psychotic and non-psychotic as the expression of a universal
dynamic present in all human minds. We could speculate over some
possibilities, for instance, that maybe at that time Bion was dealing with
a similar confusion to those who believed Klein’s concept of “paranoid-
schizoid position” was specifically referring to psychosis (Grosskurth,
1986, p. 429), instead of a mechanism present in all individuals. There
was, however, an inclination in Bion to introduce some generalisation
to the concept when he said that:

I further consider that even in the severe neurotic there is a psy-

chotic personality that has to be dealt with in the same way …
(1967, p. 42)
On this fact, that the ego retains contact with reality, depends the
existence of a non-psychotic personality parallel with, but obscured
by, the psychotic personality. (Ibid., p. 46)
I consider that this holds true for the severe neurotic, in whom
I believe there is a psychotic personality concealed by neuro-
sis as the neurotic personality is screened by psychosis in the
psychotic … (Ibid., p. 63)

In a very similar inquiry, Meltzer (1978) pointed out that Bion did not
discriminate between the psychotic part of the personality and clinical
psychoses, because of Klein’s influence in considering the paranoid-
schizoid position as representing the fixation point for schizophrenia.
He also added that it was not clear whether Bion “thinks that this part
of the personality is ubiquitous or only present in the person who actu-
ally presents a schizophrenic disorder” (p. 26). The discrimination often
made by Freud, between “normal” and “neurotic” persons, helped to
sustain the delusion of the existence of an idealised model of absolute
 P R E FA C E xix

mental sanity. Lacan, in 1966, came close to divulging such prejudice

between patient and therapist when he expounded:

Think, what a testimony of spiritual elevation we might express, if

we reveal that we are made of the same material of those we shape.
(p. 16)

However, by considering his pronouncement “a testimony of spiritual

elevation”, Lacan appeared more to be providing a “concession” than
making a “proper statement”.
In 1974, during one of his conferences in Brazil (1974), Bion clari-
fied, in a rather anecdotic manner, that the confusion about his original
statement of the two sides of the personality was the result of the type
of patient he was then treating. He said:

I have only analysed schizophrenic patients who were able to come

to my consulting room. Although I still think the best description
of them was “schizophrenic”, I do not suggest they were compa-
rable to the kind of patients who have to be hospitalized. I must
add that in the psycho-analytic world with which I am familiar
“crazes” appear to be frequent. I am amazed how often an ana-
lyst seems to think that he can hardly claim his title unless he has
treated many schizophrenic patients. I would almost wonder how
mental hospitals manage to make a living. From the little I know I
find it difficult to believe that so many analysts are treating schizo-
phrenics. Such a claim belongs to the domain not of the science of
psycho-analysis but of fashion. As it is sometimes the fashion to
wear feathers in hats, so psycho-analysts wear “psychotics in their
hair”. (pp. 92–94)

Based on this statement and on the experience of many other psycho-

analytic researchers, as well as my own, I consider that Bion’s refer-
ence to “psychotic” and “non-psychotic” is, in fact, a dynamic present
in all human beings, resulting from early uncontained traumatic events.
This is why I have decided to change the term to “traumatised” and
“non-traumatised” states of the personality,1 and which I am using as
the title of this book. I am also considering that the splitting of the mind,
between “traumatised” and “non-traumatised” states, is a consequence
of the ubiquitous presence of pre-conceptual traumas. The traumatised
xx P R E FA C E

state is the result of the traumatic experiences that have taken place
during the first years of life, while the non-traumatised state represents
the mental and physical development that will normally take place
from birth to adulthood.
All human beings have been, are, and will always be, fatalistically
marked by the indispensable presence and eventual disappearance of
primary part objects, first and foremost the breast and subsequently
the penis, both absolutely essential: the former, for survival as well as
for attaining a sense of “being human” (animate);2 the latter, for inde-
pendence, freedom, and hope. Many of these “presence-absences”
are temporary events, but many others will overcome Freud’s “pro-
tective shield” or Bion’s (1962, p. 36) “maternal reverie” and become
permanent, amounting to an enduring distress or “psychic trauma”.
Like the Mad Hatter’s tea party in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,
pre-conceptual traumas become an eternal “now” that is continuously
projected everywhere.
The particularities associated to how these traumatic “presence-
absences” mark each and every individual, are absolutely unique, and
represent a selected fact that structures the specific demeanour and idi-
osyncrasy of every human being. There is always a substantial long-
ing for the lost objects, and sometimes there is the illusion of hoarding
them inside, bringing about a sense of triumph and contempt. At other
moments, there is the impression of failure to contain the absence-
presence, inducing a sense of hopelessness and melancholy as well as
envy towards those felt to be hoarding them. The inner void of these
absences is minutely split and becomes continuously projected eve-
rywhere, pressing for an all-pervading search ad infinitum. With age,
inner representations of these absences mutate, although changing only
their “appearance”, in a fashion that emulates the Greek god Proteus;
however, the original meaning is always preserved, and lingers, well
fastened to the primal loss. Based on these dynamics, and using Freud’s
original discoveries as well as Ferenczi’s and Bion’s contributions,
I would like to privilege the significance of “psychic traumas” and,
parodying Bion, refer rather to the dichotomy between a “traumatised”
and a “non-traumatised” state of the personality.
In “The Aleph”, Jorge Luis Borges (1945) depicted the existence of
a “little space, probably a bit larger than an inch”, located under the
stairs of a cellar and where is displayed, like on ongoing film, the
whole infinite, all the existing facts present in the universe that you
 P R E FA C E xxi

could ever have imagined, past, as well as present and future. Borges
also appropriately used as an epigraph to his story, Hamlet’s: “O God!
I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite
space …” I thought of this wonderful short story because I was tempted,
while writing this book, by the possibility of producing in “a nutshell”
the spirit and fundamental nature of the absolute ubiquity and meaning
of pre-conceptual traumas. Tentatively, I have conjectured the following
précis:

Pre-conceptual traumas, diachronically structured as a narrative of

conjoined presences of absences, stand for highly toxic and emo-
tionally organised “parasites” that inhabit the unconscious mind
from very early on, feed on time and space, inhibit processes of
symbolisation, are projected everywhere, and reproduce them-
selves incessantly, thereby determining not only all forms of psy-
chopathology, but also the idiosyncrasy of every individual.

Finally, a word of apology to the reader for the unavoidable peccadillo

of repeating myself, and with the excuse endorsed in one of Whitman’s
well known poems, which I would like to quote—save for a small twist!:
“Very well, then I … [repeat] myself, I am large, I contain multitudes”.
Toronto
INTRODUCTION

Theoretical considerations about

pre-conceptual traumas and
traumatised and non-traumatised
states of the personality

All psychoanalysts and psychotherapists face the need to produce, for

their own use, a comprehensive and multidimensional model of the
working mind, similar to sailors who require numbered coordinates
as latitude and longitude, to allow them to find their bearings in the
unknown immensity of the sea. Psychoanalysts might feel pressed to
create a similar instrument to help them find their way in the immensity
of an unknown and always changing sea of abstractions, and to journey
at ease into all corners of the mind. This, I believe, was perhaps what
inspired Bion to conceive the Grid, and what Grotstein (2007) has bap-
tised as “dream ensemble”. Analysts continuously position themselves
in the place where the transference strikes and the countertransference
is prompted, having to impersonate so many roles, being them all and
at the same time, not being any, always trying to remain invisible, like
the judo master of whom the disciple once said: “To fight him is like
fighting an empty gi”.3 Once the analyst is “found”, the analysis is over.
This book represents an attempt to provide, using Bion’s insightful leg-
acy, a practical and useful instrument to safely navigate the psyche.
During the nineteen-fifties and sixties psychoanalysts were very
much under the influence of Klein’s novel contributions on the concept
of “positions” and of “schizoid phenomena”. Psychoanalysis was then
xxiii
xxiv INTRODUCTION

considered as a therapy of choice in the management of schizophrenic

patients and several regressive psychoanalytically oriented techniques
became trendy. On the theoretical side, Rosenfeld’s (1952) contribution
on transference from catatonic patients was paradigmatic. John Rosen’s
(Morris, 1959) new technique on “direct psychoanalysis” became very
fashionable. He compared psychosis to an ongoing dream that required
a violent intervention from the therapist in order to awaken the patient
from such nightmare. During the next forty to fifty years, the limitations
of psychoanalysis with psychotic patients, as well as the progress made
by psychopharmacology in generating more effective drugs, induced
Rosen to move away from psychosis and to dwell effectively within the
limits of borderline and neurotic psychopathology.
From his work with schizophrenic patients, around this time, Bion4
produced several papers that have been collected in his book Second
Thoughts (1967). Among them is a crucial contribution that refers to the
“differentiation of the psychotic from the non-psychotic personalities”
(1957), depicting fundamental disparities between internal elements
within the same individual. There he described, among other issues,
the existence in psychotic patients, of a non-psychotic part always
obscured by the hatred of reality that existed in the psychotic part of
these patients. The withdrawal from reality was “an illusion, not a fact”
because these patients always presented a certain awareness of external
reality. Another aspect Bion elaborated was the systematic attack made
by these patients to the ego’s capacity for “verbal thinking”, which was
then minutely split and scattered everywhere with the use of projective
and introjective identifications. The result was for the patient to move
in a world of objects that ordinarily were “the furniture of dreams”
(ibid., p. 51).
This concept of splitting and ubiquitously projecting superego and
ego elements, resulted in something very similar to what Ferenczi
(1933) had previously referred to as “atomization of traumatic experi-
ences”, a coincidence already noticed by Chasseguet-Smirgel (1987),
who encountered determinant similarities between Ferenczi’s concep-
tion of psychic trauma written in 1932 and some of Bion’s contributions
on psychosis written twenty-three years later. She appeared apologetic,
and hoped not to be regarded as trying

… to detract from the great originality of Bion’s thought. It is to

indicate encounters that are fascinating for anyone taking an
interest in the history of psychoanalytical ideas. (p. 58)
 INTRODUCTION xxv

Obviously, if Ferenczi had taken a photograph of the Eiffel tower from

the east side in 1932, and Bion another of the same tower from the west
side in 1955, and we were to compare them now, we might come to a
conclusion similar to that of Chasseguet-Smirgel and say that the object
of our observation is the same, but without having to be apologetic. It is
obvious that, if Ferenczi and Bion were examining “the mind” from
different viewpoints and were accurate about their conclusions, they
would concur; after all, “truth does not need a thinker”. 5 Although Bion
was originally referring to schizophrenic patients, in two of his papers
(1967, pp. 42, 63) he made his conclusions extensive to individuals who
were not psychotics.

I further consider that even in the severe neurotic there is a psy-

chotic personality that has to be dealt with in the same way before
success is achieved. (1967, p. 42)

And additionally, in closing his paper on the “differentiation of the psy-

chotic from the non-psychotic parts”, he said:

Further, I consider that this holds true for the severe neurotic,
in whom I believe there is a psychotic personality concealed
[obscured] by neurosis as the neurotic personality is screened by
psychosis in the psychotic, that has to be laid bare and dealt with.
(Ibid., p. 63)

Following several of these remarks I have arrived at two conclusions:

a) albeit Bion never referred explicitly to traumas, I think, with Grotstein
(2007, p. 154), that this concept is implicit in most of his contributions,
and obviously, as I have just stated, that it is not a coincidence that he
and Ferenczi were observing similar mechanisms in different forms of
psychopathology; b) although Bion made his observations while treat-
ing schizophrenic patients, he became aware of the ubiquity of his state-
ments, meaning that they were also present in neurotic patients. Both of
these aspects will be evaluated in detail in the first chapter.

* * *
Two opposite systems, considered as the traumatised (psychotic) and
the non-traumatised (non-psychotic) states of the mind, constitute
the basic elements that structure Bion’s model of the mind. The dif-
ference between each dimension results from the ego’s capacity to
xxvi INTRODUCTION

tolerate, or not, frustration by means of an epistemological apparatus

for thinking, or “alpha function”, which emulates a digestive system
that tries, among many other issues, to “digest” lies in order to produce
truth. This is why Bion stated that while the body feeds on food, the
mind feeds on truth. “Alpha function” operates according to a model
Bion referred to as “container–contained”, where the “traumatised”
part contains the “non-traumatised”, or vice versa. Behaviour will
depend on which part contains which and for how long. In the case of
clinical psychosis, for instance, the traumatised part contains the non-
traumatised almost all the time. It will be the opposite if the person
displays a kind of “insightful awareness”. The middle ground will be
left for borderline pathology.
The ego’s incapacity to tolerate frustrations imposed by reality, often
triggers emotions related to pre-conceptual traumas that can uncon-
sciously contain the non-traumatised state, resulting in a condition Bion
has alluded to as the “reversal of alpha function”.6 This mechanism
consists in a failure of alpha function and of the dissolution of already
existing alpha elements that will regress to a particular form of beta ele-
ments different from the original one, which Bion described as “bizarre
objects” (1962, p. 25). The opposite, of the non-traumatised containing
the traumatised part, is achieved when the alpha function is able to
change sensory experiences, or beta elements, into alpha elements that
can be used in the manufacture of creative and common sense thinking
(positive knowledge or +K). I believe this modification requires also a
transformation of the kind of communication used between split parts,
by moving from negative to positive links. This aspect is described fur-
ther in Chapter Eight.
Beta elements are stored as particles that cannot be employed for
thinking but are only good to be used as missiles in mechanisms of
projective identification, representing early unconscious and untrans-
formed emotional registers that have been stored but not remembered.
They are used for action as a kind of evacuative language (1962, p. 6)
with the purpose of manipulation by way of projective and introjective
identifications. Originally, Bion (1963) described them as indigested
facts,

… objects compounded of things-in-it-selves,7 feelings of

depression-persecution and guilt and therefore aspects of the
personality linked by a sense of catastrophe (p. 40)
 INTRODUCTION xxvii

However, several years later he stated that beta elements were not only
synonymous with mental pathology, but instead represented a kind of
communication, perhaps intuitive, commonly used by children (1974a,
pp. 127–128). By this time, Bion was conceiving the notion of “O”, which
he also classified as a beta element.

* * *
Although stored unconscious traumatic experiences represent beta
elements, not all beta elements stand for traumatic experiences, since
other undigested facts or unthought thoughts—such as, for instance,
the intuitive notion of “O”, or other unnamed forms of “non-traumatic
sensory impressions”—can also be considered, following Bion’s
description, a beta element. I would now like to consider what I refer
to as “pre-conceptual traumas”, representing beta elements or scars left
in the mind by psychic stimulus, which took place at a time not only
when there was not a rudimentary mind capable of digesting and con-
taining the impact of such psychic facts, but also, and very importantly,
when the mother’s alpha function had also failed.
We have learned from Freud that an experience becomes traumatic
when it is capable of fracturing the ego’s protective shield against
stimuli. This concept was distended by Bion when, perhaps following
Winnicott’s famous statement that “there is no such thing as a baby
[alone]”, he established that the mother’s reverie plays a substan-
tial role in the child’s failure to contain certain stimulus. Something
could become traumatic when a series of given conditions, such as
the ego’s frustration intolerance, turns a temporary fact into a perma-
nent one. If reality represents a temporary event circumscribed to one
instant, we could then ask, what set of circumstances would bear suf-
ficient weight in order to change what would, otherwise, have been
a person’s transient moment, into something perpetual? What would
make a temporary absence a permanent presence? Perhaps it might be
thought of as similar to dinosaurs’ footprints found engraved in the
limestone. We can imagine a thirsty dinosaur’s early walk performed
as an uneventful act repeated regularly until, one particular morning,
the presence of a series of variables conjoin to preserve the footsteps
forever. It means, in summary, that now, when there is no longer a lake
and the dinosaur has been erased from the face of the earth and there
are only absences, its footprints, produced in just one instant, become
preserved for eternity. Obviously, I understand that the mind becoming
xxviii INTRODUCTION

engraved with some particular repudiated emotions is a much more

complicated condition than the impression left by a dinosaur in lime-
stone 180 million years ago.
The interaction taking place in the consulting room between analyst
and patient resembles two other situations: a) in the external world,
between the mother and her child; and b) in the internal world, between
the unconscious and the preconscious. Mothers’ natural attitude
towards their babies is similar to that which animals bestow on their
offspring. I believe mothers have the capacity to exercise a natural and
intuitive disposition to prevent “transient emotional experiences” from
becoming “permanent” ones. I will clarify with a vignette: A mother
once consulted me feeling very concerned about her three-year-old
boy’s new habit of spitting everywhere and at everybody. I asked her
if she wished for this behaviour to disappear or to become permanent.
“Well no, to disappear”, she answered. Then I said: “If you can contain
this behaviour and say nothing it will extinguish itself in a few days,
but if you get into a power struggle to see who will overcome whom, it
might contain you both, and although it might disappear after a while,
it might come back subsequently, either in the same manner or trans-
formed into a metaphor, and he might not remember why.” I define pre-
conceptual traumas as facts resulting when a transient event becomes a
permanent one that compulsively repeats as an emotional narrative of
absences constantly conjoined.8

* * *
Alpha function is active continuously, day and night (Ferro, 2006;
Grotstein, 2007), and alternates between two disparate domains: one
is conscious and voluntary, the other unconscious and involuntary. This
is why Bion originally referred to alpha function as “dream-work α"
(1992, p. 62). These domains seem to work differently, but interact
continuously. The conscious one deals with sensory impressions in the
manner explained above, digesting raw sensory impressions, or beta
elements, and changing them into alpha elements. Whenever there are
facts that, while a person is awake, have not been properly digested
because of a low frustration tolerance—in the sense that some “lies” are
not adequately dealt with—the unconscious alpha function can elabo-
rate a dream while sleeping, with the purpose of revealing the unex-
posed truth. In other words, the unconscious alpha function corrects the
duties shirked by the conscious alpha function that, in order to avoid
 INTRODUCTION xxix

frustration, were not dealt with while physically awake—a situation

somewhat equivalent to what Freud described as “day residue”.9 This
is why Bion stated that dreams are not, as some people might think,
the consequence of “indigestion”, but quite the opposite; they represent
the digestion of whatever might have been left undigested. It is this
unconscious form of alpha function that is used by a mother in a state of
“reverie” while attending her baby, or by the analyst in a similar fashion
when listening to the patient “without memory and desire”. It consists,
in other words, on the analyst’s attempts to “dream” the patient’s dis-
course using his or her unconscious alpha function in order to procure
“O”—the ineffable, the “Form”—and then use his or her conscious alpha
function to change O into knowledge, or K, with the purpose of produc-
ing an interpretation. We follow a similar itinerary when we use our
conscious alpha function to decipher a dream, which has been produced
by the patient’s unconscious alpha function, attempting to achieve a
meaning using the patient’s and the analyst’s conscious alpha function.
The main purpose of “dream-work” for Bion is not determined by
the need to deceive a censorship, but to evade frustration. Also, the rea-
son for dream-thoughts would be to modify the reason for frustration,
whose essential source originates not only from the conjoint of actual
facts presented by reality, but also from automatically produced emo-
tion from early traumas triggered by the actual facts. Freud (1896) had
advised quite early over this matter:
We have learned that no hysterical symptom can arise from a real
experience alone, but that in every case the memory of earlier expe-
riences awakened in association to it plays a part in causing the
symptom. (p. 197)

I will refer to this concept in Chapter Six, using clinical material.

Following Bion (López-Corvo, 2003), alpha elements congregate in
the preconscious as a membrane or “contact barrier” between conscious
and unconscious, where it helps to discriminate between being awake
and being asleep, being conscious or unconscious, or being receptive
or not to the truth elaborated in dreams. In this last sense, it will pre-
serve sleeping, for, as Freud originally stated, “dreams are guardians of
sleep”. The conscious form of alpha function also carries out this kind
of discrimination; however, when it fails, individuals might think they
are awake, when they might actually be experiencing a nightmare, as
they consider their own projections true perceptions of reality. This
xxx INTRODUCTION

is very similar to how men are depicted by Plato, as living inside a

“Cave”. Usually, and this is my own addendum, it is the “atomised”
and projected pre-conceptual trauma that unconsciously contains the
conscious thinking mind by means of repetition compulsion and of
continuous projective-introjective identifications. Perhaps this concep-
tualisation introduced by Bion on the phenomenology of beta elements
and alpha function could be considered, after Freud, as the “third
topography”!10

* * *
There are four unfinished sculptures by Michelangelo, known as “The
Slaves”, which display a contrast between well-finished parts and the
rest of the crude marble block where they still remain impounded.
These particular carvings could perhaps cloak many meanings. Initially
they were made for the also unfinished tomb of Pope Julius II, a work
that occupied Michelangelo for over forty years, and of which he wrote:
“I find I have lost all my youth bound to this tomb”. Similarly to how
Michelangelo and his metaphorical, impounded sculptures remain
sequestered, the traumatised part unconsciously confiscates the non-
traumatised parts, attacking and mutilating its capacity to metabolise
and contain the pre-conceptual trauma.11 As a consequence, the person
feels a “prisoner” inside such a mental state and believes he would not
be able to free himself from it, because the mind, which represents the
means and ends of escape, has become impoverished and lacks the
capacity to be conscious of reality.12 The interpretation is the instru-
ment the psychotherapist will use as a chisel to carve out and liberate
the impounded non-traumatised part of the personality. This is why
Freud (1905) evoked Leonardo da Vinci’s metaphor that distinguished
between painting as a via di porre, that is, adding colours to produce a
shape, and sculptures as a via di levare, that liberates the figure by taking
something away. Freud resorted to this description in order to explain
the difference between psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. Where the
first works per via di porre, using suggestion or pedagogical techniques,
the latter works per via di levare, that is, by taking something away in
order to liberate the self (Freud, 1905, p. 260). Although Freud did not
explicitly specify that he was referring to the relationship between hys-
teria and trauma, we could argue that he was intuitively considering
these subjects—how traumas imprison the mind forever and determine
all forms of existing psychopathologies.
 INTRODUCTION xxxi

There is a significant impulse towards freedom representing a kind

of “freedom drive” that could only be achieved when abiding by the
truth at any cost (Grotstein, 2007). All human progress depicts a con-
tinuum, from the time we were inside our mother’s body, just like any
other “internal organ”, to later becoming an independent individual
capable of producing any kind of creative endeavour. A central and
common finding in the psychology of adolescents is their struggle to
free themselves from parental domination, although they are often con-
fused about where to direct this struggle: whether against the external
or the internal parents. Tattooing and piercing, for instance, are active
ways of taking ownership of the body, of saying something like: “I do
whatever I wish with this body because it is mine”. The high incidence
of suicide among adolescents is also the expression of internal confu-
sions of not knowing if the “murder” is against themselves or against
“their parent’s child” (which happen to be themselves also!)—a psy-
chotic form of attacking the internal parents. Adolescents or adults who
have not been able to contain these juvenile confusions might remain
“half way out”, like Michelangelo’s unfinished slaves, forever impris-
oned inside their mother’s bodies. This is the kind of pre-conceptual
trauma I will be referring to in more detail in Chapter Fifteen, where I
consider Meltzer’s concept of “the claustrum”.

* * *
There are many doors to reach the mind, the most reliable, I think, being
the one provided by the notion of the pre-conceptual trauma. This can
be approached by following the trail of emotional traces and imprints
present in the transference-countertransference dimension, representing
a narrative of timeless absences that must be dreamed in order for mean-
ing to be attained. The interpretation is the analyst’s only instrument, in
the search for the patient’s elusive truth as it is revealed by the uncon-
scious and that helps to reconstruct and contain the painful configura-
tion of the infantile trauma. The meaning revealed by the unconscious
can only be conceived by intuitive approximation because the language
spoken lacks the sincerity and precision of conscious meaning. Inter-
pretation of dreams, for instance, and interpretation of the manifest dis-
course articulated by the patient using free association, follows opposite
trails. When interpreting dreams, we travel from a semantic of cryptic
and abstract symbolisms depicted by the dream, towards a semantic of
concrete signs and easy access provided by the interpretation; but when
xxxii INTRODUCTION

interpreting the manifest or conscious communication of the patient’s

discourse, we move from concrete semantics to abstract meanings; or in
other words, the narrative of the manifest discourse must be dreamed.
I will elaborate these comments further by way of clinical illustrations
in Chapter Three.
But how can the analyst perceive these symbolic messages portrayed
by the unconscious? Bion often remarked that the most reliable method
of perceiving the symbolic messages of the unconscious is to listen to
the patient’s conscious discourse in a state of naïveté similar to Freud’s
(1912) “evenly suspended attention”, or, as Bion himself expressed it,
“free from any desire, memory and understanding”. In other words, as I
have just stated, we must dream the manifest dialogue of our patients.
There is great ambivalence in the psychoanalytic community about
the seriousness of this matter, about the necessary discipline to always
listen in such a state of mind. This approach, however, is well known
in many oriental philosophies, which are alien to psychoanalytic prac-
tice, such as Zen and other forms of Buddhism. For instance, in one of
the first mantras of the Upanishads we find: “Keep quiet, undisturbed,
and the wisdom and the power will come on their own … Abandon all
desires, keep your mind silent and you shall discover … Desireless is
the highest bliss.” Nisargadatta Maharaj (1992) also stated:

Your mind is steeped in the habits of evaluation and acquisition,

and will not admit that the incomparable and unobtainable are
waiting timelessly within your own heart for recognition. All you
have to do is to abandon all memories and expectations. Just keep your-
self ready in utter nakedness and nothingness. (pp. 498–499, my
italics)

I believe it could be frightening to abandon all the supports we have

learned through our lives within our occidental culture. It is not easy
to give up and live as witness to the unknown of which we are also
an essential element. I think there is too much of a demand made on
us when we say we will abandon everything and concentrate on our
being as a part of the infinite mystery of the universe. Bion, however,
similarly to oriental philosophers, insisted on approaching the mind
without any form of prejudice and in a state of total naïveté or openness,
as an indispensable discipline, required in order not to contaminate
the original state of the mind and to be able to access its true meaning
 INTRODUCTION xxxiii

intuitively. If Freud’s approach is to be considered—following Fairbairn

(1952, p. 84)—as a “psychology of impulses”, I think Klein’s could then
be interpreted as a psychology of emotions and Bion’s as a psychology
of intuition.
Bion compares the process of the analyst’s intuitive grasp of the uncon-
scious as an act similar to the way a mystic relates to the godhead or as
containing a “messianic idea”, a suggestion also found in oriental philos-
ophy. Osho (2002), a Master of Zen Buddhism, for instance, stated that
[t]he path of the mystic is mysterious, cannot be explained. The
path of the ascetic is explainable: it is very scientific, very logical
and step by step can be explained. … But the path of the mystic
has no steps, but a quantum leap, a jump into the unknown … not
based on logic but based on intuition. (p. 125)

Chapter Two is devoted to an evaluation of the concept of “intuition”.

* * *
What the psychoanalyst must face is the need to “abstract”, in order to
read the unconscious messages that are always structured in abstract
terms similar to ideographs that represent an idea condensed in just
one word, or one image. Such abstraction implies psychic facts that
remain associated in “constant conjunction”.13 Bion adds the paradox
that “abstraction should never be attempted without concretization”
(1992, p. 256), perhaps referring to the internal operation the analyst
must perform in order to grasp the abstraction implicit in the ideogram
or psychic fact, able to translate it into a hypothesis presented as an
interpretation. This is an operation we often perform in the consult-
ing room when referring to issues related to “reconstructions” and/or
“transference interpretations”, as we try to release meaning from pos-
sible realisations implicit within the ideograms they were originally
designed to represent. A young man often attacked my interpretations
by ignoring what I said and simply continuing his narrative, as if I had
said nothing. He once referred to a flooded basement, after a storm the
night before, as well as the unfair remarks his father had made accusing
him of not properly checking the drainage. This, obviously, is a very
concrete statement that I have to perceive as such and then make into an
abstraction in order to grasp the meaning, such as, for instance, that he
feared my interpretations could flood his mind with unfair accusations,
in the manner in which his father had addressed him.
xxxiv INTRODUCTION

Unconscious communications are produced using abstractions and

symbolical means, a subject I deal with in detail in Chapters Four and
Eight, where clinical material will be used to illustrate these themes.
The traumatised and non-traumatised parts of the personality use two
forms of symbolisation that I classify as “discontinuous” or “heteromor-
phic”, and “continuous” or “homeomorphic”. I consider the symboli-
sation “discontinuous” when symbols have the capacity to introduce
a leap or a distance between the original absence of the object and its
representation. This kind of discrete symbolisation is diachronically
determined and does not carry a primitive emotional meaning in the
way that “continuous” symbolisation does. In “homeomorphic” or
“continuous” symbolisation, on the other hand, representations do
not contain a sense of diachronicity. This constitutes the core of the
“repetition compulsion” and always drags with it the meaning of a
child’s unconscious traumatic object.
A patient reported a complicated surgical intervention performed
when she was a little girl in rural South America, using general
anaesthesia at a time when mask and chloroform were commonly
used. At the beginning of her analysis she brought some nightmares
carrying painful emotional memories charged with terrifying feelings
of despair, helplessness, and mostly suffocation. Six years later, almost
at the end of her analysis, she recounted a dream in which she was in a
large auditorium filled with people that were going to be killed; some-
one approached her and told her to be ready because it was her turn.
She felt very calm (something I picked up in the countertransference)
and wondered about to whom she should leave her personal belong-
ings. She associated the killing with her operation and I commented
on the differences between the emotions portrayed at the beginning
of her analysis, and now. I thought that her painful nightmares repre-
sented continuous or homeomorphic forms of symbolisation, where
the original traumatic emotional experience of despair and suffocation
was relived. This stands in contrast to this last dream, where death
did not carry the emotional sense it would have in real life, represent-
ing a form of discrete symbolisation—the original emotion attached to
the memory of her trauma and the emotion experienced in her dream
were completely different. It was this representation of something as
serious as death being portrayed with little emotion that made the
dream very significant. Differently from before, her unconscious was
telling her that now an adult element within her was able to “contain”
 INTRODUCTION xxxv

the terror once experienced by the little girl, which was also inside of
her. In other words, the emotional continuity experienced before, was
now “broken” and “torn apart”: it was a dream pointing to the end of
analysis.

* * *

In conclusion
1. All human minds are born in bits and mental growth really means
integration: the greater the integration, the greater the sense of well-
being; the greater the splitting, the greater the suffering.
2. Mental integration is hindered by the existence of “pre-conceptual
traumas”. I am considering the existence of two different forms of
trauma, “pre-conceptuals” and “conceptuals”, the former is universal,
the latter accidental.
3. Pre-conceptual traumas become structured when deficiency of
maternal reverie allows a “temporary absence” to change into a
“permanent presence”.
4. I refer to “pre-conceptual traumas” as beta elements or events that
take place during the first years of life, when there is not a mind
capable of containing them. They remain as “pre-conceptions” in
search of a realisation, waiting for an alpha function to provide them
with a sensible meaning.
5. Pre-conceptual traumas stand for ubiquitous experiences present in
all human beings, like a “mark”, or “selected fact”, that organises
and provides significance to the idiosyncrasy and identity of each
individual. They amount to successive identifications, so tight-
fitting that the trauma renders itself invisible, like the Shakespearian
expression that the eye “sees not itself”. They are related to the
paranoid-schizoid position. Pre-conceptual traumas are also
minutely split or atomised and projected everywhere together with
the mind that contains them.
6. Pre-conceptual traumas split the mind into two opposite parts, the
“traumatised” and the “non-traumatised” state.
7. The traumatised state is the consequence of the unconscious
and compulsive repetition of pre-conceptual traumas. The non-
traumatised state represents the mental development that will
normally take place from birth to adulthood.
xxxvi INTRODUCTION

8. The “traumatised” and “non-traumatised” states continuously

interact following different dynamics. The former follows dynamics
compatible with the paranoid-schizoid position, narcissism,
projective and introjective identifications, repetition compulsion,
and transference-contratransference dimensions, among others.
The non-traumatised state, on the other hand, is ruled by the alpha
function, alpha elements, and is capable of accessing the depressive
position.
9. All existing forms of psychopathology are always traumatic.
10. “Reversal of alpha function” marks the change from the non-
traumatised to the traumatised state of the personality, representing
a cannibalisation of alpha elements that change into bizarre objects.
The opposite, meaning the change from the traumatised to non-
traumatised state, is reached by the sensible work of the alpha
function capable of digesting beta elements and bizarre objects.
11. When these bizarre objects, containing ego and superego elements,
are internally projected towards the soma, a form of ongoing
“dialogue” may be established with a particular organ, inducing
a form of communication that might force a particular organ to
“talk”, or to dream what otherwise remains undreamed. Such an
unconscious chronic dialogue could eventually produce a somatic
pathology that will be determined according to the organ selected.
This dynamic was considered by Bion (1992) as “small sigma”: “σ”.
Some of these aspects are taken up in Chapter Sixteen.
12. Time, space, and the process of symbolisation are different,
depending on which state contains the mind.
13. Time is linear within the non-traumatised, and circular or deferred
(towards the future or towards the past) within the traumatised
state. This circularity determines a continuous interaction between:
a) uncontained reality facts from the present, and b) unconscious
emotions (beta elements) from pre-conceptual traumas from the
past. In other words, due to the ego’s low frustration tolerance,
there is a failure in its capacity to discriminate (reality testing)
between uncontained emotions from the present and uncontained
emotions elicited from pre-conceptual traumas. Freud (1895, 1918)
referred to this interaction as “Nachträglichkeit” or “deferred action”
and Lacan (1953) as “après coup”. Based on the intensity of the
emotions involved, I discriminate between two different forms of
interaction (reality testing and pre-conceptual traumas): i) between
 INTRODUCTION xxxvii

intense and well delimited “conceptual” (PTSD) traumas and

pre-conceptual traumas, which can often transcend generational
boundaries (Faimberg, 2005); ii) as an ubiquitous and ongoing
subtle interaction between both, similar to what Freud (1926) once
described as “signal theory”.
14. Communication between split elements within the traumatised
part takes place by means of false or negative links (–K, –L,
and –H), which reproduce internally—between the inner parts—the
emotional interaction that once took place between parents and
child, at the time the pre-conceptual trauma was structured. The non-
traumatised state, on the other hand, uses true or positive links.
15. There is also a continuous pressure from the traumatised towards
the non-traumatised state, in order to sabotage and control it by
means of mechanisms such as “self-envy” (López-Corvo, 1992,
1995) or Rosenfeld’s (1971) description of a “narcissistic gang”.
16. The superego is heir to the Oedipus complex that has always been
modified by the particular pre-conceptual trauma.
17. The pre-conceptual trauma structured as the tyrannical presence
of historical absences consolidates as superego identifications,
determining how the ego and the superego interact.
18. Traumas created by chance will endlessly repeat themselves
propelled by “emotional correlations” and “symbolic” mechanisms
responsible for a perpetual motion or repetition compulsion.
19. Because of castration anxiety, pre-conceptual traumas split the
ego into “good” or libidinal and “bad” or aggressive objects,
becoming a matrix or a kind of “primary splitting” that, following
a homeomorphic form of symbolisation, will rule all future
emotional identifications, such as, for instance, the splitting between
“compliant” and “negativistic” false selves.
20. The non-traumatised state uses heteromorphic or a discontinuous
form of symbolisation, while the traumatised part uses continuous
or homeomorphic symbolisation.
21. The mind contained by the traumatised state using projective
identifications as a form of communication will induce a state of
sleeping while awake, similar to Plato’s allegory of the Cave.
22. The traumatised state represents a form of equilibrium.
Modifications introduced by the interpretation could change this
traumatised form of equilibrium creating “turbulence” and often
producing a “catastrophic change”.
xxxviii INTRODUCTION
We could also use a diagram to represent this summary:
Traumatised state
(environmental)
1. Paranoid-schizoid position:
“bivalent part objects”
2. Low frustration tolerance
3. Four to five part objects
4. Time is circular: the object that
is no longer is still longed for
a. Deferred action
(Nachträglichkeit, après coup)
b. Transference–
countertransference
c. Trauma-entanglement
5. Beta space: (wild unthought
thoughts). Preconscious:
“screen of beta elements”
6. Space: Narcissistic or dream
space. Use of projective and
introjective identifications
7. Communication between part
objects. Use of negative links:
(–H, –L, –K) and “emotional
correlation”
8. Symbolisation: Continuous or
homeomorphic
9. Traumatised state of equilibrium 9. Catastrophic change
Non-traumatised state
(developmental)
1. Depressive position:
“univalent total objects”
2. High frustration tolerance
3. Two part objects
4. Time is linear: the absence of the
object is translated into thoughts
and words. Past and future are
inexistant, only present is real
5. Alpha space: (objects of sense or
reality), “World of Σ”).
Preconscious:
“Contact barrier”
6. Space: “Social-istic”.
Discriminates between outside–
inside world
7. Communication between total
objects. Use of positive links:
(+H, +L, +K), “uncorrelated”
8. Symbolisation: Discontinuous or
heteromorphic
CHAPTER ONE

“Evicted from life”: time

distortion between pre-conceptual
and conceptual traumas*

You were not even able to see life, how can you see death? Death
is more subtle.

—Osho
Tao: The Pathless Path (p. 27)

We live a rented life from which we will be eventually evicted, all

that we can hope for is that the eviction won’t be too tormenting.

—Emilia

“Trauma entanglement”
Is it the present that provides meaning to the past or is it the other way
around? Laplanche and Pontalis (1967) stated:

It is not lived experiences in general that undergoes a deferred

revision but, specifically, whatever it has been impossible in the

* The content of this chapter has been previously published in The Psychoanalytic
Review, Vol. 100, No. 2, pp. 289–310, and it is now reproduced with permission from the
publisher.

1
2 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

first instance to incorporate fully into a meaningful context. The

traumatic event is the epitome of such unassimilated experience.
(p. 112)

I distinguish between “conceptual” and “pre-conceptual” traumas, as

events that take place at different times. The first represents emotional
reactions that take place at an adult age, when due to frustration
intolerance, conscious alpha function falls short in containing and
metabolising a given traumatic situation. There is a large literature on
“post traumatic stress disorders” (PTSD). “Pre-conceptual traumas”,
on the other hand, take place at an early age, when a mind capable
of metabolising the facts was not yet present and the mother’s rev-
erie or unconscious alpha function failed. I have chosen an expression
used in quantum physics—”quantum entanglement”—to refer to the
correlation or interconnection between objects that make up a sys-
tem, even if the individual objects are spatially separated.1 Very often
some situations that take place at a mature age can become traumatic
mostly because they automatically elicit emotions that echo similar or
“entangled” feelings from previous pre-conceptual traumas,2 which
seem to remain always lying in waiting. From this statement we could
conjecture, as Freud (1895) stated, that “conceptual traumas” always
contain “deferred actions”, or better, “deferred emotions” from “pre-
conceptual” traumas. This is an old assumption already introduced by
Freud in 1896 in “The etiology of hysteria”, where he established that:

We have learned that no hysterical symptom can arise from a real

experience alone, but that in every case the memory of earlier expe-
riences awakened in association to it plays a part in causing the
symptom. (p. 197)

Although the adult mind has the capacity to use “discontinuous”3

forms of symbolisation to contain primitive emotions and change them
into alpha elements, the ego can, nonetheless, become overwhelmed
by a present situation and feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, and
nameless dread, similar to those which ruled the ego at an early age.
These feelings might appear again with almost the same effect, as if
time has not elapsed. It is a condition directly related to intolerance
of frustration and hate of reality, present in a mind dominated by the
traumatised state of the personality. In this situation, when the adult
ego fails to tolerate a frustration from reality, unconscious emotional
aspects from the pre-conceptual trauma take over automatically, and
 “EVICTED FROM LIFE” 3

the original trauma is again re-experienced before the alpha function

can intervene. It is a mechanism Bion referred as “reversal of alpha
function”, which I have mentioned in the Introduction and which will
be considered in detail at the end of Chapter Three. Such conditions
will require an exercise of immediate reverie and containment from the
alpha function present in the non-traumatised adult element towards
the child (traumatised) part. I believe that what opposes reality is not a
satisfaction of drives, but a high level of frustration intolerance induced
in the ego when unassisted by the conscious alpha function. A dialectic
is then established as a form of reality testing between the actual situa-
tion that inundates the ego and pre-conceptual traumas stored as beta
elements; it bears some similarity to Freud’s theory of signal anxiety.
The correlation is not between pleasure and reality, but between “being-
dreaming” or “being awake”, contingent on the existence of an alpha
function and contact barrier. “Being-dreaming” stands for something
similar to what Plato stated in the “Allegory of the Cave”, whereby one
is driven by lies or distortion of the facts, because of poor frustration
tolerance and terror of the violence of truth.
There are two forms of “deferred emotions”, depending on the
intensity of pre-conceptual and conceptual traumas: a) one subtle and
continuously performed through reality testing, where the ego either
succeeds or fails in discriminating between outside reality from the
present and inside reality (pre-conceptual trauma) from the past. This
form of deferred action hinges on the quality and intensity of pre-
conceptual traumas; b) there is also another kind, resulting from con-
ceptual traumas triggering unconscious emotions from pre-conceptual
traumas. This form of deferred action depends more on the quality and
intensity of conceptual traumas.
In Chapter Eight, I refer to the change in emotional links, from neg-
ative to positive, needed in order for adults to modify the negative
impact of their experience of parents during childhood, when their pre-
conceptual trauma took place. Such early identifications have been
stored in the adult superego and are unconsciously acted out now in
later life between internal part objects, in a similar fashion to the way
they were once acted out by the parents towards the child. A short
vignette will be helpful. After seven years of analysis, Patty, a patient
who had used intellectualisation as a central form of defence, was
referring to a significant change of attitude towards her mother, and
older brother, whom she deeply resented because she felt he was her
mother’s favourite while she felt always excluded. She read from a very
4 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

touching letter she had just received from her ageing mother, thanking
her for a card the patient had send her for her birthday, something she
had seldom done before. I sensed in the countertransference the sad-
ness elicited by the message, but Patty started to laugh compulsively.
I asked her why she was laughing if there was nothing funny, and then
she burst into painful tears. Laughing was a defence, a fearful denial
of wounding emotions; but it was also the expression of an attitude
towards a hurt, sad, lonely “child element” in her, as if the “out of place
laugh” represented an internal callous and ignorant element, analo-
gous to a mother who could have laughed at her child’s emotional
misery. It was as if there was not proper containment from the “adult
part” towards the sad “child element” in her, and a lack of positive
emotions of self love and concern. She was now repeating in her own
mind—through the interaction between a superego traumatic, callous
element and an ego helpless, submissive part—the same situation she
had continuously complained about during the analysis, namely, that
which had taken place between her mother and herself as a child.
In this chapter I will present a clinical case to investigate how pre-
conceptual traumas obstruct the possibility of dealing with the emo-
tions that a true and violent threat of death can produce. Intense feelings
linked to the phenomenology of early traumatic events obscured the
true facts of the condition present at the time of the patient’s analysis.
Before I deal with the clinical material it will be helpful for us to first
consider some aspects related to death and the death drive.

The death drive

There are two conditions linked with existence which human beings
never seem able to get fully accustomed to, and to whose presencewe
always react with utter surprise, even dealing with them as if they were
absolutely new and unfamiliar: one is related to the beginning of life
and the other to its end; one related to coitus and sex, the other with
death.4 Although Freud acknowledged sexuality very early, he did not
recognise the significance of the “death instinct”’ until 1920, when it
was already too late for its phenomenology to acquire the same rele-
vance that “libido” previously had. Peter Gay (1988) has presented this
situation as follows:
What came to puzzle him, [Freud] then, as it puzzled others, was
only why he should hesitate to elevate aggressiveness into a rival
 “EVICTED FROM LIFE” 5

of libido. “Why have we ourselves,” he asked later, looking back,

“needed such a long time before we decide to recognize an aggres-
sive drive?” A little ruefully he recalled his own defensive rejection
of such drive when the idea first appeared in the psychoanalytic
literature, and “how long it took before I became receptive to it”…
In those years [concluded Gay] Freud had simply not been ready.
(p. 396)

But besides its late recognition, there were also other complications.
Awareness of the existence of the “death drive” was a slow process
in Freud’s investigations. “It is essential, in addition,” said Laplanche
and Pontalis (1967), “to relate the concept of the death instinct to the
evolution of Freud‘s thought, and to discover what structural necessity
its introduction answers to in the context of the more general revision
known as the turning-point of the 1920s” (1967, p. 97), when he finally
introduced the notion of this drive as we know it at present. The death
instinct remains to this day as controversial as it was in 1920. In a previ-
ous publication I expressed the following:

The first attempt to describe the death instinct on equal footing

with the sexual was not from Freud, but produced by Sabina
Spielrein, a Russian doctor who, after a psychotic break [hysterical?],
was “successfully” analyzed by Jung at Burgholzli from 1904 to
1908, becoming afterwards his mistress. In 1911 she presented a
paper to Freud and his group at the Wednesday meeting in Vienna,
with the suggestive title of “Destruction as the Cause of Becom-
ing”,5 about which, in a letter to Jung dated March 21, 1912, Freud
stated: “As for Spielrein’s paper, I know only the one chapter that
she read at the Society. She is very bright; there is meaning in eve-
rything she says; her destructive drive is not much to my liking,
because I believe it is personally conditioned. She seems abnor-
mally ambivalent” (Van Waning, 1992, p. 405). (López-Corvo, 1995,
pp. 114–115)

Freud had a similar disagreement with Adler around the same time,
arguing that he was overemphasising the importance of aggression.
Gay (1988) had this to say:

He [Freud] had long patiently listened to Adler, but no more. In this

mood, he could not recognize that some of Adler’s ideas, like his
6 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

postulate of an independent aggressive drive, might be valuable

contributions to psychoanalytic thought. Rather, he bestowed on
Adler the most damaging psychological terms in his vocabulary.
(pp. 222–223)

In 1920, when Freud finally changed from a monistic to a dualistic con-

ception of his theory of drives, he provided in a footnote written in
Chapter Six of “Beyond the pleasure principle”, some recognition of the
work of Spielrein:

A considerable portion of these speculations have been anticipated

by Sabina Spielrein (1912) in an instructive and interesting paper
which, however, is unfortunately not entirely clear to me. She there
describes the sadistic components of the sexual instinct as “destruc-
tive.” (1920, p. 55)

Ten years later, in 1930, in “Civilization and its discontents”, Freud con-
fessed: “I remember my own defensive attitude when the idea of an
instinct of destruction first emerged in psychoanalytic literature and
how long it took before I became receptive to it” (p. 120). I have previ-
ously stated that

[o]thers believe, although Freud himself denied it, that it took a

worldwide conflagration such a World War I for Freud to become
aware of the inconceivable amount of aggression harboured within
the human spirit. Perhaps it was difficult to imagine such wrath
during the epoch of a peaceful Europe and a gentle Vienna, where
the main clinical issues brought to the consulting room were the
fear of pregnancy in an already large family, onanism, repressed
sexuality, hysterical symptomatology, and psychosis. (López-
Corvo, 1995, p. 116)

Klein, on the other hand, gave the death instinct an even greater rel-
evance, by making it emblematic in her contributions to the metapsy-
chology of envy. Obviously, we also have to consider that times have
changed and sexuality does not suffer the same severity of repres-
sion as it did during the Victorian period, making aggression, as a
consequence, a more present drive during our everyday psychoanalytic
work.
 “EVICTED FROM LIFE” 7

About death
I believe that what makes sex and death be experienced as always
something new, is repression; perhaps more death than sex. Buddhism,
for instance, has alerted us to the tendency to make death unfamiliar
and to deny its fatalistic presence. In the Añguttara-Nikaya (iii. 35),6
one of the sacred books of Buddhism, King Yama argues with his priests
about their ignorance and fear of death:

Death has three messengers … Did you not see the first of death’s
messenger visibly appear among men? He replies: “Lord I did
not” … Oh man! Did you not see among men and women eighty or
ninety or a hundred years of age, decrepit … bowed down, leaning
on a staff, trembling as he walked …? He replies, “Lord, I did” …
Oh man! Did you not see the second of death’s messengers visibly
appear among men? “Lord, I did not” … Oh man! Did you not
see among women or men, diseased, suffering, grievously sick …?
He replies, “Lord, I did” … Oh man! Did you not see the third
death’s messenger visibly … “Lord, I did not” … Did not you see …
a woman or man that has been one day dead, or two days dead …
and had been swollen, black … He replies, “Lord, I did” … Oh
man! Did it not occur to you, being a person of mature intelligence
and years, “I also am subject to [old age, to disease] to death, and in
no way exempt …?” … “Lord I did not think”. (pp. 94–95)

There are recorded deaths of well known personalities in history that

portray a “full command” of the facts around their own death; one, well
known, is Socrates’ execution, documented by Plato in Phaedo, where
the philosopher’s sheer serenity in facing the end of his existence is
enough to make anybody wonder. Another is the well known Scottish
philosopher David Hume’s death, taking place in 1776 in his native
Edinburgh, that has been well recorded by Boswell (1971) and Ignatieff
(1984).
Such testimonies, secured for posterity by reliable frontline wit-
nesses, induce afterward a sort of suspicious inquiry about the true
stance that these individuals might really have displayed while facing
their last moments of life. There is no reason to doubt that such
transcriptions were not also a close and reliable portrait of the truth.
However, regardless of what the facts might have been, I use them now
8 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

as possible paradigms of a remarkable and unusual attitude present in

certain individuals, who were perhaps capable of transcending their
fear of death. I will use them in comparison with other individuals
who, due to particular circumstances surrounding their personal his-
tories, were not capable of freeing themselves from the nameless terror
of death. I will add that in order to face natural death, like Socrates
and Hume, it is absolutely indispensable to achieve a profound
unconscious sense “of being alive”, or, to express it in Osho’s (2002)
words: “How can you see death if you have not seen life, death is more
subtle”. I would like now to attempt a psychoanalytic investigation of
the meaning of such awareness and what sort of circumstances might
hinder or enhance the capacity to achieve a substantial and determi-
nant sense of aliveness.

Alive vs. inanimate

Pre-conceptual traumas are organised internally as a kind of envious
and cruel internal object that could deprive the individual, among other
things, of a sense of unconditionality, meaning to feel loved for what you
are and not for what you do or have (López-Corvo, 2006). Bion used the
word “reverie”, meaning “‘day-dreaming”, to emphasise the importance
of the mother’s capacity to rely on natural and intuitive means to com-
municate with her baby, in a similar way to how non-human animals
relate to their offspring. I would like to add that reverie should also
imply not only an intuitive endeavour but also an authentic humility
and absolute respect. This form of communication will be established
as the mother allows herself to be contained by her baby—and not the
other way around—in a fashion which could be described according to
the notion of “a child being pregnant with his/her mother”.
According to Bion, the reverie function refers to the mother’s compe-
tence to develop a psychological receptor organ capable of metabolising
the baby’s sensuous information presented as projective identifications,
that she will be able—with the use of her alpha function—to transform
into “alpha-elements” (López-Corvo, 2003, pp. 167–168). For Bion
(1967) “reverie is a factor of the mother’s alpha-function … her love
is expressed by reverie” (p. 36). “Alpha function”, on the other hand,
represents a psychological construct or abstraction that Bion created to
describe the capacity to change sense information (beta elements) into
 “EVICTED FROM LIFE” 9

creative thinking (alpha elements), which will provide the mind with
material to produce “dream thoughts” (reverie), and “hence the capac-
ity to wake up or go to sleep, to be conscious or unconscious.” And,
I will add, “to be alive” or “not to be alive”. Bion continues:

According to this theory, consciousness depends on alpha-function

and it is a logical necessity to suppose that such a function exists if
we are to assume that the self is able to be conscious of itself in the
sense of knowing itself from experience of itself. (1967, p. 115)

I believe that when Bion refers to the mother’s “love being expressed
by reverie”, he is declaring that love will provide the child with the
capacity to discriminate between “being like a thing” (inanimate
object) and being “as a person” (animate object). For Bion (1962), an
overvaluation of the inanimate over the animate might represent a con-
sequence of enforced splitting associated with a disturbed relationship
with the breast. He stated that when envy obstructs the relationship
with the good breast—provider of love, understanding, solace, knowl-
edge, (Klein, 1946) during the paranoid-schizoid position—the perse-
cutory anxiety present could obstruct the physical need for sucking
and thereby jeopardise the infant’s life. “Fear of death through starva-
tion of essentials”, said Bion (1962) “compels resumption of sucking.
A split between material and psychical satisfaction develops” (p. 10).
This situation leads to an enforced splitting between the physical
need for survival (being loved for what we have or do), on the one
hand, and psychic satisfactions (being loved for what we are), on the
other. Such a condition can be achieved by the destruction of alpha
function:

This makes breast and infant appear inanimate with consequent

guiltiness, fear of suicide and fear of murder [it is easier to destroy
something inanimate—like soldiers in the war—than something
alive!] … The need for love, understanding and mental develop-
ment is now deflected, since it cannot be satisfied, into the search for
material comforts. (Ibid., p. 11, my italics)

Judith, for instance, was the wife of a successful businessman who had
managed, in a relatively short time, to become very wealthy. Although
10 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

she appeared as a rather insightful and intelligent woman, she gave

the impression of someone with little education and as being rather
primitive. Shortly after she initiated her analysis she brought a dream:
She was in a shopping centre trying to buy clothes. She had several credit and
debit cards with her, but was unable to use them and could not buy anything.
When I asked about her associations she stated that she was realising
that what she most wanted was inner peace, but she was also becom-
ing aware that she was not going to obtain it by acquiring material
things.
When there exists within the mother a significant level of envy
towards the power of the breast—experienced as an omnipotent and
autonomous entity capable of providing hope, life, sense of selfness,
feeling of well being, containment, and so on,—such envy will render
the mother unable to provide an imaginative maternal reverie that will
induce in her child the capacity to manufacture a resourceful alpha func-
tion capable of all the options I have described above, together with a
true sense of being an “alive human being”. The main restriction to this
form of awareness would hinge on the mother’s mind being contained
by an envious, arrogant, and omnipotent element, which lacks humil-
ity, and true respect for “otherness”.7

The attribute of being alive

The only absolutely necessary requirement in order to die, is to be alive.
But to be alive in the manner I am now advancing here does not nec-
essarily refer to the quality of being endowed with life as it occurs in
animals or plants; it requires, more precisely, a full awareness of being a
“living human being”. What then does it mean to be alive? It means the
presence of an intuitive awareness of selfness, uniqueness, autonomy,
continuous growth, and, paradoxically, a sense of deadness. It requires
a denotation of unconditionality, to feel loved for what you “are” and
not for what you “have” or for what you “do”: “We live a rented life
from which we will be eventually evicted, all that we can hope for is that
the eviction won’t be too tormenting”.8 Krishnamurti (1960) for instance,
stated:

You cannot live without dying. You cannot live if you do not die
psychologically every minute. This is not an intellectual paradox.
 “EVICTED FROM LIFE” 11

To live completely, wholly, every day as if it were a new loveliness,

there must be dying to everything of yesterday, otherwise you live
mechanically, and a mechanical mind can never know what love is
or what freedom is. (p. 58)

And, further on:

Sir, if one may ask, why are you so concerned to know what hap-
pens after death? “Doesn’t everyone want to know?” Probably they
do; but if we don’t know what living is, can we ever know what
death is? Living and dying may be the same thing, and the fact
that we have separated them may be the source of great sorrow.
(p. 62)

There are certain “pre-conceptual traumas” (López-Corvo, 2006)

that have the power to rob the self of being able to achieve a sense of
“selfness”, autonomy, uniqueness, unconditionality, and aliveness. Also,
the particular characteristics of some of these pre-conceptual traumas
could interfere with the capacity of the adult side to later achieve a true
notion of what death is about, of precisely what it consists. The continu-
ous reiteration of the same thing, forever, implicit in the compulsive
repetition of the pre-conceptual trauma, is a form of deadness, of an
absolute void of life that Plato, with unprecedented intuition, depicted
in the “parable of the cave”. Bion (1962) stated:

The attempt to evade the experience of contact with live objects

by destroying alpha-function leaves the personality unable to have
a relationship with any aspect of itself that does not resemble an
automaton. Only beta-elements are available for whatever activ-
ity takes the place of thinking and beta-elements are suitable for
evacuation only—perhaps through the agency of projective iden-
tification. (p. 13)

And further on, in 1970, he said:

“Non-existence” immediately becomes an object that is immensely

hostile and filled with murderous envy towards the quality of
function of “existence” wherever it is to be found. (pp. 19–21)
12 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

These feelings would be personified by a “non-existent” person,

… whose hatred and envy is such that “it” is determined to remove

and destroy every scrap of “existence” from any object which might
be considered to “have” any existence to remove. Such a non-
existent object can be terrifying that its “existence” is denied leav-
ing only the “place where it was”. (Bion, 1965, p. 111)

The mind contained by a pre-conceptual trauma will resort to greed and

envy; however, if the pre-conceptual trauma is contained by the mind,
then the mind will be contained by life, by the continuous becoming of
life and its end as death. I believe it is absolutely necessary to achieve
an inner state of “well being” by “aligning” ourselves with our own
nature, and if you are able to achieve that, life and death become mean-
ingful, because there will be then more possibilities of being “evacuated
from life”, more humanly! To investigate this interference induced by
early traumas that obstruct alpha function and become structured as
internal objects capable of inducing feelings of “non-existence”, is the
intended focus of this chapter. Let us now consider the case of Emilia.

The case of Emilia

Emilia, a bright sixty-year-old nurse, consulted because she was feel-
ing depressed after a recent and contentious separation from a man she
had been living with for the last seven years. Four issues became sig-
nificant from the beginning: i) she placed great importance on material
things and was always fashionably and smartly dressed; ii) she had
been married twice previously, the first time when she was twenty-six
and the second at the age of thirty-eight. Her marriages ended because
she became disappointed and felt no longer in love; iii) the way her
mother—deceased for the last twenty years—was continuously and
powerfully present in her mind, as if there was a commanding need
to keep her alive, something often reflected in the transference. There
were several items from her mother she now wore or kept in her closet;
and iv) fear of closeness, of trust and dependency.
She was an only child, and when she was eleven years old, her father
became blind after an accident that made him financially dependent
on her mother’s antique store. In the first session she brought a short
dream: Her father was wearing a blue bathrobe. It was a robe used by her
 “EVICTED FROM LIFE” 13

mother that was reversible; it could be worn on either side. I said that
perhaps she experienced her father as reversible, two-faced, not to be
trusted. She added that her parents acted very much the same and that
her father became very dependent on her mother after his accident.
“My parents were like this”—she joined both hands as if praying—
“there was no room for me”. She complained that her current boy-
friend, “A”, did not wish to marry her, and that she was not certain she
loved him either. It seemed as if there was, in her mind, an angry little
girl attempting to sabotage, out of envy, the relationship that another
adult part in her was capable of establishing with men, similar to how
she felt her parents made her feel as a child, as if there was “no room
left for her”.
About half a year into her therapy, because of a persistent dry cough,
she decided to consult her doctor, and discovered the terrible news
of a colon cancer, which had already moved to her liver. Her mother,
she remembered, had had a similar diagnosis, although localised, and
had been able to survive for thirty more years after her stomach was
removed. The diagnosis of cancer induced four significant feelings:
i) a terror as if she was not threatened with dying but with being tor-
tured to death; ii) anger and intense envy in the transference, as if she
was the only one dying while everybody else was living forever and
continuously celebrating; iii) anger and shame at herself for “becoming
a failure”; iv) the terrible suspicion that she was being rejected by her
boyfriend, her friends, and, in the transference, for being a total disap-
pointment. It seemed that feeling ashamed and a complete failure after
being diagnosed, introduced the idea that she was unconsciously deal-
ing with “something different” than a life-threatening cancer. It was a
form of knowledge that reminded me of what Bion (1965) once referred
to as “conscious awareness”. He stated:

This “conscious”, is an awareness of a lack of existence that demands

an existence, a thought in search of a meaning, a definitory hypoth-
esis in search of a realization approximating to it, a psyche seeking
for physical habitation to give it existence, a container looking for
a contained. (p. 109)

At one point, she expressed feeling very suspicious of A, because he

had invited her to go out for the weekend, and she feared he wanted
to tell her that he did not want to continue seeing her. She remembered
14 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

three dreams: In the first she was wearing a shawl that belonged to Mother
Theresa of Calcutta. There was a crowd of people that made way for her to
see herself seated in a bistro. In a second dream she was buying a lot of socks
because they were very cheap. Finally, she was going to see a play about Galileo
with a boyfriend from her adolescence. She associated to returning from her
weekend with A, when he stopped to buy some socks on sale. Although
he was very wealthy, he was also very mean with himself. She remem-
bered her previous husband who used to force her to return whatever
she bought if he disagreed with the purchase. She did not know what
to think about Mother Theresa’s shawl and about the play, but felt they
were related to her father’s blindness, that perhaps what happened to
him then was similar to what was happening to her now. About the
bistro, she remembered that when she married the first time she was
uncertain about the wedding and when she came out of the church,
she saw herself sitting by a bistro located on the other side of the street.
I said she felt she had got cancer because she was “bad” and not “good”
like Mother Theresa; maybe she wished she could get out of her body,
like when she married and wanted not to be there. Galileo reminded
her of her blind father and she would like me to look after her as she
had tried to look after him. She also felt there was an internal element
that treated her cheaply, as if she did not deserve good things, or have
the right to be nice to herself.
The following week Emilia arrived crying and feeling very upset.
She said she was angry and very unhappy because she felt the test
results she was supposed to obtain from the hospital were going to be
very unsatisfactory and questioned the purpose of coming to see me if I
couldn’t do anything for her. She cried bitterly and said that everybody
was fine but herself. She asked a doctor friend to fetch the results, but
the friend said it was the hospital’s policy to hand them over to the
person; she thought this was not true, that what had happened was
that the results were so bad that her friend had refused to be the carrier
of such terrible news. The next day she went to pick them up and the
doctor told her the results were better than expected, that fifty per cent
of the tumours were reduced, and some were even calcified. But even
with this good news, she was not pleased and looked very strained
emotionally. I said to her that perhaps in her mind someone—possibly
the “cheap” part inside her mind—was secretly watching her, and if she
appeared to be too happy about the good results, it was either going to
be a bad omen or she was going to get punished by making the tumours
 “EVICTED FROM LIFE” 15

worse. Perhaps if she suffered, someone could commiserate and spare

her the illness. She remembered that her mother was nice to her when
she felt ill.
A few weeks later she talked about having arguments with A. She
asked him to help her to pay someone to assist her at home: “He is very
rich and can afford it, but he refused and this infuriated me … he is also
very distant and does not even touch me”. She remembers a dream: She
was in a caravan with a group of gypsies; somebody knocked at her door but
she could not distinguish if it was a man or a woman. The person was dressed
in blue and said they had an injection that could prolong her life for up to two
years. In another dream she woke up and was unable to find her mother,
went to the living room and found her dead on the floor and felt terrified. She
gives no association to the “gypsy”, although the blue colour reminded
her of a dress her mother used to wear. She felt very angry at A. Yes-
terday was his birthday and she called him but got no answer and
imagined he was with another woman. She felt like telling him to go
to hell. She called again and he answered and said he had been in the
bathroom, and she asked if he was with somebody else and he denied
it. Then she called her doctor and told her she was hallucinating. I said
she might have identified the gypsy with me and her mother, wishing
that we could protect her from dying. She needed to keep her parents
alive but managed at the same time to imagine that they, like A, left
her out, something that made her extremely angry and disappointed. It
seemed difficult for her to imagine that her parents were dead and that
she was by herself. She said she felt dizzy and felt like leaving. After a
long pause she remembered another dream: She was wearing new shoes
and a dress her mother made for her when she was sixteen. She associated
the dress with one she had while at high school when she received an
award from the wife of the president of her country. If her father had
not become blind, her financial situation would have been much better
and she could have become a doctor instead of a nurse, she said very
angrily. I then said that an element in her head convinced her that her
parents were still alive and that she could argue with them for what
they didn’t do for her.
On another occasion she arrived very angry, stating that everybody
had something to feel good about, they felt hopeful, and were mak-
ing plans to travel. She was also angry at me because I didn’t do any-
thing for her, and what I had said to her about not “thinking ahead”, is
almost impossible to do. After a pause she quietened down and said her
16 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

mother was like that, always criticising everybody. She remembered

how her mother could talk for hours, always repeating the same stories,
and forcing her to listen; once she asked her father how he managed to
deal with her mother repeating the same stories, and he answered that
he never listened to her. I said that perhaps her mother treated her like
a toilet, pouring out whatever she wanted to get rid of without any con-
sideration of Emilia’s own needs, and that she fears I could treat her in
a similar manner. She stated that she remembered looking at the clock
hoping for the time to go quickly and for her father to arrive around
seven o’clock.
A few sessions later she arrived elegantly dressed and I felt she
might be trying to be seductive. She said rather hesitantly that she was
afraid, because she was seeing another analyst at the same time as she
was coming to see me, but this analyst had died unexpectedly at the
weekend, and she feared I might not wish to see her any more. I said
that perhaps she felt she was doing something to me by seeing the other
analyst, although I did not feel that way, that whatever she did was fine
with me. Perhaps she experienced me like her mother and felt the need
to see another analyst as someone else to turn to, as she did as a child
with her father. She agreed and added it was like a “sneaky” part of her
which appeared whenever she felt afraid or threatened. I said that per-
haps the “sneaky” part, out of fear, was using her elegance to “seduce”
me. She laughed a bit anxiously. I also added that there was something
interesting about this “sneaky” element, because it seemed to induce in
her the need to “fabricate” an “abusive mother” in order to “sneak” to a
“rescuing father”, because after all, looking for another analyst was like
an outlet from the feeling that I was in her mind, similar to her abusive
mother. However, in spite of the promising results of the medical tests
and the interpretation I repeated about identifying the analyst with her
mother, the level of anxiety escalated. She looked completely run down
and was unable to listen to what I said, similar to what she felt as a child
when her mother forced her to stay and listen.
Some days later she brought a dream: She was travelling in a double-
decker bus, like those in London, and behind her there was a lady with a little
girl. Someone was selling jewels and she purchased a very expensive ruby and
gave it to the woman behind her for her little girl. The lady was very embar-
rassed and did not know whether to take it or not. At the weekend she went
out with A and saw a double-decker bus. Later that same day, he gave
her a very expensive brooch which made her feel more comfortable.
 “EVICTED FROM LIFE” 17

When she went to the hospital to have some tests done, someone stole
a ring from her purse. However, when the technician was checking on
her, she was more concerned with the expression on his face, to see if
he looked concerned, than with the loss of her ring. She also remem-
bered that on her eleventh birthday her mother gave her a ring with
a stone similar to the one in her dream. Sometime later she lost the
ring and became very frightened about her mother knowing about it,
and kept the issue a secret while desperately looking for it; however,
the mother who had found it remained silent, as she watched Emilia’s
despair. I told her that perhaps she experienced the feeling that reality
was robbing her of something so precious, similar to an internal sadis-
tic mother part that filled her with terror, that this element was some-
times projected outside on to others—like the technician or me—and
then she would try to placate this element by offering something very
valuable.
A few weeks later she recalled a dream: She was somewhere in the
water and had the sensation that life was leaving her behind; she experienced
this as a form of exclusion as if it was herself who remained outdistanced. She
felt as if someone was going to rescue her from that. She looked physically
strained and neglected. She remembered reading that dreaming about
water could be associated with mother matters; also she recalled going
to the beach as a child with her mother while her father stayed behind
because of his work. She felt extremely unhappy because she could not
stand being alone with her mother. She wanted him to rescue her but
he never appeared. Every day, when she had said good-bye to her class-
mates and arrived home from school, her mother, who was waiting for
her by the door, would force her to sit on the sofa and listen to her talk
endlessly about the same things. She could hear her friends talking and
playing outside while she hopelessly watched the clock on the wall,
waiting for her father to arrive and liberate her. She recalled how diffi-
cult and shameful it was for her to always have to invent excuses for her
classmates about not being able to go outside and play with them. I said
that perhaps she felt very envious of those little girls whom she heard
playing outside because they were free to do whatever they wanted,
instead of being like her, who felt prisoner of her mother’s needs and
unable to free herself from her control. I also added that her mother used
her like an ear-toilet, as if she did not exist as an individual, other than
for her mother to dump her word-faeces into. Maybe she felt frustrated
that I, like her father, was unable to rescue her from feeling threatened
18 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

by her cancer, trapped by her condition as she had felt trapped by her
mother.
A week later she appeared very depressed and feeling hopeless
about her analysis and very angry and envious of others: her boyfriend,
other friends, and even me. She cried in great despair, stating that she
felt terrified because she was going to the hospital the next day to have
a scan and was completely certain it was going to be terrible. I said that
although that might be possible, she did not know, and that she would
have to wait until tomorrow to see. I repeated a previous interpreta-
tion: Perhaps she was making herself feel terrible as a form of punish-
ment, thinking that in this way the results might be better. She had had
problems sleeping the previous night and referred to another dream:
A patient who was a prominent business man, whom she used to treat at the
hospital, was sitting in front of her. Suddenly she observed that something
like a penis was coming out through his shirt. He apologised and put it back
inside. This man’s penis was not in his crotch but at the level of his liver.
I said that perhaps a part of her wished that someone prominent would
introduce health to her liver with his penis through her vagina. Perhaps
she had similar desires towards me, that I could introduce something
through her ears-vagina, like a fantastic penis capable of curing her
liver’s tumours; however, there seemed to be another part in her that
feared I could become too important in her life. She answered that she
was always suspicious of others, of what they might want from her, and
that she feared her need of me, her wish to come every day.
Two weeks later she appeared very angry and stated that she had a
terrible headache and believed it was because of something I had said
the day before. She brought several dreams. She was giving a conference at
the hospital’s grand round, forgot the introduction, and felt anxious. A woman
said to her that she was not well dressed and she decided to change. She asso-
ciated this with the time when she used to present cases at the grand
rounds and was always dressed very nicely. Since the time she was a
child her mother forcefully insisted that she be properly attired and was
always extremely critical of how she clothed herself. In a second dream,
she was trying to clean a sculpture in a tomb but broke a piece of it and feared
someone could have seen her. I said she wished to regress to old times
when she was happy, well thought of, and in command; also, there was
wishful thinking of being able to change her present situation as easily
as changing clothes. About the second dream she said that perhaps it
represented her attempts to free herself from the cancer. I added that she
 “EVICTED FROM LIFE” 19

seemed to be dealing with a cancer in her body and another in her mind
and that the latter appeared to be the product of something terrible she
seemed to be doing, like attacking and destroying a dead person, per-
haps her mother, who she felt was responsible for her sickness. At the
same time she did not wish to know about this, because she preferred
for nobody to know she had broken the sculpture.
Sometime later, I said that I would be leaving the next week for
Christmas holidays, something I had already announced three weeks
earlier. She responded with a dream: She was with her father in the garden
of the house in which she was born; he said that C is looking for her and Emilia
goes to fetch her. C said that they could not meet after four next Monday but
would meet at eight am the following day. Emilia felt very upset and angry
because of the cancellation of their appointment and said to C that she will lose
a lot of money. She linked C with a very ill and needy woman she used to
look after, as well as a couple who came to visit this patient, and Emilia
learned from another nurse that this couple became friends with older
people with the purpose of snatching their things after they died. Four
o’clock she associated with the time when she arrived from school and
her mother was waiting for her in order for Emilia to listen to her end-
less talk the whole afternoon. She remembered that there was a tree in
the garden where she used to talk to her father who loved gardening. It
was the only place she felt really close to him, also because her mother
hated anything that had to do with the garden and never came out to
it; it was like a secret or magic place. Even to this day she thought a lot
about that garden and at her boyfriend’s place there was a tree that very
much reminded her of her own garden. When her mother confined her
at four o’clock every day, all she could do was to watch the clock on
the wall, wishing for her father to arrive, or to think about the tree and
the garden, wishing to be there; it was her only way to freedom, even if
it was just in her imagination. C was also one of her classmate friends
when she was a child, whom she envied immensely because she was so
free and could do anything she wanted after school.
I said that C was like a seriously ill part of herself, and she felt she
could trust no one, that everybody—like the couple who snatched old
patients’ possessions—were for themselves, and did not really care for
her, like me, because I was going away next week regardless of how
she felt. It seemed that her present illness had trapped her in a way that
made her feel confused, not knowing if she was dealing with the real
threat of her cancer or emotionally remembering feeling trapped by her
20 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

mother. It was like a repetitious circularity, where she felt captured by

her mother who then used her as a toilet to deposit all of her undesired
emotions, making her feel like she was dead, nonexistent, like a thing,
good only to be the silent audience of a crazy and powerful mother.
She then attempted to become alive by flying away in her mind from
this internal powerful mother, going to the secret garden she shared
with her father; the conflict, however, was that she seemed to feel that
such an attempt was possible only if she could get rid of her mother,
meaning killing her in her mind. It seemed that such a mechanism was
still present in her mind, and she was still trapped in that circularity, of
killing her mother and bringing her back to life again and again. This
is why she felt that she was the only one dying now, while everybody
else was continuously celebrating. She was confusing her present ill-
ness and the possibility of dying of cancer now, with what happened
to her when she was trapped as a child by her crazy mother, while at
the same time she felt everybody else, like C, for instance, was having a
great time, which they were, while she was condemned to remain life-
less, listening to the endless, meaningless, and abusing discourse of her
mother. She remembered that shortly before her mother died, a good
friend of hers, who had met her mother, asked her afterwards, “How
could you ever stand such a mad and insensitive woman who talked
like a radio”. In the transference I could be, indiscriminately, her friend
C or the snatcher mother who robbed her sense of being an individual.

Conclusion
For as many as ten or eleven years, Emilia was trapped daily and tor-
tured by her mother’s pitiless need to pour into her innocent mind the
toxic waste she needed to excrete. Nobody came to her rescue, not even
her blind and useless father, or her little friends whom she heard with
great envy, playing and singing outside while she waited inside for
her torment to end. There was the embarrassment of having to excuse
herself from engaging after school hours in any mutual play because
she knew her mother was waiting to prey on her. The only outlet she
learned with practice through the years was to dissociate herself, leav-
ing her body behind and wandering in her mind to what later became
her “secret garden”. She became so good at such strategies that during
her first wedding, when she felt trapped and was torturing herself with
having second thoughts, she saw herself sitting at a bistro across the
 “EVICTED FROM LIFE” 21

street, an image she again repeated in a dream while searching for a

way out from the threat of cancer. It was a conspiracy, from destiny, of
a total disrespect of her humanity, whichleft a deep emotional scar of
hopelessness, helplessness, and impotence. At one point, almost in the
last days of her life, she remarked with deep sorrow that she felt she
was being “evicted from life in a very cruel manner. All that anybody
can hope for is that the eviction won’t be too tormenting.”
The particular characteristics of her early pre-conceptual trauma later
cloaked the true threat of a deadly disease: the absurd sense of failure,
the envious delusion that everybody else was living forever and con-
tinuously celebrating, the anger and wish for retaliation, and so on. She
was not really dealing with true death but emotionally repeating the
particular characteristics of an early trauma’s footprints. In her mind it
was not only cancer she was dealing with, but a “time trap”: the eternal
repetition of an internal exceedingly toxic and deadly mother.
When death becomes a threat (even without the presence of a deadly
disease, as in the case of Emilia) and we are cornered by the natural,
progressive degradation of mind and body, as happens in old age, when
the gap between the here and now and a possible future death becomes
close, that threat can also act like a traumatic menace that will automati-
cally trigger painful emotions from pre-conceptual traumas.9
CHAPTER TWO

The mark of Cain: ego and superego

narcissistic identifications with pre-
conceptual traumas*

… I had become convinced that the distinction between body and

mind is only verbal and not essential, that body and mind are one
unit, that they contain an It, a force which lives us while we believe
we are living.

—Groddeck (1977, pp. 32–33)

The classic psycho-analytic view supposed the mind or personality

to be identical with the physical identity of a person. The object of
my proposal is to do away with such a limitation and to regard the
relationship between body and mind (or personality, or psyche) as
one that is subject to investigation.

—Bion (1992, p. 314)

* Read at the Canadian 35th Annual Congress of Psychoanalysis, Quebec, June 2009 and at
the English branch of the Psychoanalytic Society, Montreal, March, 2010.
23
24 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

Introduction
Cain was the older son who dedicated himself to cultivating the land,
while Abel looked after the flock of sheep. The Lord, suspiciously tainted
with human unfairness, privileged Abel’s offerings over those of Cain,
inducing jealousy and envy which eventually led to murder. If we know
something about sibling rivalry, we can conjecture that the envy, which
was already there from the very beginning, from the older Cain toward
the younger Abel, had set up a predisposition that exploded under the
effect of the Lord’s inequitable way of dealing with each of them. God
then set a punishment that Cain considered too unforgiving and Cain
feared to be recognised and put to death. The Lord responded by set-
ting a “protective” mark that would allow others to recognise Cain so
as not to harm him.
We could interpret “Cain’s mark” as the precise configuration made
on the structure of the Oedipus complex by the phenomenology of the
pre-conceptual trauma experienced by each individual. Early traumas
leave a “mark”, a “selected fact”1 that organises the personality and
determines significant aspects of the idiosyncrasy and identity of all
human beings. Not just the presence of any “crossroad” for the kill-
ing of the father and any “mother’s bed” for the consummation of
incest; but the unmistakable narrative of a precise “crossroad” and a
specific “mother’s bed”, registered in the history of each of us. There
are always the same characters in the Oedipus complex; however, the
narrative about how the interactions between these characters evolve
in the myth, is absolutely particular to each individual, to the point that
the cruelty exercised by the superego against the ego, is always directly
proportional to the cruelty present in the pre-conceptual trauma. These
traumas represent significant aspects of our idiosyncrasy, structured
following early incidents that have been bound in constant conjunc-
tion2 that pursue no other purpose than to repeat the status quo; they
are experiences inflicted by chance and repeated by compulsion.
According to Bion (1974a) any myth can be represented by the
formula K(ξ), where K stands for a constant that is conscious and
saturated—like the presence of the characters in the Oedipus myth,
who are always the same—and ξ characterises what is variable, what is
private, unsaturated and unconscious (p. 23). It means, in other words,
that the Oedipus complex, having always the same characters, evolves
in a unique manner according to each person.
 T H E M A R K O F CA I N 25

It is essential to keep in mind, as we try to help patients free

themselves from the restrictions and mental pain exercised by their
pre-conceptual traumas, that it is not with ease that someone will give
up something like that. Although it is true that the trauma has been
the cause of immense suffering, it is also true that it has, in addition,
provided them with a source of identification and a form of identity.3
The importance of such identifications may be clarified by the follow-
ing example of a patient in the midst of a second analysis, who, as a
little boy, experienced a complicated tonsillectomy and as an adult
developed symptomatology compatible with multiple sclerosis.4 We
had discussed the possibility that his neurological symptoms provided
him with a “secondary gain”, as he felt protected by the several doc-
tors he was frequently consulting. He presented the following dream:
He was with a doctor who had taken a second X-ray plate of his head and
superimposed them in order to see the progress, discovering that it appeared
“clearer” than a previous one. The doctor then strongly insisted that he leave
the room because there was too much radiation that could harm him. He went
to a waiting area where an ear and throat surgeon appeared who invited him
to come into his office, but he felt apprehensive and refused, saying he was
the radiologist’s patient. He associated the X-ray plate with the analysis
and the radiation with what we had discovered in the present analy-
sis concerning his pre-conceptual trauma, which was not considered
in a previous one. The throat specialist reminded him of the tonsil
intervention. I interpreted that the radiation could have represented
the threat that the current analysis might signify to the consolidated
“traumatic objects”, which we had been seeing now more clearly than
in the previous X-ray plate. Something in the dream forced him to go
outside (“the doctor then strongly suggested”), as a form of resistance
to the continuous clarification the present analysis was helping him to
achieve. However, once outside, he felt confronted with the terror of
castration induced by the trauma itself in the form of a surgeon. The
dream portrayed a form of ambivalence between the progress achieved
in his present analysis with regard to the phenomenology of his origi-
nal pre-conceptual trauma, and the danger that these discoveries, in
the form of “radiation”, signified for the unconscious organisation of
the “traumatised state”. Remaining in the analysis, according to his
dream, would mean that he would get rid of all the “culture” related
to his traumatised state: feeling safe in the hands of neurologists look-
ing after him, the continuous tests, appointments, as well as coming
26 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

to analysis. If he were to give this up, what would he then do with his
life? On the other hand, to abandon the analysis would leave him in
danger of a terrible outcome of the continuous painful experience of
his original trauma. Pre-conceptual traumas can also be conceived as
nonlinear forms of equilibrium that maintain an internal stability in a
manner similar to Thom’s concept of “catastrophe theory” (Poston &
Stewart, 1998). Changes in certain parameters in the system can cause
equilibrium to modify, leading to sudden modification of the behaviour
of the system in the form of a catastrophic change.5
Bion (1967) alerted us to the danger of attempting to change such
resistances at any price. He advised that the therapist should be very
careful when interacting with his patients, so as not to display the dan-
gerous combination of “arrogance, curiosity, and stupidity”, something
akin to “not seeing the forest for the trees”. “Arrogance” in the sense of
not being aware of the patient’s true place and position, nor the qual-
ity of the transference, but rather to relentlessly pursue the therapist’s
intention, without considering the consequences. “Curiosity” refers to
privileging epistemophilic impulses instead of taking into account the
patient’s resistance to find her truth. Finally, “stupidity”, because to
practise both arrogance and curiosity at once and indiscriminately in
the sense previously stated, is absolutely stupid. Sometimes the ana-
lyst’s rigid attitude of maintaining the frame at any cost, regardless of
the patient’s need to exercise communication through incisive projec-
tive identifications, can represent an intolerant and arrogant attitude
towards the patient’s needs that has turned into a stupidity. It reminds
me of an expression I heard while in training: “My interpretation was
correct, but the patient didn’t come anymore!”

“Second topography” reconsidered: what is compulsively

repeated—instinctual satisfaction or pre-conceptual traumas?
In “Analysis terminable and interminable” Freud (1937) referred to a
similar phenomenon when he described a “libido adhesiveness” or a
resistance from the id, he believed to be a

… field of enquiry … still bewilderingly strange and insufficiently

explored. We come across people, for instance, to whom we should
be inclined to attribute a special “adhesiveness of libido” … We are,
it is true, prepared to find in analysis a certain amount of psychical
 T H E M A R K O F CA I N 27

inertias … We have called this behaviour, perhaps quite correctly,

“resistance from the Id”. But with these patients I have in mind, all
the mental processes, relationships and distributions of the force
are unchangeable, fixed and rigid. (pp. 241–242, my italics)

Freud borrowed his concept of the “id” (Ich) from Groddeck, a German
doctor who showed an interest in psychoanalysis. According to Bos
(1992), when Groddeck coined the term “It”, he meant to designate the
unidentifiable forces in the human body that apparently determine our
behaviour; it was, according to him,

… neither a psychic nor a physical force but something of both …

a force which lives us while we believe we are living … The actual force
that rules us, the “It”, erects our body, creates the physical look of
man. It gives us feet, hands, eyes, the colour of our eyes, the growth
of our hair, a small or a big heart, a healthy or an unhealthy stom-
ach and it shapes our nose—all these are creations of this peculiar
being: the It, man, God or whatever you may call it. (Bos, 1992,
pp. 433–434)

This is an idea apparently borrowed from Nietzsche’s (1909) Thus Spoke

Zarathustra, where he stated the following:

But the greater thing—which you don’t want to believe in—is your
body and its great intelligence: it does not say I, but does I. (p. 30)

Freud (1923) was familiar with Nietzsche’s statement and knew

Groddeck had borrowed from him, as stated in a footnote written in
“The ego and the id”:

Groddeck himself no doubt followed the example of Nietzsche, who

habitually used this grammatical term for whatever in our nature is
impersonal and, so to speak, subject to natural law. (p. 23, my italics)

Seen from the perspective of a “life that lives us, instead of feeling
that we live our life”, or a “body that does not say I, but does I”, such
description reminds us of the concept of “Tao” as described in orien-
tal philosophy.6 Freud, however, followed the more precise and scien-
tific model of “drives” and “instincts”, perhaps under the influence of
28 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

Darwin, instead of an elusive, almost religious configuration found in

oriental philosophy and even in Groddeck’s statement: “… the It, man,
God or whatever you may call it” (Bos, 1992, p. 434). At first Freud
completely identified das Es with the unconscious; later, however, he
thought the id was only part of the unconscious because other aspects,
such as the ego and the superego, were unconscious also.
The difficulty in using a model of the human mind based on Darwin,
as Freud did, pivots on the lack of discrimination between humans and
animals. We might be born with naked drives searching for satisfac-
tion, similarly to other animals, but immediately after birth, a realisation
is established with the proper object, say the breast, and the drive will
no longer remain divorced from that experience; in other words, from
the very beginning the instincts become attached to objects. Fairbairn
(1952) summarised this in his well known statement, that “libido
[aggression too] is object seeking” (p. 82). Different from what Freud
had established, Klein and her followers affirmed that instincts are not
entelechies that can exist free from experience and that can easily detach
themselves from the object in order to invest in the self (secondary nar-
cissism), but they are emotional incidents that remain firmly fastened
in “constant conjunction” to all objects of experience that remain stored
as memories. They are, as Bion stated, “pre-conceptions” or states of
expectation searching for realisations, like undigested facts that remain
amassed in the mind as “beta elements”. It is absolutely essential to
discriminate between “repetition compulsion” (Wiederholungszwang)
as an unconscious repetition of the Oedipus complex always modified
by pre-conceptual traumas (mark of Cain), and “instinctual impulse”
(Triebregung) as the expression of a primary, “endogenous impulse”
(Freud, 1915) or state of expectation, struggling for satisfaction.
However, it is not my intention to take up here a debate surrounding
the distinction between drives and instincts. I will finally speculate,
using Plato’s notion of “Forms”, that while Freud’s conception of drive
represents what Russell (1945, p. 121) referred as the “metaphysical”
side of Plato’s Form, “object relations” would point to the “logical”
side of the same theory.

Pleasure vs. reality principle or dreaming vs. being awake?

The dichotomy between reality and pleasure principles was empha-
sised by Freud in 1920 when dealing with the clinical contradiction
 T H E M A R K O F CA I N 29

between traumatic neuroses and the purpose of dreams, perceived as

“wish satisfaction”. Some of this controversy was timidly introduced
by Laplanche and Pontalis (1967) when they stated that

… it will be readily granted that the living organism is naturally

endowed with predispositions which treat pleasure as a guiding
principle, but that these are subordinated to adaptive behaviour and
functions. (1988, p. 325, my italics)

The dichotomy between pleasure and reality principles might be clear

during the first years of life, but it will not be so at a later age, once early
pre-conceptual traumas become well established and are acted out,
determining the individual’s idiosyncrasies. The phenomenology of the
original trauma will vary depending on the individual’s age; it might
not be as obvious in infancy, as it is cloaked by the particular character-
istics of childhood, but it will appear later on—depending on its inten-
sity and uniqueness—similar to a powerful emotional “tsunami” that
has been for many years unnoticed and then suddenly erupts. Bion was
critical of “primary and secondary process”, finding the theory “true
but weak” (1962, p. 54), because he thought that, due to the existence of
“alpha function” and the “contact-barrier”, the unconscious exercises
activities that could be identified with consciousness, and the opposite,
that consciousness presents behaviour compatible with dream activity.
Dreams during sleep are a product of alpha function (“dream-work α”);
but also when awake, if the conscious is dominated by the traumatised
(psychotic) part of the personality and alpha function is precluded, the
individual will be in a state of hallucinosis, where reality and phantasy
are not distinguished.
Using the “container–contained” model, Bion (1970) has subjected
the pleasure principle to mechanisms of projective and introjective
identification, such as the pleasure of incorporation, retention, or evac-
uation of accretion of stimuli (p. 29). He associated introjective identi-
fication and retention with remembering and the opposite, projective
identification and expulsion, with forgetting (p. 29). According to Bion,
it is possible that dreams can sometimes stand for a wish satisfaction,
but it will be something quite irrelevant, because the main purpose
of engineering a dream will be the attempt of unconscious alpha func-
tion (dream-work α) to metabolise lies (beta elements) that were not
properly dealt with by the conscious counterpart of alpha function in
30 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

order to produce truth (alpha elements). What opposes reality is not

satisfaction of drives, but a high level of frustration intolerance present
in the ego when unassisted by conscious alpha function, and whose
failure to deal with reality demands will usually trigger unresolved
stored emotions from pre-conceptual traumas. A dialectic interaction
is established between the actual situation that inundates the ego due
to low frustration tolerance and pre-conceptual traumas stored as beta
elements, similar to Freud’s theory of “signal anxiety”. The correla-
tion is not between pleasure and reality principles, but between “being
dreaming” or “being awake”, contingent on the existence of an alpha
function and contact barrier. I am considering “being dreaming” in a
sense similar to Plato’s description of the allegory of the Cave, whereby
one is driven by projections-introjections and distortion of facts, or lies,
because of poor frustration tolerance and terror of the violence of truth.
I will take up this subject in detail in Chapter Seven.

“The choice of neurosis”

The “choice of neurosis”, or why a form of psychopathology prevails
over another, was one of Freud’s early concerns, dating to the time of his
correspondence with Fliess. Laplanche and Pontalis (1967) have argued
about his use of the word “choice”, because it could imply an act of
volition instead of a fatalistic fact (p. 69). In his initial consideration in
1896, Freud postulated traumatic causes—but only of a sexual kind—as
the main reason for a choice of neurosis (or defences), discriminating
between “passive sexual experiences” that predisposed to hysteria, and
“active ones” that induced obsessive neurosis. Nearly ten years later,
following the particular psychosexual stages of development at the time
a trauma had occurred, he discarded this hypothesis and appropriately
considered the importance of “fixations” (1905a). However, at the time
Freud was bearing these questions in mind, he lacked the essential com-
prehension of the psyche he later acquired, which could have provided
him with a better understanding of why one form of defence prevailed
over another. First of all, he placed more emphasis on descriptive semi-
ology than on a more introspective metapsychological point of view.
Second, the same confusions present at the time of his investigation on
instinctive sexuality and “seduction theory”, were also reflected in his
search for the choice of neurosis. Finally, he looked for just one reason
instead of multifactorial causes. I would argue that different types of
 T H E M A R K O F CA I N 31

psychopathology are expressions of different forms of defence used by

the ego to deal with the continuous return of unconscious, repudiated,
and painful emotional memories or beta elements generated by pre-
conceptual traumas. There is a multifactorial aetiology involving sev-
eral causes, such as genetic predisposition, nature of the trauma itself,
the point of psychosexual fixation at the time of the trauma, cultural
background (psychopathology in the tropics is different from psycho-
pathology in northern countries), time, and evolution (conversion hys-
teria at the beginning of the 1900s had almost completely disappeared
from developed industrialised cultures). All of this conglomerate of
fatalistically enmeshed variables determining the specific idiosyncrasy
of any individual represents what I am now introducing as “the mark
of Cain”.

On tropism
There is a difference in how the mind, dominated either by the trau-
matised or the non-traumatised states, interacts with reality. The non-
traumatised is capable of being aware of reality independence and
limitations, while the traumatised intends continuously to reproduce
the original traumatic situation, as if driven by an established script,
like a moth in search of the light.
In an undated quote found in his book Cogitations (1992, p. 34), Bion
referred to “tropisms” as powerful forms of communication or pro-
jective identifications that require an object (a breast, or the analyst)
capable of containing them. He said:

The tropism may be communicated. In certain circumstances they

are too powerful for the modes of communication available to the
personality. This, presumably, may be because the personality is too
weak or ill-developed if the traumatic situation arrives prematurely.
But when this situation does arise, all the future development of
the personality depends on whether an object, the breast, exists into
which the tropism can be projected. (p. 34, my italics)

Bion was referring to attitudes or demeanours present in the transfer-

ence during the analysis, which were the consequence of early traumas
that had taken place when the patient was an infant and had lacked a
mother competent enough to adequately metabolise his anxiety. The
32 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

patient requires the presence of an analyst receptive enough to allow

the tropism to be projected, but when such a condition is not provided,
the “essential” transference reaction could be of “aggressiveness and
hate”.
Let’s explore some clinical material. A young man presented two dif-
ferent forms of behaviour. He would ramble on, describing situations
related to his parents, school, friends, or patients from the place where
he worked; he was very lively, with good humour and often laughing
and turning around to look at me, as if wishing for me to engage. Other
times he would go silent and become very angry if I interrupted to make
any interpretation. I experienced his anger in the countertransference,
as I remained silent and heard him rambling on and laughing while I
felt completely left out, useless and bored. His mother abandoned his
father when he was approximately four years of age, and sometime
later, when he was six, his father remarried and eventually had a baby
girl. He experienced intense feelings of jealousy towards this sibling,
which are still acted out. There was the idea, in his family as well as
in him, that in comparison to him, she was a “true child”, because his
stepmother was her mother while he had lost his. There was the feeling
that his mother had deserted him. I felt his rambling conversation was a
need to maintain a kind of relationship with his mother before she had
left, when he felt in complete control of her presence, feeling that he
was there with her, playing and laughing. At the same time, there was
also a secret split element, an angry and murderous desire against her
and immense envy towards his father and stepmother. He remembered
that as a small child he spent long hours by himself playing with his
toys.
In the transference, I was the mother he idealised and wished to keep,
to be there for him only, without a life of her own, like an inanimate doll
over which he could exert absolute control. If I said something, he felt
threatened that I could become the animate (alive) mother capable of
“deserting” him, something that elicited terror and narcissistic rage as
a form of defence. This attitude coloured his life, profession, and choice
of friends; it was his “mark of Cain”, his tropism that impelled him to
move forward in search of an object willing to become an unthreatening
“inanimate doll” (dead) to accompany his misery. It was a continuous
attempt to recover what he had lost once his mother had disappeared,
his father had remarried, and his sister was born. As stated by Bion,
it was absolutely indispensable to allow this particular aspect of his
 T H E M A R K O F CA I N 33

transference to be expressed, and for the analyst to become the “lost

breast” capable of containing the intensity of his projective identifica-
tion and the penumbra of emotions induced by it.
Possibly following his notion of “basic assumptions” observed in
group psychology, Bion classified tropism according to three differ-
ent forms of unconscious intentions as present in the transference: i) to
murder or be murdered (like the patient I have just referred to above);
ii) a parasite or a host; iii) to become an object to create or by which to
be created. According to Bion,

… the action appropriate to the tropisms in the patient who comes

for treatment is a seeking for an object with which projective iden-
tification is possible. This is due to the fact that in such a patient the
tropism of creation is stronger than the tropism of murder. (1992,
p. 35)

In conclusion, “tropisms” represent an unconscious manifestation of

behaviours that have been determined by the specificity of the particu-
lar pre-conceptual trauma experienced by any individual, or in other
words, the mark of Cain.
CHAPTER THREE

The conceptualisation of pre-conceptual

traumas

True freedom consists in aligning ones Goal with Nature’s will.

—López-Corvo

He [Jesus] complained when his disciples were not stupid enough

to be simple.

—Wilfred Bion,
A Memoir of the Future

Short history of trauma

I once said to a patient that he was “kidnapped by childhood emotions”,
referring to compulsive transference reverberations from his own
infantile trauma. He then wittily responded: “You mean adultnapped?”
Psychic trauma is at the centre of all forms of psychopathology, some-
thing therapists should, as a rule, keep in mind in order to research the
profile of the trauma as soon as circumstances might allow. It is through
such discovery that meaningful interpretations capable of maintaining
the patient’s interest, will hinge.
Bion (1967) suggested that Freud’s comparison between psychoa-
nalysis and an archaeological investigation
35
36 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

… was helpful if it were considered that we were exposing

evidence not so much of a primitive civilization as of a primitive
disaster. The value of the analogy is lessened because in the analy-
sis we are confronted no so much with a static situation that per-
mits leisurely study, but with a catastrophe that remains at one and the
same moment actively vital and yet incapable of resolution into quiescence.
(p. 101, my italics)

As far as I know, Bion did not pursue further the notion implicit in
this statement, in order to declare “traumas” as the centre in any form
of psychopathology. Grotstein (2007), however, has stated that if Bion
were “alive today, he would no doubt” see the relevance of traumatic
disorders (p. 154), instead of leaving it implicit, as pre-conceptions in
search of a mind to contain them. Similar to Winnicott’s model of the
“good enough mother”, Bion (1962, 1974) refers to the intuitive or rev-
erie capacity of the mother to contain her child’s language of action.
Bion associates the reverie only with feelings of love and hate from
the child, and believes it to be a factor of the mother’s alpha function,
which permits a total reception of any projective identification com-
ing from the baby regardless of it being felt as a good or bad object
(López-Corvo, 2003). There are, however, some brutal pre-conceptual
traumas, which, due to the violence involved, make it absolutely
impossible for any mother to metabolise and contain the immensity
of the event in order to prevent a temporary occurrence changing into
a permanent one. In other words, instead of the mother being able
to contain the violence, the violence will contain the mother as well
as the child, like a kind of “hyper-container” (Ferro, 2009). Following
the existing literature on trauma, we could theoretically regard two
extreme forms of trauma: a) the “hyper-container” that due to its mag-
nitude will always exceed any ego’s capacity to tolerate frustration;
b) the kind of trauma we could associate with Khan’s (1963) notion of
“cumulative trauma”, which is obviously related to frustration intol-
erance or failure of the maternal reverie. The first form of trauma is
considered by descriptive psychology as the true trauma capable of
inducing “post traumatic stress disorder” (PTSD); the second form is
seldom cogitated.
I find what Freud stated in 1920 very useful to understand what I am
now expressing:
 T H E C O N C E P T U A L I S AT I O N O F P R E - C O N C E P T U A L T R A U M A S 37

We describe as “traumatic” any excitations from outside which are

powerful enough to break through the protective shield. It seems to
me that the concept of trauma necessarily implies a connection of
this kind with a breach in an otherwise efficacious barrier against
stimuli. (p. 29)

Even more, because of the particular nature of these traumas, the child
will always sense that his parents were important accomplices in their
“implementation”,1 inducing a sense of “absolute void”, which I con-
sider the core of all traumas, meaning powerful feelings of terror, hope-
lessness, and, as Freud (1926) stated, of total “helplessness”:

A danger situation is a recognized, remembered, expected situation

of helplessness. Anxiety is the original reaction to helplessness in
the trauma and is reproduced later on in the danger-situation as a
signal for help. (pp. 166–167)

Obviously caught in his time and culture, Freud was unable to reach
a comfortable position from which to perceive the discrimination
between outside events considered as real and traumatic and inner
oedipal pressures considered neurotic. The weight of Victorian
repressed sexuality at that time was far too imposing. Similar to what
happened with concepts such as the “death instinct” or “secondary
narcissism”, we were left as orphans struggling to make some sense
and to find a more reasonable understanding of trauma. Freud’s ini-
tial “seduction theory”, gathered from observations made on patients
at the end of the 1800s, was built on the belief that all neuroses were
the consequence of paternal sexual abuse. This supposition did not
last long, as Freud soon started to observe that his generalisation
was defective. After discovering the relevance of childhood sexuality
at the beginning of 1900, Freud turned 360 degrees, giving up com-
pletely the importance of external seduction and concentrating totally
on inner sources of anxiety linked to instinctive sexual desires related
to the Oedipus complex. It was not until 1918, at the end of World
War I, that aggression and traumatic neurosis appeared and the ques-
tion of nature and nurture emerged again. Nonetheless, the confu-
sion remained. In 1926, in “Inhibition, symptoms and anxiety”, Freud
stated that,
38 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

A real danger is a danger which threatens a person from an external

object, and a neurotic danger is one which threatens him from an
instinctual demand. (p. 167)

By discriminating between outer and inner realities, Freud had

deprived the mind of a diachronic sense, conceiving the presence of
instincts as something completely alien to any historical becoming, as
a sort of entelechy. Several issues interfered also with Freud being able
to provide trauma with a predominant role in the aetiology of men-
tal suffering and anxiety as we might recognise it today. In the first
place, he privileged anxiety over trauma and used the latter in order to
understand the former, instead of the other way around. In the second
place, possibly influenced by his patients’ psychopathology as well as
the physics of the “steam engine”, Freud provided the unconscious
and the id with energy and drive that do not seem to be present in the
human mind.2 He absolutely believed that sexuality first, and aggres-
sion later on, were traumatic just for the fact of being embedded in the
human mind, and not that they became traumatic as a consequence of
the environment. It was not because of “outside seduction” only, nor
because of “inner polymorphous perversions”, but as the consequence
of constant mutual interaction. At that time, possibly influenced by
Darwin (Meltzer, 1984), he was centred on drive theory, on the power
of the id, and on sexuality making its way through the vicissitudes of
the Oedipus complex, then considered the main “internal” source of
psychopathology; external traumas were of less interest. Today, sexual
restraints have lost their grip and the relevance they possessed during
the Victorian era. Sexuality is much less repudiated, more relaxed, and
this has had major repercussions in society and culture, as we can see,
for instance, in the disappearance of “conversion hysteria” from books
on psychopathology.
It was Ferenczi (1933, 1933a) who made the most outstanding contri-
butions to the relevance of traumas in psychopathology. He introduced
concepts still quite germane today, such as the incapacity of a child’s
rudimentary mind to register events taking place at an early age, as well
as the presence of mechanisms of minute splitting or “atomisation”.
However, in his attempt to deal with these clinical findings he moved
to grounds that were already quite at odds with established psychoana-
lytic techniques, such as relaxation and catharsis, and he also encour-
aged other procedures such as changing roles with his patients, inducing
 T H E C O N C E P T U A L I S AT I O N O F P R E - C O N C E P T U A L T R A U M A S 39

regression and states of trance. There was a considerable discrepancy

between his significant clinical enlightenment about trauma and his
destructive attack on psychoanalysis, a condition we could interpret
today as an expression of “self-envy” mechanisms (López-Corvo, 1992,
1995, 1999). It did not take long for Freud (1933) to react with strong
critical remarks that compelled their long-standing close friendship to
wither. On 2 October 1932, eight months before Ferenczi died, Freud
wrote to him:

I no longer believe that you will correct yourself as … For a couple

of years you have systematically turned away from me … Objec-
tively I think I could point out to you the technical errors in your
conclusions, but why do so? I am convinced you would not be
accessible to any doubts. (p. xvii)

It is obvious that when Freud said “I corrected myself a generation ago”

he was referring to the first steps of psychoanalysis, the time of hypno-
sis and “seduction theory”, that not only he had abandoned; it also left
him unable to see the importance of trauma as Ferenczi, and follow-
ers like Balint (1969) did. For others, such as Bokanowski (1996) and
Dupont (1994, 1998), Ferenczi was then still struggling with significant
ambivalent feelings regarding psychoanalysis, a consequence of unre-
solved transference neurosis from his analysis with Freud.
It is quite probable that Freud had abandoned his “seduction theory”
because conceiving neurosis as the sole consequence of the father’s
sexual abuse was far too reductionist, and possibly also, as Masson
(1984) suggested, because of an aversion towards the very nasty fiasco
experienced with the case of Emma Eckstein,3 and difficulties in his
friendship at that time with Fliess, who might well be regarded as a
borderline psychotic. We could also speculate further and imagine that
later he lacked the time and/or the interest to consider a blending of
“traumatic experience”—including sexual abuse—and the Oedipus
complex. I do not believe that what forced Freud to change his the-
ory was because he feared the establishment, as Masson has stated,
because if that had been the case, why did he not return to the trau-
matic aetiology once the psychoanalytic movement had build up a
solid reputation?
Miller (1990) on the other hand, criticised Freud ‘s stubbornness in
maintaining the primacy of the Oedipus complex over the “seduction
40 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

theory” and attempted to find a solution outside psychoanalysis.

Although I agree with many aspects of what Masson and Miller have
expressed, I believe the answer to Freud’s omissions can be found
within psychoanalytic theory, just as Klein, Bion, Meltzer, and many
others, have been able to find answers to other questions using psy-
choanalytic methodology. The difference between Freud’s emphasis
on the Oedipus complex as an expression of the id’s unsatisfied drives
and the determining emotional effects of pre-conceptual traumas, can
be resolved if we consider that the Oedipus complex in all of us has
always been modified according to our individual trauma, something I
consider in the next chapter as “the Cain complex”.

Of all things, the measure is man

What exactly takes place in the outside reality at the time of any trau-
matic experience is of no concern to the psychoanalyst. Implicit in Bion’s
psychoanalytic model is a rather anthropocentric disposition, similar to
Protagoras’ conception of the mind as representing the “measure of all
things”. Abel (1976), for instance, referring to the Greek philosopher,
states:

Any attempt to say how things really are, or what objectively exists,
requires a set of concepts (or terms, or symbols); and these concepts
are not dictated unequivocally by “the facts.” Indeed, to refer to
“the facts” or “the given” as if it were obvious just what is given
to us as fact is to disregard how the idiosyncrasies of human sen-
sation, perceptions, and cognition select and shape “the facts.” …
Can we assert that logic and mathematics, at least, are independent
of human conceptualization, eternally subsistent in their crystalline
purity? (p. xxii)

For Bion (1965), reality cannot be known but intuited:

The belief that reality is or could be known is mistaken because

reality is not something which lends itself to being known. It is
impossible to know reality for the same reason that makes it impos-
sible to sing potatoes; they may be grown, or pulled, or eaten, but
not sung. Reality has to be “been”: there should be a transitive verb
“to be” expressly for use with the term “reality” … The point at
 T H E C O N C E P T U A L I S AT I O N O F P R E - C O N C E P T U A L T R A U M A S 41

issue is how to pass from “knowing” “phenomena” to “being” that

which is “real”. (p. 148)

In other words, human beings will not be able to remove themselves

from the limit and reductionism of their own humanity. In relation to
traumas, for instance, there are still many analysts who insist on view-
ing the facts from the side of “pure” veracity, of how a specific real-
ity took place, instead of using binocular vision and looking at reality
through the eyes of the patient, within the kernel of “pure” transfer-
ence. From a practical point of view, exactly what happened is of less
importance than what the person bore witness to and seems to be deal-
ing with at the present time. Traumas must be investigated intuitively
and backwards, like peeling an onion, subsequently reconstructing
from the patient’s present—as it is conjectured from the transference-
countertransference dimension—and moving to the time when the
trauma was experienced and progressively structured in the mind.
However, we should always proceed using “binocular vision”, as Bion
advised, looking into the past without ever losing sight of what is tak-
ing place in the “here and now”.
The purpose, in other words, would be to use transference and
countertransference in order to recreate, as closely as possible, how
the pre-conceptual trauma was perceived in the child’s mind. All pre-
conceptual traumas present a toxic gradation that spreads from a core
of concentrated intensity and expands towards more secondary conse-
quences as a penumbra of emotions. A woman who had a brother two
years younger and whose parents divorced when she was three, often
had “disgusting dreams” in which her brother was eating from a bath-
room’s “dirty floor”. Obviously, she had experienced these significant
traumatic experiences of her parent’s divorce at the time she had been
dealing with her sphincter education.
The purpose of reconstruction is to supply the ego with substance
enough to build a reasonable understanding of how the facts actu-
ally occurred. Reconstruction helps the patient perceive the traumatic
events he experienced as a child, through the eyes of the adult he is in
the present. It also provides the ego with sufficient rights, power, and
resistance to rebel against and fight back the superego’s irrational dom-
ination induced by the tyrannical presence of absent objects. In other
words, to be able to contain the emotions that surrounds the traumatic
event, instead of being contained by them.
42 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

Pre-conceptions
Bion hyphenated the word with the purpose of stressing that he was
referring to something that precedes a “conception”, analogous to
Kant’s notion of “empty thoughts”, or

… a desire in demand of a realization … a state of expectation com-

parable with the supposition that the baby has an innate or a pri-
ori disposition towards the breast; in other words, when the baby
(pre-conception) gets in touch with the breast, a realization takes
place, that is translated into a conception and represents for Bion
a kind of container–contained relationship. (López-Corvo, 2003,
pp. 216–217)

Bion did not expand on this idea as related to drive and impulses, but
we can intuit from these statements that his approach was in some ways
Protagorian, because drives in humans do not operate in a void totally
divorced from the mind and the particular historical events that have
conjoined them. We never deal with naked instincts, as might perhaps
happen with animals, but with specific “object relations” individu-
ally conjoined and stored in our memories, on the wait for a mind—or
alpha function—capable of containing and deciphering them. “Oedipal
desires” and “outside traumas” can never be differentiated one from
the other, as Freud led us to believe. They are always diachronically
intermingled and stored as “pre-conceptions” in search of a realisation.
They have been established by “chance”, according to a particular syn-
chronicity, and, subsequently, “compulsively” repeated, reminding us
of Jacques Monod’s (1971) well known expression of “chance and neces-
sity”. With this statement I am implying not only, as Freud once stated,
that the Oedipus complex remains at the centre of all psychopathology,
but also, that all possible forms of existing psychopathology we deal
with in the consulting room are always the immediate consequence of
childhood traumas.
Pre-conceptual traumas represent a state of continuous expecta-
tion in search of a realisation—like a moth in search of a light—that act
as a selected fact capable of organising and providing meaning to an
individual’s life (the mark of Cain). They are similar to Plato’s ideas of
Form, representing the idea of “something” that exists independently,
like a noumenon that will acquire the status of phenomenon—within
 T H E C O N C E P T U A L I S AT I O N O F P R E - C O N C E P T U A L T R A U M A S 43

the consulting room—by means of the transference-countertransference

interaction, as well as by the analyst’s alpha function or dream thoughts
capable of transforming O into +K. They are, quoting Bion (1992), an
“indigested fact … [that] has not been dreamed; [that] … has not been
transformed by α” (p. 64).
Plato’s “theory of forms” (ω ρομ) contains two sides that we can
describe as metaphysical and logic (Russell, 1945, p. 121). The former side
refers to the existence of a type or sort of “something” produced by
nature (or God) that pre-exists in the mind independently if any kind
of that particular “something” exists. For instance, if someone were to
say that they had seen an animal of around a metre high, with four legs
and a tail that barks, it is quite possible that anybody would conclude
that it was a “dog”, even if that person has never seen the animal. It is
like a sort of ideal form where all existing dogs can be contained, like
some kind of universal “doggyness”. This character is not born when a
particular dog is born, and does not die when it dies. “In fact, it has no
position in space or time; it is eternal” (Russell, ibid., pp. 121–122). The
idea of a dog does not have a sensory form, although this is a possibility
present in any dog, but only one dog in particular, for example, “dog
X”, could change into a “phenomenon” and become recognisable by
the senses as “dog X”, something that will represent a realisation of the
ideal form (metaphysical side) into the shape of any particular dog (logic
side) that belongs to a particular individual that will live and die. Bion
uses this notion to explain the transformation of “O” into “K”, or from
noumenon to phenomenon, by means of a realisation. In a similar way,
a pre-conception could be conjured up by the senses as a possibility
within an individual, but could only be formulated once it was touched
by a special event, a realisation, and changed into a concept. Similarly,
I conceive the existence of two sides to pre-conceptual traumas, one
related to the fact that every human being will be eventually marked by
a given fact, representing the “metaphysical side”; however, once that
fact takes place and becomes the permanent traumatic experience of a
particular individual, it will then repeat forever, representing the logic
side of Plato’s theory.
I think that the original split into two breasts, good and bad (Klein’s
1975), represents a temporary position, where the split can be resolved
and integration obtained. This, in turn, gives way to a total object and a
shift to the depressive position. When reverie fails and the split is incre-
mented to the extreme, it will then reach the level of four breasts: good,
44 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

bad, good-idealised, and bad-persecutory. Once the object reaches this

level of fragmentation, the correlation established between the extreme
splits (good-idealised vs. bad-persecutory) becomes a rigid and perma-
nent position that structures the phenomenology of the pre-conceptual
trauma, and progression towards the depressive position fails. In conse-
quence, of the “four breasts” described by Klein, only the “good-breast”
is real, the other three (“bad-breast”, “good-idealised breast”, and “bad-
persecutory-breast”) are just absences or shadows of the good one.
I believe the correlation between the third and fourth breast—idealised
and persecutory—embodies the matrix of all pre-conceptual traumas.
This fact, being universal, will represent the metaphysical side of Plato’s
theory of “Form”. However, once the trauma consolidates as a perma-
nent fact in the mind of a particular individual, the specific realisation
that takes place will correspond to the logic side in Plato’s theory. After
structuring, pre-conceptions will continuously mutate as the individual
grows, following specific realisations or experiences that generate other
forms or phenomena, according to a mechanism I have referred to as
“homeomorphic symbolisation”, similar to Bion’s notion of “transfor-
mation in rigid movement” (1965).
With time, the trauma consolidates itself as the internal presence of
an absence or a “traumatic object” that will be constantly repudiated
from consciousness—when frustration is not well tolerated—due to the
penumbra of extremely painful affects associated with it. It will remain
active for two main reasons: i) a fundamental incapacity to make use of
symbolisation in order to break away from domination by the internal
parents; ii) a circular and perpetual “bivalent” mechanism—known, since
Freud, as repetition compulsion—engineered by the emotional duality
present in part objects, something I will be investigating in detail as the
“bivalent part object” in Chapter Eleven. Traumatic events consolidate
as primitive, cruel, threatening, and castrating pre-conceptions that will
always substantiate the basis of primitive superego elements, capable of
exercising a powerful and tyrannical control over a subjugated ego. It
means, in other words, that the superego is not heir to the Oedipus com-
plex only, as Freud once stated, but to an Oedipus complex that has been
chiselled and designed by the erosion from early childhood traumas.

The dinosaur’s footprints

Pre-conceptual traumas represent “living fossils” similar to dinosaurs’
footprints left impressed in limestone for the last 180 million years4
 T H E C O N C E P T U A L I S AT I O N O F P R E - C O N C E P T U A L T R A U M A S 45

(López-Corvo, 2006). Footprints could have occurred on any day when

the dinosaur ventured forth to quench its thirst on an already dried
lakebed. But on this particular day a series of variables—such as the
weight of the animal, the quality of the sand or mud, the weather condi-
tions, temperature, humidity and so on—conjoined at one moment to
preserve the footsteps for eternity. Trauma represents the capacity for
a temporal fact to break the silence of a natural becoming and acquire
permanency, trapping the self and compulsively reverberating forever.
Low frustration tolerance will induce the ruling of the pleasure princi-
ple over the reality principle, also provoking the continuous projection
of traumatic memories together with the mind that contains them. Such
a mechanism can create a loop in which traumas from the past will con-
stantly return and always be projected, in a circularity that “contains”
the mind like a time trap, making it impossible for traumatic experi-
ences to be dissipated or contained by the non-traumatised part. I will
be referring further to this mechanism in Chapter Eleven.
For all natural entities life can evolve noiselessly, like a wheel run-
ning on a track touching only one point, resting on one instant, the
present, the reality, while incessantly flowing from the fleeting past
towards the unknown future. However, such a silent flow can be inter-
rupted by a fact capable of exceeding the natural surge and producing
turbulence—in Bion’s sense5—leaving an imprint that becomes particu-
lar. It breaks Freud’s “protective shield” and cannot be contained by
the maternal reverie, so inflames the self forever. It may change into
a substance for dreams, phantasies, transference, countertransference,
projective identification, or wild thoughts searching for a thinker who
will contain them by revealing their history and eventually providing
them with a meaning. I define psychic traumas as the pre-conception
resulting from a transient absence changing into a permanent one that will
remain constantly conjoined6 and structured as an unconscious emo-
tional narrative.

The thousand faces of the “traumatic object”

In Greek mythology Proteus is a sea-god capable of foretelling the
future, something he always evaded by becoming invisible, being able
to transform himself into any given form; however, once pinned down
he would answer any question.7 I believe that, similar to other scenar-
ios created by the ingenious minds of the Greeks, Proteus represents
the multiplication and metaphorical transformation of the fragmented
46 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

trauma that incessantly recurs ad infinitum. The most relevant defence

mechanism displayed by children in the face of mental pain, is to split
the fact and to project it outside in order to free them from it. But in
this manner, in the future, the fragments can be met ubiquitously, from
where they will exercise their threat by inducing persecutory and pho-
bic anxieties (“panic attacks”).
All pre-conceptual traumas are structured as complex, active, and
powerful internal objects, with identifications in both the ego and the
superego. There are universal complications that I will try now to sum-
marise, some of which had been referred to by Bion (1967) when dis-
cussing psychotic psychopathology. I would like to emphasise that I
am referring to early or pre-conceptual traumas that took place at a
time when there did not exist a mind capable of containing the vio-
lence present in the act, either because the child was too young, the
mother incapable of metabolising properly the forces of the trauma, or
the trauma itself was too violent and un-containable.

i. The ego reacts in the first place, by minutely splitting the trauma
and continuously projecting it everywhere and in all directions.
Perhaps a clinical example could add clarity to this mechanism.
An adolescent patient who was raised by very rigid and religious
parents and who was starting to rebel against their sometimes
unfair authority, brought the following dream: His dog was hungry
and he was trying to find food. He opened the kitchen cabinets and all that
he could see were alligators and salamanders, and when he opened the
refrigerator it was full of alligators too. Finally he found the dog food and
then realised that even there, inside the dog’s bowl, were tiny alligators.
In his associations he explained that during the past weekend he
had broken up with his girlfriend because there was the feeling
that, since she belonged to a different religion, his parents were not
going to approve of the relationship; however, he did not feel happy
about breaking up. He also remembered that the previous year he
had gone with his family to visit Miami’s Everglades, where they
saw many alligators. It was there, for the first time, that he had a
heated argument with his parents, accusing them over and over
of being too rigid and manipulative. I thought he was ambivalent
about coming to therapy because he could have been feeling that
therapy was inducing him to protest against his parents, which
made him feel guilty. I said that it seemed he felt trapped because
 T H E C O N C E P T U A L I S AT I O N O F P R E - C O N C E P T U A L T R A U M A S 47

he could not find a neutral ground, like the right food to feed the
dog, feeling angry if he complied or guilty if he rebelled, that he
had split this “primitive” mechanism and projected it everywhere,
like the alligators in his dream.

The projection or atomisation of pre-conceptual traumas can reach such

a power of density and distension that the individual lives completely
submerged in a world of his own, without being aware. A man who
was placed with a foster family for one year at the age of three, and
who was often assaulted by bouts of unexplainable depression and a
sense of absolute hopelessness, became aware that he had remained
all his life in a state of “waiting” for his mother to appear and rescue
him. Whenever he experienced that possibility he felt hopeful and
content, but very bored and unsatisfied whenever he felt abandoned
and excluded. His life was like an ongoing nightmare of projective and
introjective identifications, between inclusion or exclusion and nothing
else. In The Republic, Plato referred to the “Allegory of the Cave”, where
he described a specific condition where all men find themselves living
in a state where things as they are perceived by the senses might not
be exactly what they are, and that the real world could only be appre-
hended intellectually. Bion emphasised this interpretation of Plato’s
parable when he stated that

Plato thought that “things”, as we call them, and people are really
a kind of precipitation of the “Forms” … [Or] the “noumena”, were
not understandable. Plato seemed to think that the Socratic Greeks
might at least understand the parable of the cave. But between then
and now many hundreds of people have tried, oh, “ever so hard”,
to understand what it means. (1991, p. 47)

If we believe that Plato had really attempted, 2400 years ago, to provide
an understanding of how pre-conceptual traumas are capable of exer-
cising an unconscious control and containment of any thinking mind,
it could be argued, that perhaps he—or Socrates—had provided the
first meaningful intuitive achievement yet to be accomplished by any
human mind. In Book VII of The Republic Plato says the following:

… let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or

unenlightened: Behold! Human beings living in an underground
48 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

den, which has a mouth, open towards the light [reality] … here,
they have been from their childhood and have their legs and necks
chained so that they cannot move … and they are strange prison-
ers. Like ourselves [everybody], I replied; and they see only their
own shadows, or the shadows of one another … To them, I said, the
truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images.

ii. There will be also a projection of the mind that contains these
split particles. For instance, in what are now referred to as
“panic attacks”, the fear is not so much about some “terrorising
element” that has been projected, but about the void left in the
psyche by the part of the mind that has also been projected and
which could have been capable of containing the “terrorising
element”. In other words, the part of the mind absolutely
necessary to contain the projected “terrorising element”, once
it is introjected, is missing—a condition responsible for the
prognosis or capacity to change from a pathological to a less
conflictive form of paranoid-schizoid dynamics. In other words,
the lack of discrimination between reality and projection, as a
consequence of a failure in the conscious form of alpha function,
will induce a form of psychotic confusion similar to what Plato
described in his “Allegory of the Cave”, as I have just stated;
in simple terms, it will be like saying that very often “a cigar
is not a cigar”. A psychotherapist in his third year of analysis
was rather keen and productive about investigating his own
patients, but when we touched a hard issue concerning his own
difficulties he would usually remain silent or answer in a rather
childish manner: “I don’t know”, as if there was a mind ready
to investigate the others, but there was none to explore himself.
By saying “I don’t know”, he was expecting me to use my mind.
This results in three complications: a) there is no mind, or alpha
function, to contain the pre-conceptual beta elements structuring
the trauma; b) the patient turns to the analyst’s mind, but fears
such dependency; and c) there is a terror about the re-introjection
of what has been projected, something Bion has referred to as
“projective identification in reverse”:

… these objects which are felt to have been expelled by projective

identification become infinitely worse after expulsion than they
 T H E C O N C E P T U A L I S AT I O N O F P R E - C O N C E P T U A L T R A U M A S 49

were originally expelled, the patient feels intruded upon, assaulted,

and tortured by this re-entry even if willed by him. (Bion, 1967,
pp. 62–63)

Some questions often asked by patients can be useful in detecting the

sense of a “missing mind”: for instance, the feeling that the patient is
coming to please the analyst, or brings material like dreams because
the analyst has that kind of interest, or the feeling that the analyst is the
only one who knows, something Lacan has described as the “place of
supposed knowledge”. It is this minute splitting, together with the pro-
jection of the mind containing them, that makes it difficult to achieve
any process of reconstruction during therapy. Bion (1967) in relation to
this issue stated:

As a result of these splitting attacks, all those features of the per-

sonality which should one day provide the foundation for intuitive
understanding of himself and others are jeopardized at the outset.
(p. 47)

iii. Low frustration tolerance will induce a powerful repudiation of

external reality, allowing phantasy to prevail over reality, and
allowing the patient to exercise the omnipotent belief that he has
absolute control over any threatening surprise manufactured by
reality. Reality, after all, carries an overpowering “will” of its own.
The attack on reality is often carried out by attacks on linking, such
as, for instance, the pathology observed in mechanisms of “self-
envy” (López-Corvo, 1992, 1995, 1997), or in psychosis, as stated
by Bion (1967). Psychotic patients find in the magic present, in
their delusional system, an “effective provider”, more powerful
than the therapist’s “meagre” attempt to face reality.
iv. The trauma is structured as a powerful internal object that
continuously exercises a cruel and dictatorial domination over
the self, as I have previously described (López-Corvo, 2006), and
something I will be exploring further in Chapter Five.
v. All traumas represent absences that continuously reverberate
out of time and space, becoming tyrannical presences.8 Any
situation capable of becoming permanent, and of repeating itself
compulsively, represents a tyrannical presence of absences, material
for dreams, substance for projective identification, and the stuff
50 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

of transference-countertransference dimensions. In other words, it

represents, following Bion, “a memoir of the future”.

Pre-conceptual traumas rob the mind of the possibility of achieving

mental growth, of changing from the magical thinking dominated by
omnipotent defences used by children, to the logics of adult thinking
based on inductive and deductive systems.9 Traumas hinder the mind’s
capacity to grow and acquire a sensible notion of a reality structured
with total objects and depressive hope (López-Corvo, 1995). Such trau-
mas also hinder the discrimination between inner and outer realities;
the conceptualisation of time as a progressive magnitude that differ-
entiates between a nonexistent past, a real present, and a nonexistent
future; and, finally, the use of intuition as a special form of communi-
cation. Pre-conceptual traumas are like mental parasites that feed on
time and space and inhibit the function of symbolisation, among other
things.
There are several meaningful variables often present in the configu-
ration of pre-conceptual traumas, such as birth order, the gender of
the patient and his or her siblings, age difference between them, cul-
ture, parental disposition, and so on. For instance, a male adolescent
who consulted because of serious suicidal rumination was the mid-
dle child and the second boy followed by a girl. Both parents were
successful hard-working professionals. The older boy became the
mother’s favourite while the younger daughter was privileged by the
father. The sense of desolation, resentment, loneliness, hopelessness,
and lack of awareness about what was taking place, was so pathetic
that my first interpretation, made once I had a hint of the profile of
his trauma, was to say that “unfortunately, the main problem was not
so much that he fell into the crack, but that nobody had noticed it”.
Another adolescent, also with suicidal ruminations after a girlfriend
had abandoned him, was the third of four boys, with about two years
of difference between each of them, with the exception of the young-
est who was six years different and still a little one. The older brother
was heavily into marijuana and the second, previous to the patient,
was seriously ill with a genetic disturbance. I gathered, from previous
experiences, that the older boy was a “claustrum” child,10 meaning
someone that used marijuana in order to fulfil his mother’s narcissistic
fault by providing her with a phallus in the form of an eternal child.
 T H E C O N C E P T U A L I S AT I O N O F P R E - C O N C E P T U A L T R A U M A S 51

The second boy was so ill that he required his mother’s continuous
attention, a condition that resulted in constant and severe neglect
towards my patient. Obviously, because he was unable to evoke these
extremely painful repudiated emotions, he could not remember them
and was not able to associate his present girlfriend’s desertion with his
mother’s serious neglect.

Reversal of alpha function

The preconscious can display different reactions towards unconscious
contents, depending on which elements dominate its structure, either
a “contact-barrier”11 formed by alpha elements, or a “screen of beta
elements”.12 Obviously, the psychoanalyst’s mind should be dominated
by a “contact-barrier” that will allow a friendly reception of the truth
portrayed by the analysand’s unconscious and to exercise reverie and
containment to the projective identifications present in the transfer-
ence. Beta elements dominate the traumatised (psychotic) part, while
the non-traumatised (non-psychotic part) is subject to alpha function
and alpha elements. In order to follow the implications of these mental
constructs, we could conceive what takes place between the preconscious
and the unconscious—depending on which elements contain what—as
similar to what happens between the mother and her child, or ana-
lysts and their patients. If the mind of the mother—or the analyst—is
contained by the non-traumatised part, she will be able to contain and
metabolise her child’s rudimentary language of action, and return it
to the child already digested by her “contact barrier”. However, if her
mind is contained by the traumatised part of her personality—or a “beta
screen”—then she might treat her child as inanimate, narcissistically
identify him with absent elements she has projected, and treat the child
like an extension of herself. A similar interaction can also take place
between the truth portrayed by the unconscious and the kind of recep-
tivity that truth might have from the preconscious, contingent on the
type of elements (alpha or beta) dominating its structure. Analysts will
also require the use of their alpha function to contain their patient’s
language of action, digest it, and provide an interpretation outlining the
patient’s particular truth.
In a rather obscure passage, Bion stated that the “screen of beta ele-
ments” is formed by a “reversal of alpha function”, where alpha elements
52 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

“self-digest” themselves, resulting, as a consequence, in a dispersion of

these elements and the formation of a “beta-screen”. He said:

Instead of sense impressions being changed into alpha-elements

to be used in dream thoughts and unconscious waking thinking,
the development of the contact-barrier is replaced by its destruc-
tion. This is effected by the reversal of alpha-function so that the
contact-barrier and the dream thoughts and unconscious waking
thinking which are the texture of the contact-barrier are turned into
alpha-elements, divested of all characteristics that separate them
from beta-elements and are then projected thus forming the beta-
screen. (1962, p. 25)13

Possibly Bion was attempting to provide a meaning to the kind of mech-

anism that might control the mind when different clinical changes take
place, For instance, when the traumatised part of the personality con-
tains the mind and psychotic symptoms are displayed, such as emotional
confusions, hallucinations, delusions, paranoid projections, phobias, and
so on. While lying on the couch a patient was coherently reasoning over
oedipal matters associated to a previous interpretation. Suddenly, she
saw a little spider on the ceiling and rushed to the door in total panic.
What induced a logically thinking mind to suddenly change into a state
of psychosis? Schizophrenic patients are capable of sustaining a conver-
sation with absolute logic and suddenly switching to a delusional sys-
tem when the matter of argumentation changes to a particular sensitive
ground. What happened to this gifted patient’s alpha function (contact
barrier) that up to that instant was totally engaged with, and logically
discerning about, important material? How could such an insignificant,
harmless, minuscule spider, produce such an uncontained, abrupt, and
violent reaction? Further investigation revealed the little spider was not
so “innocent”, that it was pregnant with memories from nocturnal sexual
games with her siblings, of little fingers crawling over her genitals, fin-
gers they referred to as “little spider walking”. The spider had become a
powerful “absence-presence”, a negative space or “minus K”, which Bion
(1962) baptised as “a bizarre object”, where he discriminates between
beta elements that result from the accumulation of undigested sensory
experiences and those secondary to the digestion of the contact-barrier:

… we could consider that reversal of alpha-function did in fact

affect the ego and therefore did not produce a simple return to
 T H E C O N C E P T U A L I S AT I O N O F P R E - C O N C E P T U A L T R A U M A S 53

beta-elements, but objects which differ in important respects [little

spider] from the original beta-elements [sexual game] which had
no tincture of the personality adhering to them. The beta-element
differs from the bizarre object in that the bizarre object is beta ele-
ment plus ego and superego traces [the spider’s superego accuses!].
(1962)

Without the presence of an alpha function my patient’s little spider

became a negative space, a “bizarre object”, a powerful presence of an
absence, or as Bion has stated, just “dream furniture”. If the contact bar-
rier is missing, there is no capacity to discriminate between being awake
and being immersed in the middle of a nightmare.14 The spider loses its
real characteristics of harmless insignificance once it becomes the con-
tainer of the patient’s projection,—”beta elements plus ego and super-
ego traces”—acquiring the power of an unyielding monster as it takes
place in any bad dream. Every time the external object is enveloped by
projected beta elements and loses its true mien, the individual remains
immersed inside the “furniture of dreams”, unable to wake up.
Brown (2005) has investigated the dynamic interaction between
reversal of alpha function and trauma, stating that

… my emphasis here is on the concrete nature of this traumatic

organization and on the adaptive nature of the beta screen in bring-
ing order to a psyche shattered by actual events—an order that,
tragically, offers little comfort to the patient. (p. 407)

I very much agree with this statement, and I think that the trauma
becomes a selected fact that influences the personality, something I
consider in the next chapter as the “Cain complex”. My only differ-
ence hinges on my belief that such mechanisms are universal and
take place in all human minds, because all forms of existing psycho-
pathology are always traumatic in nature. Others, such as Meltzer
(1978) and Grotstein (2007), have also attempted to provide a mean-
ing to the obscurity of the concept of trauma never totally elucidated
by Bion.
Another aspect I deem decisive for the possibility of the trauma-
tised state shifting to the non-traumatised one, is the modification of
communication between inner part objects; the change from negative
links used in the traumatised state to positive ones present in the non-
traumatised state. I consider this dynamic in detail in Chapter Eight.
CHAPTER FOUR

The unconscious: the messenger

of truth from Bion’s perspective of
container–contained interaction*

A dream which is not interpreted is like

a letter which is not read.

—R. Hisda
Babylonian Talmud:
Tractate Berakoth 55a
3rd century BC

The unconscious: the voice of the truth

as a structuring agent
“We infer the unconscious from its effects, but of its true nature we
know nothing”, said Freud as late as 1933 (1933a, p. 70), a statement
relevant to the present time, as the unconscious still remains reluctant
to unlock its natural mysteries. Following Bion we could establish a
correlation between consciousness and unconscious, or more precisely,
between conscious and the unconscious alpha functions: not so much
in the sense of being opposite to each other, but as a regulator that

* Read at the Canadian 34th Annual Congress of Psychoanalysis, Vancouver, June 2008.
55
56 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

endeavours to achieve a continuous equilibrium between the conscious

propensity to lie and the unconscious faculty to reveal the truth; possibly
also, as a need to maintain an adequate level of homeostasis between
each. Previously (López-Corvo, 2006), I have considered some of these
aspects and concluded that the unconscious

… seem[s] to function like a regulating agent that automatically

maintains equilibrium by adjusting consciousness’ apprecia-
tions of the internal and external realities perceived through the
sense organs. Such equilibrium is established by the continuous
activity of the unconscious in revealing the truth, meaning the
“private” truth … Is an organ of hybrid qualities, in order to
produce messages, uses a syntax formed by symbolic and meta-
phoric ideographs—similar to conscious language—instead of
using the biochemical language present in involuntary organs.
(p. 126)

What I would like now to stress is that the main function of the uncon-
scious is not to provide, as classical psychoanalysis established, a sat-
isfaction of repressed impulses, nor to repeat early repressed object
relations, but to purposely and continuously point out the lies that
consciousness uses in order to deal with frustration intolerance (Bion,
1992, p. 54). In other words, the unconscious is an organ that constantly
secretes truth, but, at the same time, is blind and completely dispas-
sionate about what that truth might mean to the individual. Perceiving
the unconscious in this light, emphasises its more gracious, positive,
and valuable nature. The main defence is from the resistance of a pre-
conscious structured as a “beta screen” that can refuse to know by
repudiating the unconscious message. The emphasis then, as we shall
see further on, is placed more on the dynamic structure of the precon-
scious than on the true intention of the unconscious of always reveal-
ing the individual’s truth, an intention that at all times remains the
same. The fear humans have of the unconscious is an expression of
fear about the violence often implicit in their own specific truth of the
repressed.
The existing interaction between the preconscious and the uncon-
scious is a container–contained relationship, similar to the one observed
between the baby and the breast or the psychoanalyst and his analysand.
In other words, it represents the interaction between a pre-conception
 THE UNCONSCIOUS 57

and its realisation, resulting in a conception (López-Corvo, 2003). I have

previously stated that

… the baby’s instinctive and natural needs, similar to the

unconscious, represent a biological truth that is universal, prede-
termined, and irrevocable. The main differences in the interaction
between “container” and “contained” would be determined by the
oscillations within the maternal attitude or reverie and never by the
baby’s biological demands. The contained ( ) is always the same; what
changes is the container’s ( ) attitude. (López-Corvo, 2006, p. 156)

I believe this model can help us understand the relationship that

exists between the unconscious and the preconscious as a part of the
internal side of consciousness. Like the water’s infinite motion in
a river, the unconscious, as a continuous source of truth, is always
becoming and, for this reason, unknowable; it cannot be grasped,
but can be intuited, like Bion’s O (López-Corvo, 2006). The fact that
the truth is not well received or that it might represent a threat will
depend not on the truth itself, but on the person who receives or dis-
regards it. It is not the absence of truthfulness that makes the uncon-
scious react, but the presence of undigested lies, of their destructive,
omnipotent power and the danger they can pose even to life itself.1
The preconscious repudiation of a message presented by the uncon-
scious ends up in an internal reversion of perspective,2 meaning that
there will be no communication between the two entities. I have also
stated that

[i]ncapacity to metabolize beta elements into alpha ones [due to

low frustration tolerance] will result in an increment of the former
which will be located at a preconscious level and will generate what
Bion has called a “beta screen.” If on the contrary, beta elements are
continuously changed into alpha ones, they will then accumulate
by taking the place of the former and will result in what Bion has
called the “contact barrier.” Obviously, there will be a continuum
between these two extremes … (Ibid., pp. 158–159)

The greater the predominance of alpha elements or contact barrier, the

better the communication between the unconscious and consciousness,
or the opposite, if the preconscious is dominated by a beta screen.
58 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

The unconscious messenger of truth

In footnotes added in 1914 and in 1923 (1900, pp. 579–580; 1923a,
pp. 111–112), Freud cautions against the danger of granting the uncon-
scious a quality he referred as the “mysterious unconscious” (1914).
He attributes to Adler the idea “… that dreams possessed a function of
thinking ahead” (my italics). Freud here is obviously referring to “think-
ing ahead” as a kind of future divination. He gave a similar warning
about associating the dream’s manifest content with irrelevant mean-
ings based on supernatural beliefs. Looking from another perspec-
tive, “thinking ahead” might also represent the unconscious capacity
(“dream-thought”) to think “ahead” of the conscious, or as Bion (1992,
p. 52) stated, to digest what consciousness has left undigested. It will be
similar to those intuitive unconscious revelations referred to by scien-
tists such as Friedrich August von Kekule, who confessed to discover-
ing the structure of benzene after dreaming of the uroboros, the snake
that bites in its own tail.
Freud remained faithful to the end of his days to his remark that
dreams, similar to unconscious repressed instincts, were specifically
driven by wish fulfilment. He maintained this position even after “anxi-
ety dreams” and “traumatic neuroses” proved differently and he felt
forced to introduce further theoretical validations. Meltzer (1984) con-
sidered that Freud was

… so deeply rooted in a neurophysiological model of the mind,

with its mind-brain equation, that it will not bear the weight of
investigation into the meaning of the meaning of dreams. (p. 11)

If the unconscious represents a simple instrument that provides hallu-

cinatory satisfaction to unfulfilled wishes, how is this function different
from daydreaming? What value would there be for nature in repeating
an attribute that consciousness already exercises?

Two dreams from a patient

Two dreams from a patient might be helpful. A man in his late sixties
undergoing analysis was, at one point, investigating memories related
to sexual initiations as a child and what he considered to be a kind of
“sexual addiction” during his youth. Around this time, he produced
 THE UNCONSCIOUS 59

the following dream: He was at a party sitting with a young and beautiful
woman whom he was trying to seduce. Suddenly she stood up and left and he
could see how she moved away, greeting everybody as if she was very popu-
lar. He decided to follow her and approached her again but she answered with
certain disdain, as if she was not interested, and he thought that perhaps he
was too old for her to be interested. She walked towards the entrance and left,
while he went back and sat again where he was previously, and then thought
that if he was inventing his own dream, how come he was not able to pro-
duce a nice young woman capable of having a warm sexual encounter? In his
associations, he elaborated his concern about getting old, not being as
attractive as he felt he had been not long before. Then he said that his
unconscious had a mind of its own and an already established agenda:
“It might have been very nice to have a sexual experience with an attrac-
tive young woman”, he added. “However,” he continued, “the truth
about my main concern at this moment is not so much about having an
affair, but about mourning the loss of my youth, and this is exactly what
the unconscious has pointed out.” And I added, “The truth, more than
satisfaction of a wish”.
Sometime later, he referred to symptoms related to prostatic enlarge-
ment that had surfaced after driving for a long distance during his
holidays. He also expressed concern about possible side-effects from
medication prescribed by his doctor to treat this ailment. In successive
sessions we investigated his prostate concern through material related
to childhood sexuality, how a nanny sexually manipulated him when
he was around seven years old, as well as his parents’ divorce when he
was nine. We concluded that an unconscious element in him was now
attempting in his phantasies to “control” his “mother-nanny” with his
penis, similar to how he felt he had as a child and in his youth. Perhaps
feeling now old and unattractive was unconsciously reproducing emo-
tions similar to those experienced by him as a child at the time of his
separation from his mother, and in his youth when he was still endeav-
ouring to find her in his desire for younger women. He wondered if
perhaps this continuous search for this sexualised “mother-nanny”
multiplied everywhere, as well as if his difficulty to mourn the “van-
ishing of his youth” was related to his prostate enlargement. Maybe
unresolved oedipal pretensions, if still existing at an older age, could
have represented a menace to the species and to nature’s laws due to
the danger of a faulty procreation.3 At the next session, he brought the
following dream: He was in bed and was holding tight with his legs the legs
60 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

of a woman of whom he could only see her naked buttocks. He supposedly

was trying to collect from her behind the medicine he was taking for his pros-
tate. Next, a man from the insurance or something of that sort, who was inves-
tigating what has happened to the woman he was holding, came into the room.
Apparently, a car had hit the woman and there was an investigation to deter-
mine if the woman or the driver of the car was responsible. An old woman, who
was also there, insisted that the driver, and not the woman, was responsible.
The patient also agrees and adds that the same irresponsible driver has also
hit him sometime previously. He stated that he could not figure out what
the dream was about. I said that perhaps the woman he was holding
was a feminine aspect of him. That he felt his “unresolved oedipal pre-
tensions” represented a masculine way to relate. Possibly, if he were
capable of behaving more in a feminine manner, he might be able to
stop the medication for his prostate; that is, be able to get his medicine
back from the girl’s derrière. He completely agreed to this interpreta-
tion and added that the argument about who was responsible—either
the driver or the girl—might be related to his questioning the cause of
his prostate enlargement, whether it was external, produced by his long
drive during his holidays, or was because of his own oedipal preten-
sions. He again was taken by what he considered—and I concurred—
the wonderful and beautiful condensations and metaphors displayed
by the unconscious, “so fast, so bright and so stunning”.

Programmed dreams
In 1911 Freud, referring to “dream interpretation”, specified a certain
kind of dream he designated as “programmed dreams”, which were
capable of portraying

… the entire pathogenic material of the case, as yet unknown to

both doctor and patient … and is sometimes equivalent to a transla-
tion into dream-language of the whole content of the neurosis. (p. 93, my
italics)

Very often, however, this kind of “programmed dream” bestows the

impression that the unconscious representations portrayed in the
dream are already well ahead of the patient’s conscious realisation. It
is as if the unconscious was determined to reveal whatever the patient
was stubbornly resisting consciously. This would not represent the
 THE UNCONSCIOUS 61

unconscious as a thrust towards satisfaction of repressed impulses, but

as a form of forcefully depicting what consciousness avoids acknowl-
edging, as if the unconscious was “thinking ahead” as a kind of “uncon-
scious alpha function”. Further advanced in the analytic process, some
dreams can reveal behaviour, as well as conceptual changes patients
appear to have achieved but do not seem to have yet consciously reg-
istered. Consequent analysis of these dreams often induces resistance
because the patient believes that the interpretation of the dream pro-
vided by the analyst stands for the analyst’s theories, and does not rep-
resent a truthful and revealing comprehension of their own about their
unconsciously resisted material.

A clinical illustration
Ingrid, a forty-two-year-old married mother of three, was referred by
a psychiatrist who treated her “on and off” for around two years, but
who felt now unable to continue seeing her due to a difficult turn in
her marital situation, and also because the psychiatrist’s relationship
to the patient had become more “friendly than therapeutic”. During
his telephone referral, the psychiatrist stated that he had tried without
results to make her aware of the “immoral and dangerous situation she
had placed herself in”, in which she listens but always ends up doing
whatever she wants. The referring psychiatrist felt that perhaps I might
be able to confront her “more strongly”.
Ingrid is a rather intelligent, sensuous, attractive-looking woman,
who often wears suggestive miniskirts and behaves in some ways
younger than her stated age. Her presenting problem at the start of our
first session was that she wanted to divorce “A”, whom she married
over twenty-four years ago, because she was no longer in love with him.
She also claimed to be deeply in love with “B”, the all-time best friend
and business partner of A. B was married to their friend “C” and was
father of two children. Ingrid married A when she was eighteen and
“never had another man”. Her husband, she stated, has always abused
her, treated her with contempt as if she was stupid, and for several
months now they have not been sleeping together. She had never con-
sidered divorce before, because she did not want to upset her mother-
in-law, who was very much like a mother to her, but she has now been
deceased for two years. “My husband is very sorry about what has hap-
pened, and has also started therapy trying to change himself because he
62 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

wants to win me back again. I feel sorry for the man; he seems to bend
over backwards, sending me flowers, and offering me anything I want.
He just bought me a new car”.
Ingrid is the youngest of four siblings and there is more than a twenty
year difference between her and her oldest sister, who together with her
older brother acted more like her true parents, because her real ones, due
to the significant age disparity, were rather distant and unconcerned.
The two families, hers and B’s, immigrated to Venezuela from the south
of Spain about fifteen years previously. “We came with little money but
have made a fortune here”. She is a jewellery designer, has exhibited
some of her work and even won a prize, although she was not certain
her work was of great value. Speaking of B, her lover, she said, “He
is very jealous and very religious”. Then with a smile she added, “He
accuses me of being too liberal, that I am always surrounded by men
and that I dress too sexy, showing everything. But I am completely in
love with him; I think he is my soul mate and loves me unconditionally.
His wife, C, suspects something but she doesn’t really know. She called
my husband and told him she thought there was something going on
between me and B, but my husband didn’t believe her”.
At the next session, Ingrid asked if I could give her some guidance
about what she should do. I said it would be unfair to give her advice
because she knew more than I did about her situation, but that I thought
an important issue seemed to be that she felt divided in two correlating
desires, the need to idealise her relationship with B, while at the same
time there was also the need to degrade her marriage. One part felt in
love with B and the other wished to go ahead and get a divorce regard-
less of the consequences to A, her children, C, and her own children.
I wonder if her wish for a divorce was unconsciously related to anger
and a desire for revenge against her distant and neglectful father. The
danger, it seemed to me, was not so much that she would have then to
face the consequences of a divorce, but that in taking such a decision,
she could be repeating again what she did at eighteen when she mar-
ried her husband. In other words, once more she could be taking an
important decision because a man (A previously, and B now) was offer-
ing to collude with her, against the memory of her neglectful father,
only this time the projection of the neglectful father was falling on A.
Now she was willing to risk everything because she felt that another
man was again offering her the unconditional love she felt her parents
did not provide her with.
 THE UNCONSCIOUS 63

She listened attentively and then disagreed completely with what

I had said, repeating that she had thought about everything carefully,
including the consequences. She reaffirmed that she was really in
love with B and could not forget all the humiliations she had endured
with A.
At the next session, she said she was not very clear about why she
was coming to see me, that she was aware I could not give her any
advice, and also that she was clear about what she was planning to do.
I said that although what she was saying might be true, there was also
an important issue that was not being addressed. In taking the decision
to end twenty-four years of marriage and moving on with B, she might
be leaving out what she really wanted. She might be forgetting about
herself, that is, the part of herself that was different from “Ingrid-with-
husband” and “Ingrid-with-lover”. Again, she denied what I said and
added that this was the opportunity of her life. She had been unhappy
for too long and had no hesitation in thinking that this decision was the
most convenient for her, even though she was fully aware of the diffi-
culties the children would have to deal with and of what people might
say about her. Then she remembered a dream: She was in an apartment on
the tenth floor of a building. She knew B was there somewhere, but could not
see him. She was talking to C on the phone. C was complaining about B because
he had abandoned her. The apartment’s balcony had no fences or any other form
of protection, but there was an open chute on the side of the building that could
be used to slide down to the ground. She attempted to use it but became terri-
fied of falling down and decided to climb back to the apartment. She said that
B and C had a beach apartment that was on the tenth floor. B had men-
tioned that he was planning to go there during the holidays with C and
this made her feel very jealous, but B tried to calm her by saying that he
was not planning to stay, that he was only taking her there and would
be back to the city immediately, so they could see each other. I said that I
was wondering if the dream was telling her that to take C’s place would
imply a very dangerous threat to her, like descending through an open
chute from a tenth floor, as if a part of her felt she could be jumping
from the frying pan into the fire. She did not agree and asked if the
dream could be interpreted differently.
At the next session, she said that she had seen B. Also, her husband
was extremely affable and had given her a new car. She said her daugh-
ter had asked if there was any problem between them. She remembered
two dreams: She took her new car to a garage and a black man asked for the
64 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

key and started to drive like a mad man. She told him to be careful that the car
had a flat tyre. In the second dream, her youngest daughter was in a hospital
and a nurse was administering her medicine using some mechanism attached
to the child’s forehead, as if there was a lesion on her head. The nurse was
monitoring the amount of medicine with a machine and the child shivered and
jumped as if the amount of medicine released was too high. Of the last dream,
she said that her youngest child was perhaps left out, because her age
difference with the other two was too great. The oldest is a girl, and she
was like her right hand, the second is a boy and completely spoiled,
but the youngest is a bit like she was as a child, left aside and ignored.
“She is also rebellious, like I was”. Of the medicine, she said that B was
Jewish and a believer. The day before he was referring to some “funny
thing” Jews tied around their arms and their forehead and she felt this
was ridiculous and stupid: “What can such a stupid device do for you?”
I said that perhaps she felt I am administering her overdoses of stupid-
ity in what I am saying. She disagreed. Then I said that another pos-
sibility could be that perhaps the nurse and the child represented inner
aspects of herself, as if she was saying to herself that a “nurse part”
inside of her was administering to a child part, also inside herself, over-
doses of stupidity she has learned from B. She listened but said nothing.
After a silence, she said about the first dream that her husband was
trying to win her back, and had given her a $70,000 car as a present.
She said, “A new car is like a new man”. The black man reminded her
of a holiday in Florida several years ago, at a time when there were a
number of news stories about several women being murdered. She was
coming back to her hotel by herself through a lonely parking lot when
she spotted a black man hiding behind some cars. She felt really scared
and started to run very quickly towards the hotel. She felt she was in
real danger at that moment, and it was perhaps the most threatening
experience she had ever endured. I said that perhaps a part of her felt
that B, “her new man”, was a real threat, so important that she felt he
was similar to the threat she experienced in Florida; or perhaps, since
the car was a present from A, the black man driving the car could have
also represented what she felt she was doing to her marriage, which
already had a flat tyre. She rejected the interpretations and asked again
if that was the only interpretation that such a dream could have. I asked
if she could think of something else the dream might have represented.
“Why should the car represent A or B?” she questioned. I said, “I agree,
but that is what you just said”. I then said that it seemed as if there
 THE UNCONSCIOUS 65

were two different parts of her, one that dreamed and another that was
awake, which did not like what she dreamed about. It also appeared as
if there was not much communication between them, as if the awaking
part of her did not seem to like what the dreaming part had to offer.
At the next session, she brought another dream: She was somewhere in
the midst of a children’s party. There was a beautiful “piñata”, nicely decorated.
There was also a man, a close friend, who then introduced a knife through the
back of the “piñata” that then became alive and changed into a dog that was
going to be used in some experiments to be dissected and cut into pieces. The
man in the dream was a very good friend whom her children found
very amusing and liked very much because he performed all sorts of
magic tricks: “The other day they all went to eat at a Chinese restaurant
and there was a fountain that contained colourful fish and my friend
took a piece of carrot in his hand and placed the hand inside the foun-
tain making believe he had caught a fish. He then put it in his mouth
and was making believe he was eating one of the fish, and the children
were looking at him astonished and with eyes wide open. Another time
he had a barbecue at his house and was roasting a lamb and he said to
the children that it was a dog.” I said to her that perhaps a part of her
wished for me to be like this friend, like a magician at a children’s party,
to change serious matters from reality into simple jokes, and to be able
to rescue her from the serious predicaments she was dealing with now.
In other words, she wanted me to prevent a happy (nicely elaborated)
piñata party for the children (marriage) from turning into the horrible
slaughtering of a poor dog (divorce).
In the next session, she said she was awaiting the upcoming religious
confirmation of her youngest daughter and explained that some of her
relatives from Florida and France would be coming. Once this was over,
she would ask her husband for a separation and would wait for a year
before she moved in with B. She remembered a dream: She was going to
see B and parked her car around the corner, and then went to fetch an antique
pram that B had given her. She could see through the houses as if they were
made of glass. She is able to look inside his house and see how he was coming
down the stairs holding hands with his wife, C, something that made her feel
very jealous. She associated the baby carriage with small children, when
they look vulnerable and defenceless. “If there is a wounded person or
an animal like a dog”, she stated, “I feel more impelled to assist the dog
than the person, because a person will always have more people will-
ing to help. People can always speak if something hurts them, but dogs
66 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

are never asked and are treated as if they weren’t experiencing pain.”
I said that perhaps she places a child part of herself into the defenceless-
ness of dogs or helplessness of babies and that she might have experi-
enced something similar long ago and that for this reason, the carriage
is antique—it’s old. I wonder if in some way her relationships with
men could carry something similar, that someone could take care of her
unconditionally.

Discussion
For Bion, the main purpose of dreams is to avoid “frustration intoler-
ance” produced by the facts of reality. In this same direction, the main
purpose of “dream-work” for Bion will not be determined by the need
to deceive a censorship but to evade frustration; and the raison d’être of
dream-thoughts, as well, would be to modify the reason of frustration.
I believe that an essential source of frustration results from the conjoint
of actual facts presented by reality, which I refer to as “conceptual trau-
mas”, and emotions related to early pre-conceptual traumas that are
automatically triggered by the actual facts. It is a form of interaction
similar to Freud’s notion of “deferred action”, which I will be discuss-
ing in Chapter Six, and which I have described in detail as “trauma
entanglement” in Chapter One.
Bion (1992, p. 45) stated that, “contact with reality is not dependent
on dream-work”, however, the accessibility to the individual “of the
material derived from this contact is dependent on dream-work” (1959).
Dreams represent stored memories of external and internal undigested
facts or stranded thoughts expelled in the form of ideograms that could
either disappear or find an alpha function capable of unconsciously
metabolising them into material for thinking. “A dream which is not
interpreted is like a letter which is not read”, stated Raby Hisda in the
Babylonian Talmud, around seventeen hundred years ago.
Bion (1992, p. 49) presented another theory about dreaming, although
as far as I know he never pursued it further. In a note written at the
same time as the above statements, he associated the pictorial manifes-
tation of dreams with visual hallucinations, conjecturing how a given
stimuli, such as a tactile experience, for instance, is changed into an
image. He interpreted this mechanism as a kind of “synthesising func-
tion” or “linking one sense to another” that would be carried out by the
 THE UNCONSCIOUS 67

dream-work. Using material from a psychotic patient who projected his

hallucination “by seeing it”, Bion (1959) said:

I described him as taking in the interpretation and evacuating it as

far as possible away from himself by ‘seeing’ it, i.e. visually evacu-
ating it as a hallucination. If this is so, the dream proper may be an
attempt at visual and flatus-like evacuation. (1976, p. 98, my italics)

Ingrid, the patient I just referred to, was a new patient presenting a
behaviour problem of considerable emotional implication as well as
of significant and lasting consequences for her and the two families
involved. My interest at this moment was not so much with the psy-
choanalytic process but with the physiology of the unconscious, with
the enormous contrast between the conscious disposition and persistent
denial on one hand, and the unconscious repetitive revelations, through
the dreams, about the true nature of the conflict, on the other. The expe-
rience represented the work of six sessions, face to face, in a span of two
weeks. The dreams appear clear in what they seem to portray and yet I
did not find then, and do not find now, a different way to interpret the
symbolism involved, as the patient often requested.
CHAPTER FIVE

Transformation of pre-conceptual
traumas: heteromorphic or
homeomorphic symbolisations

All forms are similar, and none is like the others. So that their chorus
points the way to a hidden law.

—Goethe1

Introduction
I remember as a child reading a story about a closed door standing in
the middle of a field. If walked around, it was an ordinary closed door
with nothing attached to it, but if opened and its threshold crossed, one
entered a completely different and unknown world. This door is a good
metaphor for what the aptitude to symbolise has bestowed on human
beings; this is why Langer referred to symbolism as a “new key” to
philosophy:

Its cleavages cut across the old lines, and suddenly bring out new
motifs that were not felt to be implicit in the premises of the schools
at all; for it changes the questions of philosophy. (Langer, 1942, Preface,
original italics)

69
70 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

Great changes, ontogenetic as well as phylogenetic, are a product of

these “cleavages cut across the old lines” through symbolisation, such
as, for instance, the appearance of language, meaning the exchange of
the “absence of a thing” for a particular sound or sign, supported by a
common-sense agreement. A world without language is nearly impos-
sible to imagine. We may recall Jonathan Swift’s (1920) portrayal in
Gulliver’s Travels, where islanders from Laputa, who believe that utter-
ing words will corrode the lungs and shorten life, opt not to use spoken
language to name things, so they carry those things with them, because
they are necessary in order “to express the particular business they are
to discourse on” (p. 190). Money is another good example: since we no
longer need currency to embody its own value, as old gold coins did,
or to bring, like the Laputa inhabitants, animals, or things for trading,
we bring plastic cards or pieces of paper instead, which we exchange
freely, solely on the basis of trust induced by symbolisation and com-
mon knowledge.
Although symbolism is a crucial move towards freedom and men-
tal growth, it is also a primitive form of communication. In psychoa-
nalysis symbolism has always been attached to the discovery of the
“mysterious” unconscious by Freud at the end of the 1800s, a dis-
covery that introduced him to the importance of this form of rep-
resentation as the main instrument of communication used by the
unconscious to portray its messages. The fascination brought about
by this breakthrough induced not only an idealisation of the process
of symbolisation, but also an immense and still vibrant controversy.
Great discoveries or inventions can create such enthusiasm and have
such powerful influence that sometimes they might access and con-
taminate other fields of knowledge. A good example can be found in
psychoanalysis itself: Freud used the “steam engine” model—so much
in fashion during the “industrial revolution”—in order to understand
how the mind worked. His first comprehension of the metapsychol-
ogy of anxiety was derived from the physics of gases, where concepts
such as “repression”, “sublimation”, and even “libido”, were the
product of a mechanical configuration of the mind. Drives were con-
ceived by Freud as independent constructs capable of detaching from
the objects at will, evident in some of his models such as “secondary
narcissism” or the dynamics of “mourning”. Klein, on the other hand,
seemed to have responded to more contemporary physics when she
implicitly stated that the object (mass) and its representation (energy)
 T R A N S F O R M AT I O N O F P R E - C O N C E P T U A L T R A U M A S 71

were absolutely indivisible, compatible with Einstein’s well known

E = mc2 formula.

Two forms of symbolism: “heteromorphic” or discontinue

and “homeomorphic” or continue
Symbols maintain a close and meaningful tie to the objects or things
they represent, while signs keep a fortuitous attachment to them. It is
similar to the distinction between a blood or natural family tie and a
legal one, respectively. Often the relationship between the symbol and
the object signified appears hazy, requiring a keen eye in order to reveal
the hidden meaning; however, in art as well as in poetry for example,
such awkwardness and vagueness in the affiliation, displays beauty
and elegance.
We must discriminate between two main aspects of symbolisation,
one related to the differences between discontinuity and continuity,2 and
the other to the differences amid container and contained.3 A symbolism
is discontinuous when it introduces a leap or a distance between the
original absence of the object and its representation; although there will
always remain traces of the original object represented. In this form
of symbolisation, the “containers” may be similar, but the “contained”
constantly changes, signifying that similar containers can carry differ-
ent meanings. It is similar to Freud’s expression that “a cigar is some-
times a cigar”. For instance, as the resolution to the Oedipus complex is
achieved, we are capable of coupling with another person who might
appear (container) just like one of our parents, but is “absolutely” not our
parent (contained), so although the container might be similar, the mean-
ing, or contained, is different. In other words, the phenomenon is similar
but the noumenon, the “thing-in-itself” or meaning, is different. On
the other hand, residues of unresolved Oedipus matters, representing
incapacity to discriminate between our parents and other individuals,
will stand as an obstruction to the dynamic of pairing, representing a
homeomorphic or continuous form of symbolisation where the container
(mother or father) could look different from other women or men, but
the meaning (contained) remains unconsciously the same. Stated in dif-
ferent terms, the phenomenon changes but the noumenon, the “thing-in-
itself” or meaning, remains. While a discontinuous form of symbolism
is used by the non-psychotic or non-traumatised state of the person-
ality, homeomorphic or continuous symbolism is the only mechanism
72 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

i) Public and
conscious
a) Primitive form ii) Private and
A) Discontinuous or of communication unconscious
heteromorphic
b) As a defence against
Includes ‘+links’:
narcissistic fusion
(+K, +L, +H).
Found in the
non-traumatised
state of the
SYMBOLISM personality

B) Continuous or Continuous sliding of emotional

homeomorphic. representations related to the
Includes ‘-links’: traumatised state
(–K, –L, –H).
Found the traumatised
state of the personality

Figure 1. Symbolism as a public and conscious form of communication.

by which, within the psychotic or traumatised state of the personality,

pre-conceptual traumas continuously repeat themselves. Besides these
differences in the “container/contained” interaction related to discon-
tinuous and continuous symbolisations, there are also different forms
of emotions, or “links”4—to use Bion’s own language. The “links” could
be structured as positive or true, such as: +K (knowledge), +L (love), and
+H (hate), which are at hand in “discontinues symbolisations”, or nega-
tive or false emotions, such as: −K, −L, or −H, present in the “continues”
kind—false in the sense that the links represent displaced emotions, like
those seen in the transference-countertransference or in some forms of
defences. Erotic transference is a false feeling (−L) and does not consti-
tute a true love (+L), neither is aggressive transference a true emotion
towards the analyst (–H). Intellectualisation, on the other hand, repre-
sents a form of defence used in order not to think, or –K.

Discontinuous or heteromorphic symbolism

Primitive form of communication
Public and conscious
Symbolism is also a public and conscious form of communication, when
a certain quality of an object is used in order to express a meaning by
association, as can be observed in logograms, such as the shape of a lion
 T R A N S F O R M AT I O N O F P R E - C O N C E P T U A L T R A U M A S 73

to express “courage”, or a balance to convey “justice”.5 The progression

of Egyptian writing is an extraordinary example illustrating how ontog-
eny recapitulates phylogeny, because the development of this language
through history, as it changed from hieroglyphics to Demotic, para-
phrased ontogenetic changes from symbols to signs, as is shown in the
genetic progression of individual language.
Symbols are not empty of meaning. There is a rudimentary natu-
ral link between container and contained, or between the object and its
representation. Then again, signs, such as words, have a casual but
specific relationship with the object represented. For instance, “horse”,
“cheval”, and “caballo”, are written differently and have dissimilar
sounds, yet they are all linked to the same animal. Symbols by them-
selves verify the object they represent; signs require a consensus in order
to certify their relationship to the object. On the other hand, in “sym-
bolisation” the association between “container/contained” is lax, in
the sense that one “container” could contain different “contained” or
vice versa, different “containers” could point to the same “contained”.
This condition makes symbols imprecise and sometimes obscure, as
in dreams, for instance, and different from “signs”, where the rela-
tion container/contained is rigid, and the same “container” always
contains the same “contained”. The word “snake”, for instance, is a
“sign” absolutely tied to the representation of such a reptile; however,
the image of a snake in a dream could stand for “danger”, “a phal-
lus”, the “snake” itself, or something else privately conjoined. In both
instances, of “symbols” or “signs”, the link associating “container”
and “contained” is true or +K.
Throughout history, money has followed a process of abstraction
similar to that of language. Comparable to symbols, currency initially
had an intrinsic value according to the weight of coinage, which was
manufactured out of what were considered precious metals, such as
iron, copper, silver, gold, and so forth. In other words, the coin was
itself the original object and not its meaning. Later on, as the world
became more stable and reliable, legal tenders and bank notes appeared,
which, similar to words or signs (like books), stood and still stand for
the “meaning” of the original object. They represent a general con-
sensus about their equivalence in value, which is backed up by gold,
not in the coin or money itself, but in the specific country’s bank. This
consensus is based on trust, similar to what allows human beings to
remain calm even when a loved one is not present, because they rely
on the confidence placed on the abstract representation made inside
74 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

their mind, in the meaning; therefore even if the person is not present,
he or she still exists. Money as we know it at the present time—coins,
paper, plastic money, and so on—represents a symbolical account for
labour; however, there is enough trust for us to accept it without any
hesitation in spite of the absence of its equivalence in gold. In other
words, the internal representation or meaning of a loved object, the pro-
gressive change from symbol to sign in language, the transformation
from coinage to paper and plastic money—or changes from hieroglyph-
ics to demotic language—all carry within them a progressive disaffec-
tion from the trap exercised by the weight of the original object. Moving
away from the object is made possible by a “natural” call or drive to
achieve higher degrees of freedom, something that eventually will
induce mental growth and progress.

Private and unconscious

David Hume’s concept of “constant conjunction”, also borrowed by
Bion (1967, 1992), can be quite useful to explain the private and uncon-
scious side of symbolisation, that is, of how two different elements can
be “conjoined” in private, when,

we infer one from the other not by reason, but from the particular
experience that surrounded them … It seems as if there is noth-
ing logical to explain their relationship which bears more towards
a causality of cause-effect relation where both were linked by
experience, by accident and remain associated. (López-Corvo,
2003, pp. 67–68)

Private symbolisations are always “constantly conjoined” and represent

most of the language used by the unconscious—although not all—in
order to communicate. It can be observed more clearly in the assembly
of dreams, parapraxis, as well as in the psychotic patient’s construction
of “bizarre objects” and other defences (Bion, 1967, pp. 39–48, 81–82). For
Klein (1930), symbolisation is a protection against persecutory anxiety
that results from attacks against the mother/father’s body parts (breast,
penis, and so on). In order to avoid fear of retaliation from those objects,
the child equates the organs in question with other things, which in turn
also become “objects of anxiety” that constantly impel the child to make
other and new equations (symbolic) (1930, pp. 236–250).6
 T R A N S F O R M AT I O N O F P R E - C O N C E P T U A L T R A U M A S 75

There is a crucial difference between conscious and unconscious

forms of symbolism. While conscious symbolism responds to logic
based on deductive-inductive mechanisms and moves from the general
to the particular and vice versa, unconscious symbolism follows a logic
I believe is based on a process referred to as “transductive” (Piaget,
1962), which moves from the particular to the particular. Consider, for
instance, images within the narrative of a dream that associate with
each other by a particular quality, such as colour, shape, time, place,
and so on. Transductive logic implies that unconscious symbols are tied
or conjoined by means of some particular and hierarchical qualities pre-
sented by the objects used in the narrative and needed for the purpose
of conveying a message. For instance, the image of an individual, who
was remembered by a patient as a relative who was mentally retarded,
was used in a dream “to light a barbecue that might explode”, in order
to denote that some issues this patient was involved with in real life
were “stupid and dangerous”.
An example of this form of symbolism could be useful. Stella, an
adolescent patient struggling for independence, who had a compli-
cated surgical intervention involving her spine when she was seven
years old, presented the following dream: She was with a dog on a raft
surrounded by sharks, and someone threw the dog to the sharks. She said
dogs were “vicious and angry”, while the sharks she related to her
operation. I interpreted that her trauma (the surgical intervention) was
destroying an angry and vicious part of herself, which was necessary
in her struggle towards independence. The dog was chosen to rep-
resent an angry but frightening unconscious part of herself (private),
because in her mind it was conjoined with those feelings, in the same
manner that the “ferociousness” of the shark was conjoined with the
injury experienced by the surgical intervention. In another dream,
the operation was represented as a “very long hilly street” in a large
city, “like those in San Francisco”. This metaphorically implied that
her injured spine projected everywhere, was like the hilly street: “all
over the city”. Stella’s unconscious, using different dream images and
phantasies, was continuously representing the same traumatic experi-
ences: sharks, dogs, and long hilly street, all were attached to the same
contained: “operation-on-her-spine”. The link that bound together the
narrative of the dream was cognitive and based on “transductive”
logic, such as the terror of sharks, aggression from vicious dogs, or hilly
street like the spine. It can be represented using container/contained
76 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

mechanisms linked by K (knowledge) and following a “transductive”

logic, as follows:

Container : Shark Hilly street

( K ),  (K )
Contained : Spine operation Spine operation
Myths portray an intermediary form of symbolisation, simultaneously
presenting both sides, private and public, an aspect commonly
explored by Jungian psychotherapists. Myths are primitive forms of
pre-conception, as well as a stage in the publication or communica-
tion of an individual’s private knowledge to the group. “Myths”, says
Bion (1992), “must be defined; they must be communicable and have
some of the qualities of common sense—one might call them ‘common
non-sense” (p. 186). They could be represented by the formula K(ξ),
where K represents the constant in a myth that is public and endlessly
repeated—like the presence of the same characters in the Oedipus
myth—whereas ξ represents what is variable, what is private, individ-
ual, and unsaturated (Bion, 1974, p. 23).7

Symbolisation as a defence against narcissistic fusion

From a different vertex, symbolism also represents a defence against
narcissistic fusion.8 All persons move from being an “organ” inside
their mother’s womb to becoming autonomous individuals capable
of exercising their own free will. Language implements or stimulates
such a powerful endeavour towards achieving independence, involv-
ing such a thrust that we might even regard the existence of a natural
drive or instinct towards freedom, which is something Freud implicitly
considered when, in 1920, he referred to “ego or death drives”.
Freud stated that the unconscious reaches consciousness by changing
“thing representations” into “word representations”. However, it is not
really a “thing representation” but the representation of the “absence
of a thing”, because a “re-presentation” is already a sensual facsimile
of the thing and not the thing itself; in other words, it is the meaning of
the thing. With the assistance of the mother’s intuition or “reverie”, as
stated by Bion, the child is capable of containing or metabolising the
absence of the object and then integrating this absence in order to build
an “apparatus for thinking” (Bion, 1967). The intimate process of con-
taining the absence of the object is achieved by means of a symbolical
function, because the symbol allows a leap from the “presence of an
 T R A N S F O R M AT I O N O F P R E - C O N C E P T U A L T R A U M A S 77

absent thing” into a non-toxic internal—or mourned—representation of

that absence. The symbol, as stated previously, still preserves powerful
“blood” ties with the absent object; an attachment that is progressively
lost as signs and rational thinking start to take over. Make-believe play
is the most important manifestation of “symbolic thinking” in children,
usually shown in “pretending” games so common among them.
Narcissism (López-Corvo, 2006) represents a fusion between self and
the external object; when related to space it will induce projective and
introjective identifications and when related to time it will induce the
presence of transference. In this sense, narcissism is associated with
“homeomorphic” or topological displacement, as well as negative or
false links, as we shall see next. ‘Discontinuous’ or “heteromorphic”
symbolisation will act like a wedge between the self and the object, cre-
ating a primitive space that later will grow with the appearance of signs
and spoken language. The change from homeomorphic to heteromor-
phic forms of symbolisation will require alpha function in order to con-
tain and mourn the lost object, whose absence will be then suggested
by the symbol.

Homeomorphic or continuous symbolism

Let us recall the myth of Proteus,9 where a sea divinity could change
shape and transform into all sorts of things. This conveys an intui-
tive comprehension of the phenomenology of pre-conceptual traumas
(López-Corvo, 2006), symbolised by the sea divinity, like a kind of topo-
logical and continuous transformation of emotions related to repressed
traumatic events. It is different from a symbolical discontinuous trans-
formation representing a jump from the original lost object, which will
eventually lead to the formation of thoughts and signs. The continu-
ous or homeomorphic transformation, on the other hand, maintains an
invariability that unveils the presence of the original traumatic object,
as can be observed, for instance, in the transference-countertransference
dimension, similar to Descartes’ bee’s wax illustration.10
Segal (1957) refers to the “equation” between the original object and
its symbol both in the inner and the outer world. According to her, such
an equation represents the basis for concrete thinking as observed in
psychotic patients, where substitutes do not differ from the original
objects, and both are treated as if they were one and the same thing.
“Symbolic equation” means a lack of differentiation between object and
78 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

symbol where the psychotic patient confuses the violin with the penis.
Segal (ibid.) said:

The symbolic equation between the original object and the symbol
in the internal and the external world is, I think, the basis of the
schizophrenic’s concrete thinking where substitutes for the origi-
nal objects, or parts of the self, can be used quite freely, but, as in
the … examples of schizophrenic patients which I quoted, they are
hardly different from the original object: they are felt and treated as
though they were identical with it.

She continued:

This non-differentiation between the thing symbolized and the

symbol is part of a disturbance in the relation between the ego and
the object. Parts of the ego and internal objects are projected into an
object and identified with it. The differentiation between the self
and the object is obscured. Then, since a part of the ego is confused
with the object, the symbol—which is a creation and a function of
the ego—becomes, in turn, confused with the object which is sym-
bolized. (p. 41)

What I am aiming at by referring to a “topological progression” of

symbolism is similar to Bion’s notion of “transformation in rigid move-
ments”, a concept borrowed from projective geometry and used to
describe a form of alteration that “shows little deformation between the
original object or the thing-in-itself, and the product of the transforma-
tion” (Bion, 1965, p. 19, p. 31; López-Corvo, 2003, p. 296). The homeo-
morphic form of symbolisation is present only in the traumatised part
of the personality and represents a progressive sliding or transforma-
tion without any rupture or jump from the original object, where the
look differs but the meaning is the same: “the violin is the penis and
at the same time it is not”. They have in common the meaning but not
the form. Emotionally it is the same because, as the object slides and
stretches, there is a familiarity preserved, but at the same time, cogni-
tively, the violin and the penis are dissimilar; or in other words, the con-
tainer, the form, (violin and penis) appears different but the meaning
(pre-conception or repressed emotion) is the same. As in Plato’s concept
of the Form, the external shape, the phenomenon, could change, but
the noumenon, the “thing-in-itself”, remains. What fails is the alpha
 T R A N S F O R M AT I O N O F P R E - C O N C E P T U A L T R A U M A S 79

function’s capacity to produce dream thoughts and change “bivalent

beta elements”11 into total objects capable of transcending separation
anxiety. Atomisation of the pre-conceptual trauma could reach such
a level of ubiquity that every human being could live, in great part,
immersed in the emotions surrounding their original pre-conceptual
trauma, oblivious, like the inhabitants of Plato’s “Cave”.
It is quite possible that Winnicott (1951) was referring to a homeo-
morphic transformation when he referred to “transitional space”:
… the transitional phenomena have become diffused, have become
spread out over the whole intermediate territory between “inner
psychic reality” and “the external world as perceived by two per-
sons in common” … It seems that symbolism can only be properly
studied in the process of the growth of an individual, and that it
has at the very best a variable meaning. For instance, if we consider
the wafer of the Blessed Sacrament, which is symbolic of the body
of Christ. I think I am right in saying that for the Roman Catholic
community it is the body, and for the Protestant community it is
a substitute, a reminder, and is essentially not, in fact, actually the
body itself. Yet in both cases it is a symbol. (p. 89, p. 101)

In spite of such continuous sliding or homeomorphic transformation

of the “container”, the invariability of the “contained”, the meaning,
will allow the recognition of the original trauma. This “invariant” is
extremely important because on its back will ride the interpretation.
Let’s examine a case. A young man, very much involved with sports
and suffering from a toxic psychosis induced by marijuana, said that he
was very disappointed with professional baseball because he felt the
organisers were only interested in money, that there was not a “genuine
and unconditional concern about the games”. However, as he spoke,
tears appeared in his eyes and I knew his parents were away on holi-
days, so I said, “You feel that your parents don’t have a genuine and
unconditional feeling about you.” “Yes,” he said with anger, “I have
called home several times, and got no answer.” I then added, “Perhaps
you feel something similar about me, not knowing if I am interested in
the money or about how you are feeling now.” He looked at me with his
eyes full of tears and said nothing. The baseball game, his family, and
the therapy were all cognitively different, but emotionally the same,
that is continuous or homeomorphic.
Unlike discontinuous or discrete forms of symbolism, the links
that combine the chain of associations present in the narrative of
80 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

homeomorphic symbolism, are made of false or negative emotions such

as “minus love” and “minus hate” (−L and −H). This form of links is
only present, as I have already stated, in the traumatised part of the
personality, representing the emotional structure of the pre-conceptual
trauma.
For instance, the patient with the spine defect I have just mentioned,
developed the phantasy that the intervention was a form of punish-
ment because she was “not good”, an emotion that could represent
the contained. At the same time, because of this apprehension, she was
continuously under the fear of being “fired from her work” because
they might find out that she was “not good”. She was also unable to
maintain a lasting love relationship because, even if she was extremely
attractive, as a defence she always “fired” men who approached her,
trying to get rid of them before they could “fire” her, something she
was unconsciously certain would occur. In the transference, she con-
tinuously complied in order to please as a way to avoid “being fired”
from therapy. We could represent this series of events using a chain of
container/contained interactions as follows:
Container : Fired from work Fear men will leave her
−H)
, (− , (−H)
Contained : Punished for being bad Punished for being bad

Container : Fear of being left by the analyst

( −H )
Contained : Punished forr being bad

Let’s consider another example: the non-traumatised part of Mr X,

who was suffering from erectile dysfunction, was aware that his mother
Mary, his girlfriend Betty, and his friend Helen, even though they all
look alike because they are all women, are also different. We could rep-
resent this as follows:
Container : Mary Betty Helen
, (+K ) , (+K ) ,
Contained : Mother Woman Woman

However, at the same time, the traumatised part of Mr X, dealing

with oedipal confusions due to unresolved pre-conceptual traumas,
was not able to discriminate and conceived all women, because they all
look alike, as if they all were his mother:

Container : Woman - Mary Woman - Betty Woman - Helen

, ( − L/ − H ) , ( − L/ − H ) ,
Contained : Mother Mother Mother
 T R A N S F O R M AT I O N O F P R E - C O N C E P T U A L T R A U M A S 81

A dream brought by this patient provided a corroboration of what

we had been dealing with for some time: He was following a woman
who was rapidly moving through a crowd of people who were almost stand-
ing still. He followed her and managed to come to her side and experienced
the fragrance and sensuality of her contact. They continued side by side and
then came to a pavement that was too high for him to climb, but she, being
now on the pavment and sensed by him as being extremely high, was giv-
ing him her hand to help him to ascend. The oedipal desires, related to
other women present in his life and their fragrance and sensuality,
was obvious and very familiar to him, so he felt his unconscious, in
this respect, was not telling him anything new. We focused on the
way the woman in the dream moved in contrast with the immobility
of the crowd, how he caught up with her, and how imperceptibly he
changed in the dream from being grown up to a little boy, as well as
her changing from being any woman moving in a crowd to being his
helping mother. It was a graphic description of “topological transfor-
mations” of an interaction that moved from a man and a woman to a
child and the need from his internal mother (analyst) to help him to
grow (ascend).
Although Bion said little about “negative links” such as −L or −H,
I believe that positive links are related to true emotions, while negative
ones would be associated with lies, falsehood, and evacuatory proc-
esses (López-Corvo, 2006a). The patient I am now referring to, who
suffered from sexual impotence, was emotionally very ambivalent
towards women, because he harboured displaced emotions of anger
and love (−L or −H) originally experienced towards his own mother.
On the one hand there was anger because his lack of obtaining an erec-
tion resulted in incapacity to provide sexual pleasure to women; while
at the same time, there was a displaced maternal need for which he
also searched in them. “Erotic transference” represents a “false love”
or negative link (−L), in the same manner that “negative transference”
represents a “false aggression” or a −H, because they are both displaced
emotions. Similarly, emotions displayed between internal elements,
for instance a critical attitude from a superego element towards some
regressive behaviour (−H), could represent a false attitude or identifi-
cation, resulting from similar emotions once exercised by the parents
towards the child (+H), that is now falsely repeated intra-psychically
between part objects. In Chapter Eight this aspect is explored using
clinical examples.
82 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

Listening to the patient’s narrative

How to listen
A Zen Buddhist aphorism states that the basic condition absolutely
indispensable for pouring liquid into a container is that the container is
empty! This simple fact could be applied to the mind also, to our mind
at the moment of trying to listen to a patient’s discourse. But, empty of
what? Well, minds are usually filled with “desire”, “remembrances”,
and, when we are listening to what a patient is telling us, with a need to
“understand”. This is exactly why Bion reminded us to remain unsatu-
rated, without memory, desire, or understanding.

What to listen to
A session is a narrative that follows a process of transformation (Bion,
1965), from a beginning we could refer to as Sa, to an end or Sb. Between
these two extremes there are at least two discourses taking place at
the same time: there is a conscious, cognitive, and manifest narrative
using signs that usually refer to what appears to be real facts; however,
this kind of narrative is as a rule full of misleading lies or resistances
propped up by the fear of castration (annihilation, exclusion), in an
attempt to conceal what the other discourse might attempt to reveal. It
is a narrative that uses discontinuous or heteromorphic forms of sym-
bolisation and should be dreamed by the analyst’s unconscious alpha
function or reverie in order to intuit its meaning and be “caught by
‘O’”.12 It represents what Ferro (2009a), following Bion, referred to as
“transformation in dream”.13
Some clinical vignettes will be useful. Sharon started her session by
saying that the day before, after leaving the session, she had gone to see
two houses that were for sale nearby, but were far too expensive and
the school was on the other side of the main street, which would make
it too dangerous for her child to cross. After a long pause, she contin-
ued talking about a subject that appeared to differ from the previous
material. She referred to a discussion she had had with her husband
concerning money, where he complained she was spending too much
money and not making enough. Up to this point I was wondering if she
was just referring to real concerns about the price of houses around the
area where I lived and about the inconvenience of the school location,
or if, behind this manifest narrative, she was referring to something
 T R A N S F O R M AT I O N O F P R E - C O N C E P T U A L T R A U M A S 83

else perhaps related to the proximity of the Christmas break. I said to

her that I was wondering if I was becoming too important for her and
that she was finding this emotional closeness too expensive and even
dangerous, possibly because the upcoming break due to Christmas was
getting closer. She then added that her husband accused her of spend-
ing too much money on her analysis. After a short pause she remem-
bered a dream. She was accompanying her mother to the airport because
she was travelling abroad for Christmas, but when they arrived her mother
informed her that she was travelling alone. She felt so frustrated and enraged
that she pushed her mother to the ground. I felt that my presumption about
her statement that “houses nearby were too expensive and the loca-
tion of the school too dangerous” represented another narrative with
another meaning: “her desire, of getting closer, was expensive and
dangerous”.

Container : Houses near by too expensive School too dangerous,

−K
Contained : Fear of getting cllose Fear of getting close

A forty-two-year-old married woman suffering from ulcerative coli-

tis was trying to become pregnant while working in her analysis on her
difficulty in reaching a vaginal orgasm. She was late for her Monday
appointment, stating that her phone was broken, and she had been to
the shop to change it but they kept her waiting and in the end did not
give her a new phone. She was expecting a call from her husband but
had to call him from another phone. In addition, the basement in her
house was all wet because of the rain; she thinks this is a problem and
would like to sell her house and buy a new one. Her husband wants to
do a major repair that would be too costly, but she would prefer to do
just enough and sell the house. The garage is also a problem because
only one car can be parked in it, usually her husband’s, and there is no
room for hers. I said that I wondered if she was telling me other things,
such as, for instance, that there was no communication between her
head and her body, that her anus-basement got wet (colitis) every time
that it rained (whenever there were conflicts) and that there was no
communication with her vagina-garage either, that only one car-penis
could park (orgasm) because her car-vagina (orgasm) was left out. She
would like to change her body (sell the house) or perhaps change the
analyst, work “just enough” and finish, instead of finding a true solu-
tion that might be too costly.
84 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

Symbolising vs. “killing” the parents

There is, however, one aspect regarding the process of symbolisation
that I would like to consider now in more detail. The incapacity to sym-
bolise strong and unconscious feelings of dependency from idealised
parents represents a common reason for why pre-conceptual traumas
are continuously replicated through repetition compulsion. In other
words, reiteration of early traumas can often stand for the ego’s need to
keep the “internal traumatic parents” alive by continuously reproduc-
ing early emotional links that were originally attached to them. Breaking
away or changing these early emotional links towards the internal par-
ents, with the use of “discontinuous symbolisation”, could represent a
painful and depressive process towards mental growth often difficult
to endure. Parental links are maintained alive with the use of progres-
sive “homeomorphic symbolisations” that will avoid “tearing away”
from internal emotions that were attached to dependency on idealised
parental imagos. “Tearing away” could be regarded as a “true crime”
by a non—discriminating superego that might use this confusion as if
it were a real threat in order to manipulate the ego, creating the illusion
that to break away from early traumas in order to grow mentally, will
mean a true form of parricide and/or matricide.
There are a number of extreme clinical examples in which patients
industriously attack any kind of discontinuous symbolisation in order
to maintain very primitive emotional ties with their mother.14 Similarly,
as described in Chapter Ten on the phenomenology of “Interruption of
therapy and catastrophic change”, I have treated a patient who inter-
rupted therapy as a consequence of her incapacity to use “discontinu-
ous symbolism” in order to break away from her ambivalent feelings
towards her dead mother. I think that the difference between interrup-
tion and termination of the analytic experience will hinge on the capacity
of the ego to deal with the catastrophic change induced by the sub-
stitution of homeomorphic for discontinuous symbolism. This process,
however, is not something that can be taught or achieved intellectu-
ally. It is, above all, something that results as a consequence of mental
growth, similar to how an apple falls from the tree or how secondary
sex characteristics related to gender appear around adolescence.
I have observed in some individuals an inclination to use splitting
as a means of dealing with painful facts that normally, in order to be
properly contained, might require mechanisms of symbolisation. This
 T R A N S F O R M AT I O N O F P R E - C O N C E P T U A L T R A U M A S 85

brings to mind a woman I treated who was the older of two girls and
who was sexually abused by an uncle as a young child. She manifested,
in analysis, bitter feelings against her father whom she often strongly
debased, while at the same time she praised her mother, proclaim-
ing she was his victim, and idealised other men including a teacher
for whom she felt great fondness. She married a man towards whom
she felt very ambivalent, because while she felt she loved him, she
also degraded him and often spoke of her disappointment about her
marriage. After ten years of marriage she had not been able to become
pregnant and now felt that she was not very interested. I found some
contradictions listening to her conscious discourse, because if her feel-
ings about her father were so disgusting and she idealised her mother,
why would she prefer a man instead of a woman as a sexual partner?
I felt perhaps there were some issues not yet clear that could explain her
heterosexual object choice. At one point in the analysis she brought a
dream: Andy, a sweetheart from her adolescence she felt very attracted to, was
coming to the city to visit but told her he was now married and could not get
sexually involved with her. In reality this was not the case, because he was
divorced and single at that moment. I said that if she was really inter-
ested in him why would she create a dream where she made him mar-
ried; perhaps she was talking about someone else she had disguised as
Andy and who is or was married. She immediately said, “You mean,
my father?” “Perhaps”, I answer. Such revelation suggested that her
father was not the diminished figure she had often proclaimed he was,
if after all he was still present in the hub of her desire. I believe that the
sexual molestation inflicted by her relative induced in her an increment
to her oedipal desires of being sexually penetrated by her father, mean-
ing that if her relative was capable of getting sexually interested in her
why not her father? Feeling left out and excluded by her father, who she
felt preferred her younger sister, induced in her a narcissistic rage and a
need to split her father’s image into a “bad-persecutory” and a “good-
idealised” element and to use this mechanism in order to negotiate a
positive (heterosexual) oedipal transaction where she could get mar-
ried without becoming pregnant. It was this splitting that allowed her
in some way to break away from the oedipal father and to be able to
find a male partner. It was as if some aspects of her Oedipus complex
were resolved using a discontinuous form of symbolisation and she
was able to find a man “like her father who was not her father”. How-
ever, not being able at the same time to free herself from her childhood
86 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

desire of an oedipal baby, and failing as well to give up continuous or

homeomorphic forms of symbolisation, she ended up sacrificing her
own maternity. As I have explained, “bivalent part objects” dominate
the mind previous to analytic therapy. Continuous interpretations pro-
duced by the analyst’s alpha function attempt to change “bivalent part
objects” into a total or “univalent” one, by inducing a transformation
from one state of equilibrium to another—a transformation that some-
times might generate a catastrophic change.
CHAPTER SIX

“Deferred action” (“après coup”)

and the emotional interaction between
pre-conceptual and conceptual traumas

“And ever since that,” the Hatter went on in a mournful tone, “he
won’t do a thing I ask! It’s always six o’clock now!”

—Lewis Carroll
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter VII

Introduction
Time and space are different when considered either in the
“traumatised” or in the “non-traumatised” part of the personality,
although they are always running simultaneously parallel to each
other. When the child’s rudimentary ego fails to contain a temporary
loss due to low frustration tolerance that loss can become a traumatic
or a permanent fact. This means that time changes from a linear and dia-
chronic succession of different facts—as existing in the non-traumatised
part—to a circular synchronic repetition of the same, as observed in the
traumatised domain. Bion (1965) said:

The problem does not exist in one dimension only; tolerance

of frustration involves awareness of the presence of absence of

87
88 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

objects, and of what a developing personality later comes to know

as “time” and (as I have described the “position” where the breast
used to be) “space”. The factors that reduce the breast to a point, reduce
time to “now”. (pp. 54–55, my italics)

Using a geometrical configuration, Bion represents the presence of

the absent breast as a point: a space that is equally inside and outside
(projective-introjective identifications), signifying the eternal longing
for the presence of a never fulfilled “now”. Constant attacks on the
“now” (reality) due to low frustration tolerance as a consequence of
the alpha function failing to contain reality’s demands, will induce the
past (the absence of the breast) to turn into a forever present. Instead of
an unknown future continuously becoming, as observed in the non-
traumatised part of the personality, the uncontained absence becomes
an eternal present and future of the past, as observed in the traumatised
part. The consequence of this confusion of the non-traumatised part
being contained by the pre-conceptual trauma will result in space and
time distortions.
Space will be narcissistically configured, in the manner described by
Freud as “primary narcissism”, where inside and outside coincide; also,
the interaction between inner and outer worlds within the dominion
of the traumatised part will be established only by means of projective
and introjective identifications in the manner described by Klein.1
Whereas in the non-traumatised part, the temporary absence
of the object is translated into thoughts and words (Bion, 1967,
pp. 110–119), in the traumatised part, the permanent absence of the
object becomes a presence undistinguishable from the true presence of
that object. For Bion (1965), the space dominated by the presence of the
absence could become a space filled with greed and envy towards the
existing object:

This force is dominated by an envious determination to possess

everything that objects that exist possess including existence itself.
(p. 102)

In relation to time distortions within the traumatised part, there are

at least four well identified “time” phenomena, which Freud regis-
tered as repetition compulsion, transference-countertransference, the
unconscious need to continuously reconstruct the original trauma, and
deferred action. Repetition compulsion is evaluated in detail in Chapter
 “ D E F E R R E D AC T I O N ” A N D E M OT I O N A L I N T E R A C T I O N 89

Eleven, transference-countertransference I have previously considered,2

and “the need to reconstruct original traumas” I have discussed in
Chapter One as “trauma entanglement”. “Deferred action” will be the
subject of the present chapter.

Deferred action
Freud never produced a particular theory about “deferred action” and
only alluded to Nachträglichkeit as a substantive, meaning “what is
postponed”, like a sort of “afterwardness”. As stated by Laplanche and
Pontalis (1967), he used the word very often just as a term and never
as a theory. According to these authors, Lacan (1953) was the first to
draw attention to the notion and created the term après coup in order
to provide corporeity to the idea. In other languages, however, such
as Spanish, Italian, or Portuguese, there is not a precise expression by
which to refer to it, apart from common words such as “posterior” or
“posteriority”, which are so saturated with meanings that they result in
absolute meaninglessness.
Laplanche and Pontalis (ibid.) had this to say about the concept:
In actuality Freud had pointed out from the beginning that the sub-
ject revises past events at a later date (nachträglich), and that it is
this revision which invests them with significance and even with
efficacy or pathogenic force … It is not lived experience in general
that undergoes a deferred revision but, specifically, whatever it
has been impossible in the first instance to incorporate fully into
a meaningful context. The traumatic event is the epitome of such unas-
similated experience. (ibid., p. 112, my italics)

Originally Freud (1895) used the notion of deferred action in the case of
children who were sexual abused (pre-conceptual trauma); an experi-
ence that remained repressed, like an emotional tsunami, and became
symptomatic later on, during adolescence, usually producing a “delay
in puberty”. Another reference Freud made about Nachträglich was in
relation to the case of the “Wolf Man”, where he established a connec-
tion between the primary scene, which according to him took place
around the age of four, and the dream about the wolves when the Wolf
Man was an adult.
Faimberg (2005) has made very important contributions to the con-
cept. She points to other similar ideas such as Winnicott’s (1974) “fear of
breakdown”, something Winnicott described in relation to patients who
90 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

feared a breakdown would unavoidably occur in the future, without

realising, however, that this breakdown had already taken place at a
time when a mind capable of containing it did not exist. Such early
breakdown I have described in this book as “pre-conceptual traumas”.
This concept is very similar to how present realistic facts, sensed as
traumatic, which I have designated as “conceptual traumas”, will auto-
matically trigger—due to a low frustration tolerance—pre-conceptual
traumas from the past. In other words, due to the ego’s low frustration
tolerance, there is a failure in its capacity to discriminate (reality testing)
between uncontained emotions from the present and uncontained emo-
tions elicited from pre-conceptual traumas. Freud (1895, 1918) referred
to this interaction as “‘Nachträglichkeit” or “deferred action” and Lacan
(1953) as “après coup”. Based on the intensity of the emotions involved,
I am now discriminating between two different forms of interaction
(reality testing and pre-conceptual traumas): i) between intense and well
delimited “conceptual” (PTSD) traumas and pre-conceptual traumas,
which can often transcend generational boundaries (Faimberg, 2005);
ii) as an ubiquitous and ongoing subtle interaction between each, simi-
lar to what Freud (1926) once described as “signal theory”. In Chapter
One I referred to this last mechanism as “trauma entanglement”.
In some ways, pre-conceptual traumas will usually contain elements
related to how parents were also traumatised as children, represent-
ing the traumatised states of their personalities. This means that there
is always some kind of “telescoping of generations” involved, because
everybody has been traumatised by their parents in a form similar to
how they will also traumatise their own children; as, for instance, the
“guilt for being alive” found in concentration camp survivors, which
is also observed in descendants up to the third and fourth generations.
It is common to detect that individuals who have been either sexually
or physically abused as children, often inflict similar traumas on their
own offspring. In Chapter Eight, I state that this mechanism is possible
because of false or “negative links” used for communication between
the split elements present in the traumatised part of the personality.
I will now review some clinical material.
Case one: Noreen was a forty-eight-year-old woman in her fourth
month of analysis. She stated that during her annual check-up her doc-
tor had found ulcerations in her rectum compatible with Crohn’s dis-
ease, although it had been completely asymptomatic. She noticed that
whenever she had an argument with anybody she would tighten her
 “ D E F E R R E D AC T I O N ” A N D E M OT I O N A L I N T E R A C T I O N 91

anal sphincter. She was very angry with her mother-in-law after she
felt unfairly accused by her, as well as her uncle because he had not
sided with her. Whenever she thought about either of them, she would
tighten her sphincter: “it is automatic”.
Noreen had been placed for several months with a family who were
unknown to her when she was around three years of age. This pre-
conceptual trauma left important emotional scars that were visible in
the transference-countertransference interaction. She presented a sort
of “as if” personality, always ready to comply and feeling lost in the
other person’s desire. Very often, she handled interpretations as if they
were something absolutely alien to her and provided no response, nei-
ther agreeing nor disagreeing. Frequently, at the next session, she might
refer to that particular interpretation but remain totally uncommitted,
as if it was only my own affair. She might ask a question, for instance:
“Doctor. Yesterday you said ‘this’ and ‘that’, did you means ‘this or
that’?” And I might answer, “Well, I meant ‘that’, what do you think?”
“Oh, nothing, I just wanted to be sure”. I had the feeling she was contin-
uously depriving herself of any right to say anything, always remaining
uncompromised, as if she was still feeling threatened and paralysed
with terror, perpetually living in her mind at the strangers’ house where
she was placed as a child. I pictured her as a little girl, crying profusely
and holding tight to herself her belongings, perhaps a doll.
Around a year after she had been placed, her mother came to fetch
her. I suggested that perhaps her need to please and to comply was
connected to that time, specifically, when she went back to live with
her mother; but it was not clear why she had been given away, if that
could happen again, or why her mother wished to get rid of her in the
first place. I believed she might have been absolutely terrorised at the
threat of being placed again, or even killed. She learned to comply and
to hide her anger in order to survive. The need to comply, her tendency
to tighten her sphincter when she felt resentful, and the asymptomatic
colitis, could have represented her terror about the consequences of
openly expressing her own aggression.
Noreen started a Monday session by saying that she was trying to
recall what I had said the previous Friday, but she could not remember.
She felt some cramps during the weekend that she attributed to her
colitis. I said that perhaps what I had given her was indigestible by
an internal baby that refused to feed from my breast and was daring
to express it by discarding anally what I had fed her previously. Then
92 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

she remembered something she had never spoken about before: around
eight years ago, when she was around forty, she suffered an anaphylac-
tic shock after ingesting food that contained nuts and she almost died;
she could not breathe and was taken to a hospital’s emergency depart-
ment. She noticed that after this incident, she started, for the first time
in her life, to express anger towards her mother, the reason for which
she had not been able to understand. I then said that she had waited
around thirty-seven years to dare express her anger against her mother.
She feared that perhaps I could place her too, but she was still so fright-
ened to express her anger openly that she preferred to use her anus to
silently attack me, instead of doing it aloud with her mouth.
Around a week later, she brought a dream: She was in a room with me,
although it did not look like my office. It was not very nice, was smaller and
of a different colour. I was talking about another patient, saying that she was
foolish. She fell asleep and was awoken by the light from a bulb hanging from
the roof. Then a little dog came into the room and I picked it up and said that
it was very friendly and liked to play with toys. Having said that the room
was not nice, that it was unpleasant, perhaps meant that what took
place in the office was painful, and the comments I made about another
patient could be about her. She associated with the family where she
had been placed as a child as well as my comment that there was in
her an unconscious tendency to project her “placement” everywhere.
I then said that perhaps it was painful for her to wake up. The dog she
associated with an aunt who lives in the United States, who was very
nice to her and who had a dog like the one in her dream. “I don’t like
big dogs because they frighten me, but I do not mind little ones because
those I could frighten”, she said laughingly. I said that perhaps this part
of the dream was related to her attempt to express anger, something
she had not allowed herself to do before. I said the dogs were like two
parts of her, the little frightened one and the angry big one, with the
little one making her feel angry at herself, and the big one making her
feel guilty.
Case two: Mark is a forty-nine-year-old engineer who consulted
because of chronic anxiety. When he was eighteen, he had had a car
accident where he lost most of his scalp, leaving him with a visible scar
and complete baldness. Although these marks were fairly obvious,
he dismissed them as rather inconsequential. For quite some time we
concentrated on childhood recollections and emotions related to early
traumatic experiences, castration anxiety, oedipal conflicts, and so on.
 “ D E F E R R E D AC T I O N ” A N D E M OT I O N A L I N T E R A C T I O N 93

After several years of analysis, there were several important changes

in his personality and significant achievements in his life. However,
there were three main defences that remained unmoved, like three iso-
lated departments in his mind: an intense need to idealise as well as
to intellectualise, together with a religious practice and devotion that
contrasted with his rational and scientific proclivity. I had interpreted
on several occasions that using idealisation and intellectualisation was
perhaps related to a need to rescue himself from painful feelings of
insignificance. About his religiosity, we hypothesised that possibly it
was related to unconscious memories from the time when he had a very
devoted nanny to whom he felt very close. She used to take him to
church regularly, without his parents’ consent, as they had no form of
religious conviction. She was eventually fired, once his mother found
out about the escapades, something that left in him a painful void.
Around this time, I said that it seemed as if there were three “hairy
places” in him: his “idealisation”, his tendency to “intellectualise”,
and his hidden “religious practice”. This interpretation encouraged a
new road of exploration, as if now there was in him enough ego sub-
stance and competence to investigate his accident and the loss of his
hair, which happened at an age when body image and sexuality was
at its peak. Like a modern version of Samson, he experienced this nar-
cissistic injury as a violent form of castration, a punishment from God
that left him absolutely powerless, helpless, and hopeless. He isolated
himself, feeling that no woman would ever be interested in him, resort-
ing to sexual service from massage parlours and prostitutes. Around
this time he had a dream: There was a serial killer who lived in an attic
where he kept his dead mother. He was working as a detective or something of
this sort and managed to come into this attic and saw what appeared to be the
back of the head of an old woman who was sitting in a chair. He came around
and saw that the woman was really a dead bald man. He said the dream
reminded him of the movie Psycho by Hitchcock. I stated that he was
comparable to Norman Bates,3 because like any other serial killer, Bates
was condemned to endlessly kill his mother, for the reason that he was
always failing and she was homeomorphically coming back to life con-
tinuously. Several weeks later he brought the following dream: Someone
was repeatedly knifing him on his chest and he thought in the dream, “Why
is he knifing me if I am already dead?” In his association he remembered
the previous dream about Norman Bates. I said that the “serial killer”
in him keeps killing the already dead “hairless” part of him because he
94 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

has the delusion that through idealisation and religion he is capable of

having his hair back. He keeps killing—meaning feeling always hair-
less, as new—since he really believes that his hair is capable of grow-
ing because of his praying or as a result of the “idealised” other’s nice,
pleasant, or loving approach towards the “hairless” him. It seemed as if
he was trapped in an endlessly tight circularity, where he loses his hair
(castrates himself) out of castration terror, but is capable of growing it
back by being a good boy (religious) but then fears castration and loses
it again, and so on.
CHAPTER SEVEN

Pre-conceptual traumas as the tyrannical

presence of absences

What may the bloody noise do to the silence in which it lies

imprisoned?

—Wilfred Bion
A Memoir of the Future (1991, p. 50)

The tyrannising presence of absences1

There is an implicit tendency in humans to “idealise absences” by pro-
viding inanimate things with qualities of aliveness and depriving human
beings of their true sense of life. Inanimate objects often become a site
of projected “superpowers”, as can be observed in objects of worship,
divination, or idealisation of dead persons. The main reason behind
this propensity seems to be the consequence of the terror induced by
the human presence of inner feelings of dependency, and moreover,
a strong narcissistic need to attack the process of separation and indi-
viduation. Alive objects transmuted into inanimate, or the opposite,
inanimate objects made alive, represent a schizoid-paranoid interac-
tion that attempts to exercise possessiveness and a complete ruling of
the object. It is a conflict usually related to early childhood omnipotent

95
96 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

defences, mostly anal sadistic forms of object control. Different from

faeces, objects that are animated and autonomous have life of their own
and possess a strong need to exercise freedom. It is extremely common
to find patients believing that they are going to be mended by the thera-
pist, following the specifications of some kind of private and idealised
model. The patient takes a rather passive role, acting as an inanimate
object that will be repaired by the analyst, who will in turn be responsi-
ble for any kind of “wrongdoing”. If the analyst acts out (counteracts)
due to his own narcissistic needs, and identifies with the patient’s ideal-
ised phantasy, he could then face the possible complication of a negative
therapeutic reaction or of a self-envy mechanism (López-Corvo, 1995).
In such situations, the analyst could become the target of sadistic super-
ego demands, similar to the reaction displayed by unsatisfied clients
who take their car (inanimate object) to a mechanic. The patient feels
the analyst should perform “the treatment” on them, while they remain
as observers, as if it was a medical consultation (López-Corvo, 2006).
To acquire an inner sense or quality of aliveness, of being completely
different from inanimate objects, or having an absolute awareness of
being unique, of feeling loved for what we are and not for what we
have or do, demands a very difficult experience that entails a painful
process of awareness. There will be present a feeling of inner deadness
and of “non-existence”, usually directed with the use of projective and
introjective identifications towards external as well as internal objects.
This is a dynamic of great importance in the understanding of any form
of pathological depression. Bion (1970) stated:

The patient feels the pain of an absence of fulfilment of his desires.

The absent fulfilment is experienced as a “no-thing”. The emo-
tion aroused by the “no-thing” is felt as indistinguishable from the
“no-thing”. The emotion is replaced by a “no emotion” … “Non-
existence” immediately becomes an object that is immensely hos-
tile and filled with murderous envy towards the quality or function
of existence wherever it is to be found. (pp. 19–20)

Contributions made by Bion about the conceptualisation of “absences”

could be equated to the important input provided to mathematics by
the discovery of “negative” numbers. Thoughts are always set over
the absence of things, always offering a binocular vision, which covers
both its presence as well as the place where the thing used to be. Klein
P R E - C O N C E P T U A L T R AU M A S A S T Y R A N N I CA L P R E S E N C E O F A B S E N C E S 97

granted the absence of the breast a seminal presence, representing a

negative realisation always translated into a series of emotions that con-
solidate as the presence of a “bad breast” and equated in importance
with the true presence of the breast or “good breast”. The absence of the
breast could be experienced as a threat to the child’s integrity, induc-
ing aggression and, therefore, fear of retaliation and a need to split the
breast into “idealised good object” and “denigrated bad object”. The
main purpose of this split is to project the absence (bad object) and
preserve the presence (good object), which has been idealised in order
to resume feeding and avoid starvation. In consequence, of the four
breasts described by Klein only the “good-breast” is real, the other three
(“bad-breast”, “good-idealised breast”, and “bad-persecutory-breast”)
are just absences or shadows of the good one, something I have previ-
ously referred to in Chapters One and Six.
An obsessive patient who harboured murderous phantasies against
his “abandoning” parents, expended lengthy days trying to choose one
music amplifier over another because he felt that to choose one would
imply disregarding the “goodness” of the others. It was not so much
about the “badness” that he might get, but most of all, about the “good-
ness” that he could have missed. Or even better, that the goodness
could not have been acquired without any trace whatsoever of the split
and projected resentment attached to the “absence of the goodness” (or
“badness”), which kept leaking back and inducing the nameless dread
of being amplified to action, meaning murder.
The bad breast will induce serious aggravation that, following Bion
(1965), could produce different reactions depending on the capac-
ity of the ego to tolerate such frustration. It can use evacuative forms
of thoughts or β-elements, capable of being projected into internal or
external objects. It can modify the situation or it might establish a split-
ting between physical (concrete) and mental aspects (abstract). This
third possibility, meaning the splitting between concrete (brain) and
abstract (mind), is often observed in the field of psychoanalysis. I have
previously referred to this aspect as “murdering of the mind” (López-
Corvo, 2006). For Bion, “abstraction” is a factor produced by alpha func-
tion, while “concreteness” is associated with beta elements, which are
remarkable for their concreteness, to a point where some patients regard
words not as the names of things but as things-in-themselves. Finally,
it can create a thought by mating a pre-conception with a conception or
negative realisation of the absent object, representing, for instance, the
98 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

mental mechanisms that take place when the analyst manages to grasp
the unconscious phantasy present in the manifest content, or when the
patient is capable of achieving an insight.
I believe the superego is the product of successive identifications
resulting from the accumulation of “tyrannical presence of absences”,
while the ego results from the capacity to identify with the good
object. The conscious and non-traumatised state of the mind has to
deal with reality, concrete objects, and realisations, while the trauma-
tised and unconscious state relates to a world of complex absences
or “no-things”. The world of reality requires alpha elements based
on true knowledge and acceptance of that reality or plus knowledge
(+K), while the unconscious chain of events that structure the pre-
conceptual trauma follows a logic based on a kind of pseudo causality
or chain of beta elements, that Bion, following David Hume, referred
to as “constant conjunction”.2 This form of pseudo causality would
be considered as a minus knowledge (−K) or a continuous association
of no-things or absences that are joined together following a mecha-
nism I have named “homeomorphic symbolisation” (see Chapter Five).
The mind’s intolerance of mental pain induced by the presence of
“no-things” will trigger the need to be free from the accretion of stim-
uli, using beta elements which are good only for evacuation, by means
of projective identification and acting out. These projective identifica-
tions are directed towards either external or internal objects, as seen in
psychosomatic pathology.3
Bion (1965, p. 54) represented the absence of the breast with a point
(.) and the absence of the penis with a line ( ___ ) symbolising a mark
where the breast or penis used to be but where they are no longer,
similar to a mark, or

… stigmas (στιγμι), an ephemeral spot analogous to a staccato

mark in a musical score. It would correspond to a breast that has
been reduced to a simple position, to the place where the breast
was, but disappeared consumed by greed or because splitting has
destroyed it leaving only its position, its (στιγμι). (López-Corvo,
2003, pp. 189–190)

Bion related the notion of “no-thing” to space and of “no-present”

to time, as the place where something used to be, or the time when
something used to happen. “Words”, as well as “money”, for instance,
P R E - C O N C E P T U A L T R AU M A S A S T Y R A N N I CA L P R E S E N C E O F A B S E N C E S 99

symbolise “no-things”, the representation of absent things, different

from “nothing”, or, as Bion states, “a thing can never be unless it is
both, is, and is not” (ibid.). After all, words that signal the object—or
money that signals the work—are just symbols that represent them but
are not the real object (see Chapter Five). He also presented this idea in
a different vein: “a thing cannot exist in the mind alone: nor can a thing
exist unless at the same time there is a corresponding no-thing” (1965,
pp. 102–103), meaning that −. (minus point) and +. (plus point) coin-
cide; like Shakespeare’s Falstaff, if there is no-thing the thing must exist.
The “no-thing” has taken the vacant space of the thing, or of that space
that should have been occupied by it or that it is a saturated space with
“no-thing” (López-Corvo, 2003, pp. 194–195). The psychoanalyst must
develop binocular vision, observing at once the presence and the absence
of an object; it is a form of vision absent in psychotic patients or in the
traumatised state of the personality, because thinking is dominated by
“symbolic equations”.
The “presence of an absence” always instigates a tyrannical search
for the “presence” of that object which was once possessed and
then lost, creating an unconscious state of “awareness” or alertness
towards its search. Bion (1965, p. 109) named it “Cs” or “conscious
awareness” (see López-Corvo, 2003, p. 64), different from the concept
of “consciousness” used by Freud. It is similar to the awareness of an
insect that, driven by phototropism,4 searches for the light:

This “consciousness”, is an awareness of a lack of existence that

demands an existence, a thought in search of a meaning, a defini-
tory hypothesis in search of a realization approximating to it, a psy-
che seeking for a physical habitation to give existence, [container]
seeking [contained]. (Bion, 1965, p. 109)

Tropism in this sense means the inclination towards certain kinds of

lost and idealised object relations that will induce intrusive forms of
projective identifications. A patient had unconsciously “searched” all
of his life, for the “idealised lost mother” he once had before his sister
was born when he was three years old. In the course of forty-three years
he had not only divorced three times, but had also moved a total of
thirty-two times: sometimes within the same city, others to neighbour-
ing towns, to other countries, and even to different continents. He once
described himself as a “dedicated hunter of absences”.
100 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

Pre-conceptual traumas as tyrannical presence of absences

As I have previously stated, “pre-conceptual traumas” represent the
tyrannical presence of primeval absences. I am using the term “pre-
conceptual” as similar to the notion of Plato’s theory of Forms repre-
senting the “thing-in-itself”. Whereas the confusion between absence
and presence is sustained by the ascendancy of the traumatised (psy-
chotic) state of the personality, the differentiation would result from the
control of the non-traumatised (non-psychotic) state (Bion, 1967). The
alpha function present in the non-traumatised state would be responsi-
ble for discriminating between the presence and absence of the object,
between unconscious and conscious, dreaming and being awake, past
and present, inner and outer worlds, reality and pleasure principles,
between inanimate and animate, and so on. To understand this further
we can consider the case of Lyla, a fifty-five-year-old, single woman
who consulted because of marijuana dependency and, according to
her, “unresolved mourning” resulting from the break-up of a long-term
romantic relationship with a woman. She appeared as very manly, in
her attire as well as her looks: had short hair, lacked make up, carried
no purse but a wallet in her back pocket, and so on. She came across
as a pleasant, lively, intelligent, and verbal person, who in contrast
responded with intense sadness and despair when the subject of loneli-
ness was pointed out. I interpreted the splitting and disparity between
an overt social and imaginative element and another which was sad,
helpless, and hopeless, and which remained private and shamefully
concealed.
Lyla was the third of four children, two older sisters and a younger
brother. There were strong feelings of hate and rivalry towards this
brother three years her junior, who she described as a “total failure,
I have done much better than he did in my work, and financially”. I had
the feeling of a strong phallic envy. In Latin America, boys are more
privileged than girls, so it is quite possible that her parents could have
rapidly switched their interest and narcissistic attachment from Lyla to
her younger brother, but with such a brutality that the violence still ech-
oed in the transference, as well as in her appearance and demeanour.
There was, for instance, an extreme and intense ambivalence between a
strong need for dependency and terror experienced from this need. I felt
that her “dependency” represented her relationship with her mother
before her brother was born, while her “fear” was connected with the
P R E - C O N C E P T U A L T R AU M A S A S T Y R A N N I CA L P R E S E N C E O F A B S E N C E S 101

“loss” of her mother she experienced afterwards. The absence, in other

words, has been split between an overt part representing a masculine
idealised penis element and another concealed part, depicting a femi-
nine, shameful, castrated, degraded-vagina element.
Lyla’s abandoning friend—described as beautiful and very
feminine—simply by sustaining a relationship with her, provided sub-
stance for Lyla’s delusion of having a penis, as her brother and father
had. Such delusion allowed her to “regain” back and provide a presence
to her lost and idealised mother, using a geographical zone confusion
between the breast and the penis. Unfortunately, the disappearance of
her friend re-opened the original loss. The need to fulfil the absence of
a penis by creating the delusion of its presence was a privilege attested
by the Other’s estimation, meaning by her “beautiful and feminine”
cohort’s sole decision of staying with her. She recalled, for instance,
how when travelling together, they would visit a bar where Lyla sat
separately in order to watch when some guy, motivated by her friend’s
looks, would approach her. Lyla would wait for some time to allow
their interaction to kindle, then Lyla would appear and take her friend
away, allowing him to see that they were lovers, and laugh in triumph
as she felt he was the “castrated brother” and she the one possessed of
“the powerful penis”. When her friend broke up with Lyla, she did not
lose just a partner, but the certification she used to have of not being the
castrated woman whom she hated so much, but the male she idealised
and wished to be. Such a need to continuously disavow the “absence”
of a penis—the reality of being a woman—induced the need for a com-
pensatory psychotic phantasy of having one, of the “tyrannical pres-
ence of an absence”, a condition that fatalistically established the way
she had lived all her life. I think that behind homosexuality there is
a failure in the capacity to symbolise5 unconscious elements resulting
from identification with parents of the opposite gender: the feminine in
the male homosexual and the masculine in the female.

The “stone guest”: the element seldom invited to the couch

I am using here the idea of the “stone guest” from the 1600 Spanish
play “El Burlador de Sevilla” (“The Trickster of Seville”)6 where Don
Juan decides to invite Don Gonzalo’s ghost for dinner—Don Gonzalo
has already been killed by him in a duel—and the phantom suddenly
appears at the dinner table in the form of a statue. I consider this
102 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

metaphor useful in following the dynamics of certain “negativistic”

aspects of the self that are split off, concealed, and “uninvited” from
the analytic enquiry, resulting in defended strongholds useful only as
material for dreams, parapraxis, and projective identifications. These
restrictions often linger in the training of some psychoanalytic insti-
tutes, and are possibly responsible afterwards for the inclination of
some psychoanalytic members towards a more theoretical than a clini-
cal concern; after all, Bion (1967, p. 118) stated that the interpretation
represents a form of “public-ation” (public-action?) that attempts to
make the unconscious (private) conscious (public).
I am referring to forms of pre-conceptual traumas that can manufac-
ture significant ego splits. For instance, the split between a manifest,
present, “complying” element, and its correlation, a hidden, unin-
vited “negativistic” aspect, that has been sometimes confused with
Winnicott’s (1960) concept of “true self” (López-Corvo, 2006a). I have
previously considered this polarisation as a central splitting always
present in almost all kinds of psychopathology:

In summary we have: A) A “complying false self” that attempts to

deceive an imaginary castrator projected into the object, by provid-
ing the object with what he believes the other wants. This false sub-
self is related to early oral fixations. B) The other “negativistic false
self”, is hidden, revengeful and related to anal sadistic early object
relations, usually determining certain forms of acting out. This
negativistic false self is the complete opposite of the complying
false self. Between the two false selves a paranoid-schizoid sort of
circularity takes place, where a great need to comply and deceive,
induces castration anxiety and fear of “fusing” with the external
object, of just becoming the others’ wish and changing into a lie.
This fear increases the need for a negativistic false self, as a way of
attacking the castrator and providing an identity, even if it were a
negative and false one. (Ibid., p. 36)

A female patient who presented an extreme form of complying false

self, once conveyed the following dream:7 I was walking with a suitcase,
like a tourist, through an unknown city. I came by this place that was adver-
tised, or someone was talking about. I went up these steps that went to the body
of a woman who had killed herself by turning herself inside out. Especially
her face was inside out. It sounds horrible to me but I went. The body was
P R E - C O N C E P T U A L T R AU M A S A S T Y R A N N I CA L P R E S E N C E O F A B S E N C E S 103

in the back. And I talked to her, and asked her how could you be doing this?
I got down and remembered I had forgotten something like a parcel and I had
to go back … but now the steps were a ladder and it was hard for me to climb
because I had this attaché case. A man helped me, but I never looked at the
body of the woman who turned herself inside out. The “unknown city” rep-
resented her fear of meeting the unexpected, as well as a failure of her
“omnipotent control”. “A place that was advertised or someone talking
about it” meant that in her mind, this place was very relevant. “Going
upstairs” requires associations from the patient, although I think it may
have symbolised something connected with her mind (upstairs) and
representing the part that was more “damaged”. To “commit suicide”
by “turning herself”—mostly her head—“inside out”, represented,
I believe, an amazing choice made by the unconscious in order to char-
acterise the “complying false self”, meaning the danger to the true self
of “disappearing” by turning herself into her analyst’s desire. We had no
associations about what could be inside the “suitcase” or the “parcel”
she forgot; we might, however, infer that perhaps the content of these
items could have represented hidden aspects of the “negativistic false
self”, or scattered bits from the “true self” that have never been linked
together.
This splitting represents a replication of a more primitive one, result-
ing from the baby’s early splitting of the breast, between good and bad
(Klein, 1946), then projecting the bad and idealising the good in order
to resume feeding and to avoid death from starvation; something Bion
(1962) referred to as “enforced splitting” (pp. 10–11). In this way the ide-
alised breast from which the baby sucks, is linked with oral needs, while
the bad one the baby tries to do away with, is confused with destruc-
tive aspects related to offensive secretions such as urine and faeces.
Homeomorphic progression of the idealised breast would evolve into
an overt attitude of complying, related to oral mechanisms, while the
bad breast’s homeomorphic development changes into concealed oral or
anal negativism, usually repressed or projected into the external object.
There is also a polarisation of affects between both false selves: while
the complying induces anxiety and anger for fear of “vanishing” inside
the external object’s desire and becoming a “no-thing”, the negativis-
tic produces guilt because of envious and hidden (oral, anal) attacks
performed in phantasy against the good object. Complying could also
represent a kind of protection of the object (breast) from murderous
impulses and total extinction; because to privilege the other’s desire
104 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

over the self’s (López-Corvo, 1995, p. 130) can only be achieved by

attacking the individual’s own initiative, his capacity to think, or his
mind’s alpha function. Thinking, or +K (knowledge), is sensed by these
patients as something highly subversive and deadly dangerous to the
object, resulting in a need to benefit the external object’s desire by pro-
jecting the alpha function into it. This mechanism is also present in the
transference as the need to “borrow” the “thinking mind” from the ana-
lyst. It can be observed, for instance, in phobias—now referred to as
“panic attacks”—where someone might feel terrified when facing an
otherwise innocuous situation, such as a little spider, a cat, or a mouse,
as if there was not a mind capable of reassurance that such harmless
animals represent no danger. Instead, these individuals require assist-
ance from another mind, or alpha function, fit to contain such unrea-
sonable anxiety.
In the consulting room, the need to comply always masquerades as
a negativistic element, inducing a condition compatible with Bion’s
description of the “reversible perspective”,8 where there could be an
important emotional and cognitive discrepancy between where the
analyst and the patient observe the same phenomenon from. The ana-
lyst could sense “complying” as an expression of a “good” working
alliance where there is no need to investigate further signs of aggression
or envy, which will remain as the hidden “uninvited guests”. At other
times, when the “negativistic” repressed element surfaces, it could be
confused with the emergence of a “true self”, in Winnicott’s sense, and
the analyst could collude instead of continuing the investigation further,
judging that the analysis had ended.9 The conflict, said Bion (1963),

… is therefore kept out of discussion because it is confined to a

domain which is not regarded as an issue between the analyst
and analysand … the disagreement between analyst and analy-
sand is apparent only when the analysand appears to have been
taken unawares; there is a pause while he carries out readjustment.
(pp. 54–55)

To know that there is a universal polarisation between complying

and negativistic behaviour, helps the analyst to remain alert about the
importance of additional exploration. We should pay special attention
to statements such as “I don’t have anything to say now”, which could
represent an attack on free association, as if the superego discriminates
P R E - C O N C E P T U A L T R AU M A S A S T Y R A N N I CA L P R E S E N C E O F A B S E N C E S 105

between issues allowed to be shared in therapy and things which are

not, because, after all, the brain is like a spring, always emanating
thoughts. Or the expression “I am sitting up today because I don’t feel
like having a session”, or “I want to say something that has nothing to
do with the session”, as if it was possible to have a session outside of
the session that might “not count”! Also, there is the question: “Where
were we at the last session?” leaving out whatever the patient might
have experienced between sessions. There are certain patients that com-
pulsively use the bathroom either before or after sessions, as if there
was the unconscious desire to leave something out before coming into
therapy or to disembarrass themselves from interpretations given dur-
ing the session. In relation to this matter, Bion (1974a) stated:

… according to Melanie Klein, infants split off at an early age

(or think they do) and get rid of (or think they do) in the way
that they learn to get rid of urine because it is not milk, and fae-
ces because it is not good to eat. One neither drinks nor eats one’s
mind, but the habit of splitting off can continue; there can still be a
wish to say, “I don’t want to have anything to do with all the bad
stuff that I have ever got rid of”. The analyst is saying “Do have a
look at this bad stuff; do have a look at the stuff which you have
thought is bad at some time in your life and have tried to get rid
of”. In psycho-analytic practice “looking at” is inseparable from
experiencing “turbulence”.10 (p. 67)

Some of these unresolved issues can be observed also during supervi-

sion of psychoanalytic candidates. A female psychotherapist struggled
with a young single man who used a strong narcissistic erotic transfer-
ence in order to exercise control and revenge over an internal maternal
object projected into the therapist. He came to therapy after giving up a
previous therapist because, according to him, he felt a strong physical
attraction towards her, possibly as a form of acting out due to the pres-
sure of similar transference feelings. It became obvious that the therapist
was dealing with narcissistic issues of her own that induced her to col-
lude by stimulating the patient’s erotic transference, in order for her to
gratify infantile erotic needs from an eroticising internal father. Because
of the danger of acting out, I strongly advised her to bring the situation
into her own analysis, since I had the feeling that her narcissistic need
to collude represented unresolved oedipal desires of her own. Another
106 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

case was that of a female candidate who found it very thorny to analyse
pathology related to female penis envy and homosexuality, as well as
another candidate who found difficulties dealing with destructive envy
in an obsessive patient. I wonder if cases such as these, of candidates
whose analysis did not help them to deal with split elements that could
have been acted out in the analysis of the candidate’s patients, could
later be responsible for the lack of clinical material in major presenta-
tions taking place in their respective psychoanalytic societies. In this
sense, Bion has hyphenated the word “public-ation” possibly attempt-
ing to say “public-action”, or the action of making public something
private. The interpretation, in this sense, represents a form of publica-
tion in the analyst’s attempt to make conscious (public) what has been
unconscious (private) (López-Corvo, 2003).
I will now use clinical material from a patient to illustrate how cor-
related bivalent11 emotions linked to bivalent part objects, slide or move
and are progressively uncovered with interpretation, in order to reach
the presence of absent primary objects, such as the penis or the breast.
Delia was an eighteen-year-old woman who came for consultation
because of a reactive depression after her mother was killed in a car
accident. She had always lived with her mother after her parents sepa-
rated when she was around four years of age. Two years ago, however,
she decided to move in with her father and stepmother. “I grew up,”
she stated at her first session, “travelling between my parents’ houses.”
Even though her father and stepmother were both well known analysts,
she was always resistant to engaging in any form of psychotherapy.
That is, until now, after she started to decompensate because of her
mother’s sudden death, becoming very anxious, irritable, and finally
depressed. She described her father as too rigid, very bright but distant,
and her mother as very warm, kind but stupid. When at the beginning
of her analysis, perhaps identifying with her dead mother, I showed a
rather understanding and kind attitude, Delia responded with criticism
expressing some doubts about my ability as a therapist. Afterwards it
became clear that she had reacted to an internal dissociation related to
the differences she had experienced while moving between both of her
parents’ homes. For instance, when she was a child she used to travel
by bus from one house to the other whenever she felt frustrated about
something. If, while staying at her father’s home, something happened
that made her feel rejected, she then journeyed immediately to her
mother’s house. As she travelled in the bus, she would continuously
P R E - C O N C E P T U A L T R AU M A S A S T Y R A N N I CA L P R E S E N C E O F A B S E N C E S 107

denigrate her father by saying he was a bastard, cold, detached, and

didn’t care about her. But if, after being at her mother’s place for a while,
she again felt disappointed, she would go back to her father’s place, but
again thinking her mother was stupid, weak, sentimental, and so on. In
this manner, denigrated part objects interchanged with idealised ones:
when the father was disparaged the mother was idealised and vice
versa, always protecting herself from the possibility of being excluded.
Whenever she felt the threat of being left out, she always resorted to
the geographical distance provided by the separation of both parents.
However, the denigrated object left behind became a persecutor that
threatened her with guilt, a condition she resolved by establishing a
complicity with the idealised parent she then travelled to. The failure of
this mechanism, brought about by her guilt in relation to her mother’s
sudden death, was responsible for her present symptomatology.
During her therapy, some of these elements were projected: if she
considered I was silent for too long, she might remark I was just like
her father, cold and distant. If, on the contrary, I interpreted some-
thing she did not agree with, she accused me of being weak and sen-
timental. At the second session after returning from Easter holidays,
she commented that her professor of psychology was stupid, did not
know how to express herself, and only talked “pure shit.” Also, she
had a new boyfriend with whom she felt great, and because of this new
relationship and the fact that she had some tests to write at school, she
informed me that she was going to reduce the number of sessions. Then
she told me about a poet whom she admired “a lot” and presented me
with a nice poem that depicted a farewell, adding that she did not wish
to tell me about her relationship with her boyfriend because she wanted
to keep it a secret.
It seemed as if she was repeating in the transference an interaction
similar to the one she had experienced with her parents. She was trying
to move away from a “stupid-pure-shit” part object now projected in
me, while “travelling” towards an idealised “great-boy-friend”—a situ-
ation precipitated by my absence during the holidays and associated
with her mother’s death. I then thought that there could be a third
space, a secret and autoerotic place between the two part objects, the
bad and the idealised, perhaps corresponding to the time she stayed in
the bus while moving from one house to the other. Bivalent part objects
travelled also in her inner world from one extreme—the anus (pure
shit)—to the other extreme—her head as a “beautiful intellectual poet”.
108 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

The bus could have represented a space where a secret and autoerotic
metamorphosis was established. At the same time as she was travelling,
she was incorporating through her senses (orally, visually), the now
idealised parent she was approaching, while at the same time expelling
anally the bad denigrated one she was leaving “behind”. This was also
the model she was using now to deal with her mourning: destroying
the pain in bits, and expelling it anally through the transference, while
at the same time establishing a narcissistic fusion with her boyfriend as
the ideal object. This circular narcissistic structure that she had learned
and used for survival, and which was uncannily successful until this
moment, facilitated her attempt to deal with any pain and exclusion.
The main complication, I told her, was the danger of remaining alone
because her fear of being hurt could always force her to look for some-
one else.
CHAPTER EIGHT

Negative and positive links as a form

of communication in the traumatised
and non-traumatised states (TS N-TS)

Communication in traumatised and non-traumatised

states using negative links
Bion (1992) described the existence of three different “mental spaces”:
the “beta” (β), the “alpha” (α), and the “sigma” (∑) space. The first is
made up of beta elements representing “unthought thoughts” or “wild
thoughts”, which remain in waiting for a mind capable of providing a
meaning. The “alpha space” refers to reality, as it is perceived by the
senses, with its spectrum of ultra-real and infra-real. “Sigma” repre-
sents the space of intuition that Bion (1992) has referred to as follows:

I am supposing that there is a psycho-analytic domain with its

own reality—unquestionable, constant, subject to change only in
accordance with its own rules even if those rules are not known.
These realities are “intuitable” if the proper apparatus is available
in the condition proper to its functioning. Equally, there are certain
minimum conditions necessary for its exercise … The conditions
in which the intuition operates (intuits) are pellucid and opaque.
I have already indicated that from the intuitor’s vertex opacities …

109
110 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

can be given names. These are: memory, desire, and understanding.

All are opacities obstructing “intuition”. (p. 315)

What I have deemed the “traumatised state” is part of “beta space”,

which is organised according to the paranoid-schizoid position and
communicates by means of projective-introjective identifications and
false or negative links because any emotional link established by means
of projection is always fallacious. The “non-traumatised state” corre-
sponds to “alpha space”, is structured in concurrence with the depres-
sive position, and communicates using true emotions or positive links
related to real or total objects.
I now consider the presence of an important form of communica-
tion between split parts based on the existence of false or negative links.
Bion said little about this subject—like minus hate (−H) and minus love
(−L)—in comparison to what he said about minus knowledge (−K). He
associated them to the “absence of something”, although it is not clear
what exactly that “something” meant to Bion (1963):

The first problem is to see what can be done to increase scientific

rigor by establishing the nature of minus K (−K), minus L (−L), and
minus H (−H). (pp. 51–52)

Negative links represent forms of communication between different

internal split elements within the “traumatised state” that could even-
tually become transference’s stuff, good to be used only as projective
identifications. For instance, “negative transference” and “erotic trans-
ference” are not “true hate” or “true love” (positive links), but expres-
sions of fictitious (false) sentiments, or negative links such as −H and −L
respectively, which have been displaced and projected. Positive links,
on the other hand, are associated with real objects and alpha elements.
Negative links barricade split parts, filling them up with suspicious-
ness and distrust, impeding any possibility of integration by preserv-
ing the necessary distance Klein had already described between the
good and bad objects. Positive links flourish with mental growth and
are present in the depressive position and the non-traumatised state of
the personality.
About minus K (−K), Bion said more, like the dynamic observed
in what Bion describes as “reversible perspective”, a condition where
both patient and therapist run on parallel dimensions without ever
really communicating with each other, a sort of “dialogue between
 N E G AT I V E A N D P O S I T I V E L I N K S A S A F O R M O F C O M M U N I CAT I O N 111

deaf”. Minus K also represents the central mechanism present in

intellectualisation as a form of defence. About this Bion said the
following:

Interpretations are part of K. The anxiety lest transformation in K

leads to transformation in O is responsible for the form of resist-
ance in which interpretations appear to be accepted but in fact the
acceptance is with the intention of “knowing about” rather than
“becoming”. (1965, p. 160)

I would like to use the case of a patient I have previously referred to:

A thirty-two-year-old patient, the last of three brothers, remembered

being sent away when very small to a summer camp. Although he
remembers little about the event, feelings appearing in the trans-
ference showed that it was a very traumatic experience. He only
remembered two situations: that he was always carrying a camera
with him, to the point that he was nicknamed “little camera”, and
that he had a dream where he saw a car with someone inside, that
was pushed away by the powerful stream of a nearby river, which
in reality was a dry water bed. Motivated by the memory of the
camera he searched family albums for pictures and felt rather bewil-
dered after finding nothing. It was then interpreted that the camera
he carried had just that purpose, to make sure he would remem-
ber nothing, it was a “minus camera”, to photograph absences and
forgetfulness (−K) as the only mean to make sure something was
completely forgotten [being sent away] in order to avoid a terri-
ble mental pain. He wished not to photograph the presence of the
absent breast, or what Bion would refer as a “minus point”: (−.).
(López-Corvo, 2003, p. 180)

At one point, he got curious about the real truth of these memories and
decided to visit the summer camp several years later.

He found the place very different, invaded by “delinquents” and

when he called the door, two “murderous dogs” appeared. I then
said that perhaps the picture he did not wish to take was the inva-
sion of his memories with “murderous violence” because of the
impotence he then experienced when send away; the only picture
taken that remained, was the car with someone inside (his parents?
112 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

brothers who stayed at home?), which was being carried away, but
not to be ever carried away. (Ibid.)

Communication using negative links

I can think of at least four forms of communication using negative
links:

i. with external objects by means of projected–introjected

identifications and correlated, bivalent part objects
ii. with corporal organs or parts of the body
iii. intrapsychically, between ego and superego elements
iv. intrapsychically, between the traumatised and the non-traumatised
states.

Negative links as a form of communication with external objects

using projected–introjected, correlated, bivalent part objects
These part objects are “bivalent” in the sense that they carry within
themselves mirror-like affects that oppose but correlate with each
other, creating a condition responsible for these objects to compulsively
and endlessly repeat in a sort of perpetual or “circular argument”.
Traumatic events are always experienced as a threat to the child’s integ-
rity, inducing aggression and, as a consequence, fear of retaliation and
a need to split the breast into “idealised good object” and “denigrated
bad object”. The main purpose of this split is to project the bad and
preserve the good, which has been idealised in order to resume feeding
and avoid starvation.
A patient might act “self-sufficient” (ideal object), as a defence
against the terror of being “needy” or “dependent” (bad object), an
element that will be projected into the analyst. In this case the patient
might delay payment, take holidays ahead of the analyst, come late
for the sessions, and so on. In other words, there will be a correlation
between both bivalent extreme emotions: “self-sufficient” and “depend-
ent”. A similar situation takes place in other correlations or reciprocal
dynamics. If someone is dealing with oedipal issues, for instance, the
correlation could be established between an “excluded” part that will
induce inner feelings such as “depression”, “resentfulness”, “envy”,
and so on, versus another correlated part feeling “included” that will
 N E G AT I V E A N D P O S I T I V E L I N K S A S A F O R M O F C O M M U N I CAT I O N 113

induce emotions such as “manic triumph”, “contempt”, and “guilt”.

At other moments, the correlation could be between “complying” and
“negativistic”, or between “feminine” and “masculine”, “exhibitionistic”
and “voyeuristic”, and so on.

Negative links as a form of communication with corporal

organs or parts of the body
When dealing with psychosomatic disturbances, we could consider
Henry Maudsley’s famous maxim—”The sorrow which has no vent in
tears may make other organs weep”—as a masterful summary of psy-
chosomatic dynamics.
Case one: A man I once had in analysis was born after his older
brother had died from tuberculosis as a baby. He complained about
having “weak lungs”, and often suffered from colds and twice devel-
oped pneumonia. After several years of analysis, it became clear that his
somatic disturbances were related to his mother’s excessive overprotec-
tion, as she feared losing him too, an attitude he sensed as an expres-
sion of weakness on her part that induced in him the unconscious and
omnipotent desire to control her with his symptoms, behind his father’s
back. His mother’s great concern about how he breathed, of his body
temperature and so on, made him intuitively aware of how she privi-
leged the physiology of his lungs. He remained trapped in his endless
use of somatic symptomatology as a form of secret and incestuous lan-
guage to subdue the fearful mother imago from those early years. He
continued unconsciously to maintain, with his lungs, the same dialogue
he once had as a child with his mother. This condition was present in
the transference as a form of continuous and endless complaining, sug-
gesting the crying of a helpless child.

Negative links as a form of intrapsychic communication

between ego and superego elements
The first form of communication, which I have just referred to, between
the self and external objects, is a direct consequence of internal com-
munications that take place between internal part objects, which can
be projected into external objects by means of projective-introjective
identifications. Ego elements are often projected in the transference,
as when patients project into the analyst unconscious beta elements
114 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

together with the alpha function or thinking mind capable of containing

and metabolising them. Instead of using their own reasoning and com-
mon sense, they project it in order to maintain dependency. Projection
of intrapsychic communication between superego and ego elements is
also very commonly observed in the consulting room.
I have previously considered this form of intrapsychic interaction
as being responsible for mechanisms of “self-envy”1 (López-Corvo,
1992, 1995, 1999), which consist of a kind of intrapsychic interaction
between an envious child-part-object and a powerful and creative
adult-part-object. These elements are internal representations incor-
porated very early in life as introjective identifications taking place
between a “helpless-envious child” and “powerful-creative parents”.
In other words, “self-envy”, in the way I conceive it, also represents a
form of negative link, a minus H (−H) to be more precise. I also think
there is always an important amount of envy from the traumatised part
towards the non-traumatised one. Bion (1962), for instance, stated that

[a]ttacks on alpha-function, stimulated by hate or envy, destroy

the possibility of the patient’s conscious contact … with himself …
(p. 9)
… Envy aroused by a breast, understanding, experience and
wisdom, poses a problem that is solved by destruction of alpha-
function. (p. 11)

I have previously referred (López-Corvo, 1992, 1995, 1999, 2003) to

important incongruities present in the lives of some well known indi-
viduals, such as Michel Jackson, Whitney Houston, Maradona, Conrad
Black, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, and so on,
who, after attaining a significant reputation, do something that jeop-
ardises their fame. I have interpreted this discrepancy as a corollary of
a splitting resulting from an envious interaction between different part
objects composing the Oedipus structure. Let us suppose, for instance,
that there is an important increment in the amount of envy that a child,
who is feeling excluded, experiences towards his parents, and that this
envy is mostly directed to what the child acknowledges as feelings of
harmony, love, sexuality, creativity, communication, etc., between the
parental couple. As the years go by, these feelings can become idealised
and remain in the self as “foreign” elements not completely assimilated
by the ego. When these children grow up and become adults, just like
 N E G AT I V E A N D P O S I T I V E L I N K S A S A F O R M O F C O M M U N I CAT I O N 115

their parents were, the envious element that remains unassimilated

inside can again be reactivated, but this time, however, such elements
previously envied in the parents are now part of themselves. This
condition is always reflected in the transference as a sustained attack
against idealised links between analyst and patient, experienced as a
“creative”, “productive”, and “harmonious” analytic couple. This situ-
ation could either turn into a “negative therapeutic reaction”, or induce
a premature disruption of treatment. We shall make use of some clinical
material:
Case one: Hanna was an attractive thirty-year-old, single, the young-
est and only girl of three siblings. Although she had a degree in child
psychology, she had never worked and was financially dependent on
her parents with whom she lived. The predominant unconscious phan-
tasy was that of a total paralysis, often replicated in the transference-
countertransference dimension. A very primitive and sadistic superego
constantly watched over a very submissive ego, as if it were imple-
menting the motto “damned if you do, damned if you don’t”. Usually
interpretations were experienced as some kind of aggression or unfair
criticism, inducing an endless need to justify her behaviour; it was a
defence to protect herself from guilt because of hidden and envious
attacks on her older brothers whom she felt were privileged by her
parents. As a defence there was confusion between phantasy and real-
ity, and some matters she wished to accomplish were just taken for
granted as some kind of delusion: it was enough to imagine it in order
to obtain it. She referred to ideas about marvellous enterprises or won-
derful business interactions as if they were already a fact, inducing the
countertransference feeling that she was “doing everything in order to
end up doing nothing”; a kind of phenomenology compatible with the
myth of Sisyphus.2 At one point she referred to a boyfriend, a musician
with whom she identified, who was unemployed, marijuana-addicted
like her, and who composed a song he named “Gonorrhoea” that was
so obscene that he was not allowed to sing it. At the same time, there
was another split element related to sexuality that Hanna seldom
brought to the couch: she had a significant motivation and creativity to
seduce young and attractive men. She registered on university courses
or visited tourist places with the sole purpose of finding possible sexual
partners, who presented a common denominator: not very ambitious,
younger, and socially and intellectually inferior. These were condi-
tions that provided her with enough ambivalence to allow her to then
116 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

disregard them with ease. Once she ended these relations she would
usually call them to find out if they were dating other women, and if
suspicious of such a possibility, she would react with rage, in spite of
the fact that she was continuously unfaithful. They must be always at
her disposal and ready to attend to her calls as if they were not to have
a life of their own, like “dead pieces of nothing”. She feared the dimen-
sion of the others, their initiative, profundity, and individuality. It was
like a penis containing a man, where only the penis was important, like
a fetish, the rest being easily disregarded. It was an intense, destructive,
murderous, and envious element that attacked her older brothers who
she felt were all privileged just because they were men; she then feared
retaliatory attacks that paralysed her. Intrapsychically, she attacked
her femininity and idealised her masculine identifications, in order to
exercise revenge against men, as a homeomorphic representation of her
father and siblings.
Case two: A young patient, the older of two boys, suffering from a
toxic psychosis induced by the chronic use of marijuana, was brought
for treatment. The parents explained that while at university he had
confessed to his mother that he could become homeless and survive on
his own just by eatingpigeons from the campus, something his mother
found a bit peculiar. Later he travelled to Europe, backpacking, but after
having no news for a while, his parents decided to go and fetch him.
They found him in a deplorable state of emaciation and filthiness. Some-
time later, he journeyed to Germany just for the weekend, remaining
the whole time inside the airport. Another time he disappeared for four
days, which he spent driving aimlessly for a distance of several hundred
miles. At one point, his parents confiscated his passport in order to stop
him from travelling to Colombia. From the start, we managed to estab-
lish the existence of a central splitting between two opposite feelings:
on the one hand, he held the wish to liberate himself and move away
from his mother’s control; on the other hand, he unconsciously did all
he could in order to remain dependent. Trying to move away was an
attitude that brought with it substantial feelings of guilt and a need
for punishment, such as reckless driving under the influence of alco-
hol, psychotic manifestations induced from the use of marijuana that
resulted in odd forms of behaviour and rejection from his peers, and so
on. Such behaviour persuadedhis parents to justify their unconscious
desire to take over. When they did take charge, the young man became
very angry with himself and his parents, inducing once more the need
 N E G AT I V E A N D P O S I T I V E L I N K S A S A F O R M O F C O M M U N I CAT I O N 117

to “move” away, in a perpetual circular performance. His feeling of

dependency made him angry at himself; he then attempted to compen-
sate by trying to move away from his home’s gravitational pull, ventur-
ing over and over into some form of failed independence that brought
him nothing but guilt and a need to surrender again to his parents’ will.
The first day he came for therapy, for instance, he said he could not start
right away because he was determined, in the middle of winter, to go to
a remote area up north, and to return to the city by backpacking for five
days, intemperatures well below zero. It appeared as if he was strongly
attempting to “go somewhere in order to go nowhere”.
Unconsciously he was “charging” himself unfairly for something
that, although he had not achieved it, he felt he had done so, meaning,
to move away without ever moving away! I told him he was confus-
ing outside geography with the geography in his mind, that it was not
from his real parent he was trying to move away, but from a part of
himself that tyrannised him to the point that it enslaved him in an eter-
nal trap. If he “went away” he felt he was killing his parents and this
made him very guilty, but if he stayed with them, he felt he was killing
himself and that made him very angry. Under such internal despotism,
he felt unconsciously subdued and failed at any attempt either to go or
to stay. The danger of such a trap in young people is often the risk of
suicide.

Negative links as a form of intrapsychic communication between

traumatised and non-traumatised states (TS N-TS)
The child’s inchoate mind—or “rudimentary infant conscious”, as
stated by Bion, (1967, p. 116)—is arranged in pieces and gradually, with
the passage of time, works its way through integration as a progres-
sion towards mental growth and structuring of the “non-traumatised
state” of the personality. Uncontained traumatic events that surpass the
mother’s ego level of frustration tolerance (reverie) will interfere with
the normal process of the child’s mental integration, resulting in the
configuration of part objects that structure the pathological aspect of the
paranoid-schizoid position or “traumatised state”. Some clinicians think
that such fragments remain like “isolated departments” without any
form of communication between them. Others, however, have thought
differently, such as Rosenfeld (1971), who described a form of “destruc-
tive narcissism” similar to a “gang Mafioso”; Sohn (1972), who refers to
118 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

an “identificate” that acts similarly to a “pied piper” and intends to lead

healthy parts to destruction; and Steiner (1982), who stated that,

… the nature of the intrapsychic relationship between the parts of

the personality produced by the split … have perverse elements …
and is acted out in the transference … (p. 241)

He also

… emphasized the way a narcissistic part of the personality that

can acquire a disproportionate power by gaining a hold on the
healthier parts of the personality … does this to the extent that it
can persuade these parts to enter into a perverse liaison. (p. 249)

Meltzer (1973) also stated that, feeling

[t]he destructive part of the self presents itself to the suffering good
part first as a protector from pain, second as a servant to its sen-
suality and vanity, and only covertly—in the face of resistance to
regression—as the brute, the torturer. (p. 97)

Feelings such as “helplessness” and “hopelessness” are at the centre

of any form of pre-conceptual trauma, resulting from the discrepancy
existing between the child’s vulnerability and the parental domination.
Such biological divergences should obviously disappear once the child
becomes an adult. However, it seems that such a difference in years,
between the powerless child from the past and the resourceful adult
from the present, always automatically vanish from the mind, and the
adult from the present, in the face of any frustration, experiences again
and again the same feeling of helplessness and hopelessness that once
were properly felt when a child. It seems as if the traumatised state
induces in the non-traumatised the sensation that time has not elapsed
and the resourceful adult then behaves as a helpless child.
Case one: A fifty-two-year-old social worker in analysis for the last
five years was the youngest of a family of six, whose parents divorced
when he was only five after a rather bitter separation. Both parents
were described as very severe and aggressive, who physically abused
all the children. He originally consulted because of insomnia, para-
lysing bouts of anxiety, and a sense of persecution. We were able to
 N E G AT I V E A N D P O S I T I V E L I N K S A S A F O R M O F C O M M U N I CAT I O N 119

observe the existence of a pattern in the emergence of this crisis that,

it seemed, was precipitated whenever he complained of dealing with
someone—either client, judge, or opponent colleague—that he sensed
as being too hostile, dishonest, or manipulative. In a particular session
he started by recounting a situation where his seven-year-old daughter
said she had had a dream where her mother appeared as some kind of
a monster that woke her up very frightened. He consoled her until she
went back to sleep. Then he started to repeat what he had been saying
for the last four or six sessions, that a client he had being dealing with
for some time, and who he described as rather a bully, had told him
several months ago that if he did not win his case he “will kill him”.
Although he admitted this statement was expressed anecdotally, he did
not find it “very funny”. He said that whenever he was with this client
he felt angry and very uncomfortable, and feared that because of these
feelings he might do something in order to spoil the case. He had not
been sleeping very well for the last week: “only around four hours”,
waking up several times and automatically thinking about the case
and his client, getting up very tired in the morning. I said that we had
observed this pattern in previous cases, whenever he felt frightened by
someone. He denied feeling frightened and insisted he felt angry. I then
said that I might be wrong, but I thought he felt initially frightened,
then ashamed, and then angry, but mostly against himself. He did not
treat himself in the same manner that he had his frightened little daugh-
ter. It seemed that it was easier for him to treat himself as his parents
had treated him, than to treat himself as he had treated his daughter.
Perhaps in his mind there was an angry and threatening mother-part
that preferred to accuse and frighten him instead of consoling him. He
also felt ashamed and angry, not with his client, but at himself, as if he
judged himself as his father and mother had judged him, as if he were
an ashamed, frightened, and castrated little boy.
Sometime later, he was dealing with great apprehension about his
dependency needs, sensed by his cruel superego as a kind of revolt-
ing failure. He often defended himself with the use of self-flagellation,
as a form of projective identification with the purpose of being res-
cued, although indirectly, without him knowing about it. He often
ignored interpretations given with the purpose of easing this anxiety,
and instead complained endlessly about his work, how he experienced
insomnia, depression, paralysing terrors, while at the same time accus-
ing himself of procrastinating in his duties, wasting time in nonsense,
120 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

as well as fearing being fired. He felt the role of psychoanalysis was

to mend his failures and often angrily accused the therapy of letting
him down because “nothing had changed”. There existed a correla-
tion between two bivalent part objects that continuously switched, one
accuser and another accused. At one point, he shared a dream: He was
in front of his boss who was saying all sorts of terrible things about him, that
he was careless, lazy, his work was sloppy, and so on. Then suddenly, a distant
man from the crowd started to scream, referring to this boss: “Don’t believe
him; you don’t have to believe him, why does everybody believe him?” He
associated the boss in the dream with his father and the continuous
accusations and demands he made on him; and I added, “Who is now
inside your mind.” Such accusations represented how his father had
communicated with him, that were reproduced as a kind of false or
negative link now carried out by the superego against his ego. What
was new, and a change towards using positive links, were the screams
produced by the internal object represented by the “distant man” (that
he associated with the analyst), wondering why the superego (boss)
was not questioned. Why was he not more loving (positive link) and
understanding towards himself, now that he was an independent and
resourceful adult? Why did he not question his internal parents instead
of repeating the way he was originally treated by his accuser father and
disinterested mother?
Case two: A man in his forties, whose mother died when he and his
younger sister were little, was referring to his difficulties with his ado-
lescent daughter. Remembering something I said before, he stated that
he felt trapped between the guilt of holding or keeping her and the
anxiety of letting her go. I said that such a difficulty might be related
to his own painful memories about his mother “abandoning” him, that
perhaps it was easier for him to act out that difficulty by retaining his
daughter than to talk about it now, as if by holding onto his daughter
he was holding onto his dead mother. He remained silent and started to
cry, saying that those memories were too painful. I said that a little boy
in him aches because he feels abandoned, helpless, and hopeless. He
continued talking and said that he was depriving his daughter of her
independence, that it was like making her an extension of himself. After
a pause, he said that he remembered a person who had applied for a job
and wanted the company to meet his demand instead of the other way
around, similar to what he felt he was attempting to do to his daughter.
He continued for several minutes talking, laughing, and turning to look
 N E G AT I V E A N D P O S I T I V E L I N K S A S A F O R M O F C O M M U N I CAT I O N 121

at me, as he wanted me to join in with his remarks and good humour.

I then said that he was referring to some very painful memories from
the time his mother died. However, he then moved into something else
that portrayed a completely different emotion; I was tempted to join
him, but felt I was becoming an accomplice of the part of him that was
abandoning (negative links) the sad and helpless little boy in him. Could
a part of him be repeating with himself something similar to what his
mother did to him when she passed away? Obviously, the part of him
that had “moved away” as he changed his emotions, was not a very
“concerned”, loving, or containing element (positive links) towards his
own feelings of abandonment, helplessness, hopelessness, and despair.

Changing negative links for positive ones

Changing negative links for positive ones, as a form of communication
between the adult ego and the traumatised child element, is one of the
more difficult tasks of any successful analysis or psychotherapy. It can
be rather complicated to assist patients to manufacture in their minds
the space for an internal “loving rescuer” if they never experienced,
during the dark moments of their childhood trauma, the presence of
someone capable of providing that kind of assistance and inducing that
kind of identification. It is particularly difficult to find a way out from
the time entrapment induced by pre-conceptual traumas, to overcome
the sense of nothingness, helplessness, hopelessness, destitution, lone-
liness, revenge, envy, ambivalence, and so on—the painful emotions
with which childhood traumas are always capable of inundating the
ego. I would like to present several clinical examples using correlated
bivalent part objects.

The “placer and the rescuer”

Longing for the absent breast becomes a tyrannical presence of an
absence, a form of defence against the terrible pain of containing the
original absence-loss. I believe this to be a universal type of resistance,
where a sort of vicious cycle or Catch 22 is produced: the incapacity
to contain the pain of the loss induces a powerful need for an outside
rescuer who will always fail, because it would be impossible to fulfil a
non-existent traumatic experience from the past, a situation that will
generate the need for further search of a new rescuer who will also
122 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

fail, and so on. Whenever the individual perceives the “presence” of a

“possible rescuer”, he will automatically experience a sense of consola-
tion or solace, or the opposite, hopelessness and depression, when he
fails. A patient raised by nannies always sensed a powerful feeling of
comfort whenever any babysitter was present. Another patient decided
to search for his childhood nanny, and when after some efforts he man-
aged to find her, at the moment of hearing her voice on the telephone
he unexpectedly experienced the sentiment of “feeling safe”. A forty-
three-year-old woman, who went to live for several months with her
grandparents when she was around six years of age, experienced a sen-
sation of “inner peace” whenever she sensed the particular smell of her
grandfather’s pipe tobacco, something she still experiences any time
she comes in contact with that smell. I observed similar experiences in
a patient, whose mother was a school teacher, whenever he opened a
dictionary or an encyclopaedia. Another patient described similar feel-
ings of inner peace whenever he was cooking. His mother, of Italian
extraction and who was a wonderful cook, eagerly protected him as a
child from a punitive and very aggressive father.
There also exists the unconscious desire to make a child a rescuer
and a hero even before the child is born, and the literature is saturated
with histories of such “child heroes”, such as Moses, Christ, Gilgamesh,
Heracles, Perseus, Dionysus, and so on. Ferenczi (1933) referred to the
“wise baby”, “a newly-born child, or an infant [who] begins to talk, and
in fact teaches wisdom to the entire family” (p. 165). Very recently there
was a movie, August Rush which portrayed a little boy who was a musi-
cal genius and who, through his own magnificent prodigy, reunited his
parents—musicians also—and himself together as a family. The parents
had met by chance only once previously and, although they never saw
each other again, it was enough for the mother to become pregnant
with August. Referring to Leo Kanner’s (1943) original description of
the “refrigerator mother”, I think autism represents the mother’s mur-
derous revenge against the limitations of her child, who fails to become
her own unconscious rescuer or “wise baby”.
Case one: A twenty-seven-year-old patient who, at the age of six
went through a painful surgical intervention, finds it now very hard
to deal with her depression, sense of helplessness, transference disap-
pointment, and anger, as well as the feeling that to do something for
herself, on her own, would involve facing her suspicion that “nobody
had cared”. It would be similar to what she experienced while in the
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hospital, when she could not figure out why her parents “hated her so
much”. Perhaps it was because she was “unworthy, unlovable, guilty
of something she had never been able to understand”, although she
was nevertheless “severely punished” with a surgical intervention. To
look after herself and protect herself from her own sadistic superego
attacks represented the insurmountable task of giving up the endless
unconscious hope that her parents, mostly her father, would come to
her rescue. Perhaps to do nothing and to wait in despair was the right
thing to do, because it would provide her with a way out, the hope
that someone would set her free from the pain of an ongoing surgery
that seemed to be haunting her everywhere. But when this possibility
was presented, she would then attack it in her mind out of envy and
revenge, and destroy it again and again, leaving herself always in the
midst of her painful and hopeless “surgical intervention”. It would be
better to keep alive the hope that the father would come and finally
rescue the abandoned and tortured little girl, than to go ahead as the
adult she now was and do it by herself, regardless of what might be
needed to free herself from the predicament of a tyrannising absence in
which she endlessly placed herself. Such a perplexing drama is always
at the bottom of any serious pre-conceptual injury, as observed in bor-
derline pathology, or as in self-envy mechanisms or negative therapeu-
tic reactions.
Case two: Another patient who as a child went to stay with his grand-
parents, away from his parents and younger sibling’s house, maintained
emotionally alive in his mind the extremely painful memories from that
time. At a moment when we were working through these difficult emo-
tional ties, now when he is a successful adult, he presented a dream:
He was climbing a hill away from his parent’s house and then he turned to the
right facing his back to their home as he proceeded towards a place of his own.
He said that as a child he had carried out that same turn every time he
had gone to visit his parents; feeling excluded as he “turned his back”.
I then said that it seems as if he is continuously turning his back on the
feeling of exclusion he feels unable to give his back to.

The rejecting adult and the handicapped child

A patient presenting compulsive acting out of perverse psychopa-
thology, had used intellectualisation, or minus knowledge (−K),3
as a common form of defence to neutralise painful emotions from
124 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

childhood traumatic events or pre-conceptual traumas. Intellectualisation

was also a form of competition with me, used to attack or to keep me
at a distance. In the transference, she experienced the analyst as either
a distant, rejecting mother or the threatening or castrating father. She
continuously tried to find ways either to compete, using quotes from
authors she had read or subtly to disregard my interpretations by pro-
voking endless intellectual arguments. Such a pertinacious defence
interfered with both of us being able to listen and direct our interest
towards an abandoned, lonely, excluded, castrated, and phallic-envious
inner child, a situation that carried the unconscious purpose of repeating
important sadistic aspects of her pre-conceptual trauma. It was felt that
the perverse symptomatology, consisting of masturbatory phantasies
or sexual sadistic rituals performed with the purpose of domination,
represented attempts made by an envious inner child part, in order to
control and revengefully attack the father and other siblings as well as
spoiling the goodness of the breast. There was an important tendency
to use recurrent masturbatory practices induced by sadistic phantasies,
which contrasted with her lack of vaginal orgasm and usual refusal of
engaging in sexual relationship with her husband. At one point, she
presented a short dream: She and her husband were shopping and he bought
something very valuable for himself but did not purchase a similar one for her.
They came out of the mall and she told him to be careful because the surround-
ings were not safe and he could be mugged. She associated the “valuable
thing” with his penis.
Bringing the envious child aspect into the analysis was not easy at
the beginning. It was a slow process, in which the need for intellectu-
alisation diminished. Several years into her therapy she said: “I gather
that the shame I experienced when talking about sexual matters was a
defence I used to avoid dealing with those issues”. Around this time,
she brought a short dream in which the roof of a building was collaps-
ing. She associated the building with a place she often visited as a young
woman, where she used to engage in sadomasochistic sexual practices
with a boyfriend who lived there; also, with the feeling that such urges
had diminished. Then she said that she went to visit a cousin whose
daughter has Down syndrome and felt her mother was rather neglect-
ful of the child who at one point started to cry bitterly and accused the
mother of not loving her. “I felt very sorry for the little girl and very
angry at my cousin and I then tried to comfort the girl … I think she
could represent a crippled part in me I wanted to help.” I asked if she
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had the dream before this episode with her cousin, and she said she
had, about three days before. Then I added that because an “intellec-
tual” part (defence) of her “own roof” was collapsing, she felt more
aware of the crippled, helpless, hurting, part in herself. I considered
this session a turning point, because her attitude towards the little girl
was corroborating the unconscious message portrayed by the dream. In
other words, she responded to this scene and became aware of the little
girl, because “the roof” was already collapsing and not the other way
around. Translated into Bion’s theory of links, we could say that −H
(minus hate), representing the previous emotional link between her
“careless, intellectual, adult part” and her “crippled child part”, had
changed to a +L (plus love), where there is more concern and awareness
about the “mean mother” in her.

The supra-significant versus the infra-insignificant

This is a variant of the previous form of splitting, between a child and
an adult element, to which I have just referred. I have observed a clini-
cal condition present in some individuals who have in common being
the youngest child in their family, with an age difference from their
immediate sibling of eight to ten years. The majority of these patients
were women, with the exception of one man I saw for a short period of
time. The core of the conflict seems to hinge on the incongruence that a
small child is able to induce in a family of adults, becoming, on the one
hand, the centre of attention and on the other, someone absolutely irrel-
evant when important matters are at stake. Such inconsistency induces
a severe splitting between a part I have referred to as the “significant”
element and a correlated but opposite emotion I have also referred to as
the “insignificant” one.
Case one: A middle-aged woman, a successful dentist, youngest of
ten children, was talking about her adolescent daughter who was using
drugs and acting out in order to provoke her and her husband. I inter-
preted over a possible confusion between her daughter and an ado-
lescent element in her, which interfered with her capacity to exercise
a sensible parenting. In the next session she said she felt very angry at
me and had fought against me all day long, thinking that perhaps she
should terminate her analysis after her summer holidays. I thought she
was angry at me because I did not provide her with a solution for her
daughter’s conflict that she felt was very distressing. I also wondered
126 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

to myself that, different from a baby sucking who knows when it is

satiated and does not need to continue feeding, she treated her analysis
as if it was something she was doing for me, so she would now terminate
it because she was angry at me, as if her own needs were not important
at all. I then said that she was very angry at me because I kept insist-
ing she was an autonomous human being capable of taking over as an
individual with her own existence. Perhaps it was very frightening and
painful for her to become aware that she existed on her own account.
She then remembered that her sister-in-law from out of town was stay-
ing in her house for the weekend and she observed how protective she
was of her three-year-old child, who continuously demanded her atten-
tion and that she was unable to let him be, something that made her,
and still makes her, feel very angry when she remembers it. I said that
perhaps she felt angry at her because of the similarity with her own
experiences as a child, being the youngest and having so many sib-
lings continuously overprotecting her. She recalled how as a child she
had felt powerless being surrounded by so many adults; after all, there
were ten years of difference in age with her immediate older brother.
I then said that possibly her main problem was not so much feeling
powerless in the face of any conflict she sensed unbearable, such as the
conflict with her daughter, for instance, but that she felt powerlessness
because, in the face of these problems, she projected her resourceful,
intelligent, determined part into others, like me, and expected others
to continuously take over and resolve any painful and conflictive situ-
ation for her, just as her older siblings and parents had doene when she
was a child. However, her main problem now was that, in the face of
this sense of helplessness, she never questioned why she felt like that,
or how the resourceful part of her could assist the helpless child in her
to become aware that she existed as a grown up, ingenious, and intel-
ligent adult.
Case two: A thirty-year-old woman came to treatment with an ini-
tial complaint of high levels of anxiety. She was the youngest of four
siblings and there was a ten-year difference between her and her imme-
diate older sister. From very early in her treatment we managed to
understand that the age disparity had created in her a feeling of being
unimportant. She remembered, for instance, a repetitious situation at
dinnertime, when her parents and her older siblings would engage
in political or philosophical discussions, leaving her out, which made
her feel painfully ignored. As a way of dealing with such a continuous
 N E G AT I V E A N D P O S I T I V E L I N K S A S A F O R M O F C O M M U N I CAT I O N 127

threat, she split the feeling of insignificance, together with that part of
her mind capable of thinking about it, and tried to free herself from
the mental pain with the use of projective identifications, which usu-
ally returned, inducing the feeling that the threat of “insignificance”
was present in most of her everyday interactions. She came to analysis
with the unconscious purpose of finding someone who could become
her supporter and provide her with continuous licence to be absolutely
essential. For similar reasons of attempting to become the “significant”,
she resorted to excelling in any field in which she became involved, but
to such an extreme that she often got hurt and became “insignificant”.
She started piano lessons at six years of age and did very well, win-
ning prizes, and was able to manage public performances with good
success, but had to stop due to painful cramps in both hands. A similar
story took place in her practice of gymnastics, which she also had to
give up because of a serious injury to her back. She established with her
piano teacher, old enough to be her grandfather, a sort of sadomasochist
relationship, where he manipulated their liaison in a rather perverse
manner, with sexual manipulations and promises of complete success
(supra-significant), combined with cruel threats and coercion of aban-
donment (insignificance), if she were not to abide to his demands. At
the same time he became her “champion”, or someone who was going
to provide her with a complete manic triumph in her rivalry with the
rest of her older siblings, now projected worldwide.
She complained of great anxiety every day as soon as she was awake,
as if in her “omnipotent conscious mind” she found it very difficult
to “delegate” to her unconscious while sleeping. It was as if she felt
guilty about not being consciously aware and present, instead of being
“away” sleeping. As a form of reaction formation, because of her inner
sense of insignificance, she developed the omnipotent delusion that she
was absolutely indispensable (significant) for the well being of all of
those who surrounded her. The level of anxiety was always very high
because of her superego’s demand of having always to outshine herself
in order to carry an envious vengeance against her parents and siblings,
by preserving inside feelings of “significance”, while at the same time
projecting into them her feelings of “insignificance”. Therefore, conse-
quent guilt and an unconscious need for punishment occurred, in a sort
of circularity, which was always translated into a greater anxiety. The
feeling of insignificance, always split and projected, remained hidden,
threatening her around every corner: at home with her parents and
128 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

siblings, at work, with friends, and in the analysis. She would never
refer to whatever hypothesis we might have elicited during previous
sessions to understand her anxiety, although she would get involved
and would repeat with evident interest the content of the interpreta-
tion given at the moment. It seemed as if she were extremely ambiva-
lent, between the desire to free herself from her anxiety, and at the same
time, feeling very angry and envious about what the analyst had to say
and the powerful need to render the analyst completely “insignificant”.
I had the phantasy of the interpretations nicely and carefully wrapped
up and then placed aside and forgotten.
The problem, as I saw it, was that she was trying to free herself from
feelings of “insignificance”, by projecting them out into others to make
herself “significant”; a sort of metamorphosis from insignificant to
super-significant, but with such cruelty that her own state of well being
was not considered, and she became paralysed by terrible anxiety and
hopeless despair. But even this mechanism was insufficient, because she
felt then like an “infra-insignificant” disguised as a “supra-significant”,
becoming terrified of being discovered, always feeling false and an
impostor. Internal elements repeated now in her mind the original trau-
matic condition she experienced as a child, reproducing a fake drama
structured by false or negative emotional links that were true in the past
but were no longer true in the present. At the present time she was no
longer an insignificant little girl who could have been ignored, and who
was required, as compensation, to continuously display an overwhelm-
ing performance in order to be recognised. I have also used this case in
Chapter Ten in relation to “catastrophic change”.

The feminine and the masculine parts

From a social point of view, feminine and masculine identifications are
frequently culturally bound. For instance, while in Latin countries they
could be related to sexual issues, immortalised in the well known play
of “Don Juan”, in northern countries “machismo” appears associated
with a sense of physical endurance, strength, power, and goodness, as
portrayed in “super-heroes”, such as Superman, Spiderman, Batman,
and so on. In both cases, the dynamic could point to mechanisms of
reaction formation used as a defence against feminine and masculine
identifications; after all, parents of both genders have raised us. From
a psychoanalytic point of view, feminine and masculine identifications
 N E G AT I V E A N D P O S I T I V E L I N K S A S A F O R M O F C O M M U N I CAT I O N 129

represent internal elements that correlate and are often unconsciously

used as a form of defence against castration anxiety.
Case one: A patient who at the age of four underwent a complicated
surgical intervention, and who at a point in his analysis was dealing
with castration fears, presented a dream where Hitler visited him. He
felt very frightened, but a woman who was present reassured him.
I said that this woman represented a feminine aspect of him, that being
less frightened of castration was calming the masculine part in him
that feared castration. He then remembered a film he had seen about
someone who was experiencing prostate symptoms and found some-
one who provided him with some pills, brewed from dog’s testicles.
I said that because of his childhood operation, the masculine part in
him felt that he had lost his testicles and was coming to see me in order
to borrow mine. While a feminine aspect in him was capable of con-
taining his fear of castration (+L), his masculine part induced a chronic
castration anxiety (–H). A few weeks later, he provided another dream:
He was with a friend who was homosexual, and he then went to see a proc-
tologist because he was experiencing some kind of laziness in emptying his
bladder. I said the masculine part in him induced the need to practise
a homosexual surrender to the surgeon-castrator (proctologist) who
operated on him as a child. This case is examined in greater detail in
Chapter Sixteen.
Case two: Another patient, who was a sort of “womaniser”, and who
previously stated that he felt “sexually hardwired”, brought the fol-
lowing dream: He was with a woman and felt he had a clitoris instead of a
penis, but he started to rub it and it grew or unfolded into a large penis. He
associated with the day before when he was visiting an acquaintance
whose younger daughter, a friend of his own daughter, was there. He
described her as very pretty and with a “devil in her eyes”. “I think”,
he remarked, “that she was looking at me with desire”. He gave no
further association and I said that perhaps the dream was saying that
he felt intolerant and very threatened by an internal feminine element,
as if it was difficult for him to consider that a “loving and close rela-
tionship with a woman” could be conceived as something other than
just a penis-vagina interaction. His terror about an internal feminine
element (clitoris) in him, was forcing him to intensify continuously his
masculine counterpart as a form of defence (large penis). Obviously, the
fear of his own femininity was making it very difficult for him to get
emotionally close to his daughter, as well as with me.
130 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

Conclusion
Interaction between introjected and projected correlated elements
represents a reproduction of what takes place between these same parts
inside the mind; in that sense, projective and introjective identifications
can also take place intrapsychically. Different from the usual belief that
there is no communication between these split parts, I think there is
a form of interaction based on correlated emotions or bivalent part
objects. Unlike total objects that use positive links (+H, +L, +K), these
split parts use only negative or false links (−H, −L, −K) to interact: nega-
tive or false in the sense that these emotions represent identifications
that “reproduce” formal and real interactions that took place between
parents and children, which are afterwards unconsciously and automat-
ically replicated between internalised superego’s and ego’s part objects.
These elements are also simultaneously used as material for projec-
tive introjective identifications directed to outside objects. Changing
negative to positive links should be part of the array of strategies psy-
chotherapists and psychoanalysts need to keep always in mind.
CHAPTER NINE

The traumatised ego and the

traumatising superego

Taking this sequence, anxiety-danger-helplessness (trauma), we

can now summarize what has been said. A danger situation is
a recognized, remembered, expected situation of helplessness.
Anxiety is the original reaction to helplessness in the trauma and is
reproduced later on in the danger-situation as a signal for help.

—Freud (1926, pp. 166–167)

There is not a more threatening scream than the silent whisper of

the cruel superego.

—López-Corvo

I am well aware that when referring to dynamics related to the mutual

interaction between ego and superego, we are in a territory of the mind
frequently travelled since the time of Freud. Using a Bionian approach,
I believe that the continuous accumulation of identifications resulting
from “tyrannical presence of absences” structures the superego; while
identifications with the struggle to re-establish the presence of that
absence, structures the ego. However, it is not solely this identification,

131
132 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

but generally, the continuous interaction between both, ego and

superego, that counts.1
In 1934, James Strachey put forth his concept of the “mutative inter-
pretation”, and referred to how the superego is tempered by successive
re-introjections of transference projections purposely modified by the
analyst, a concept similar to Bion’s notion of maternal reverie. Because
the primitive cruelty present in the superego is fatalistically determined
by the individual history, meaning the nature of the pre-conceptual
trauma, it would be impossible to change it directly, but it can be dealt
with using other less direct strategies. One strategy is related to the
awareness that such cruelty is always nourished by the existence of
split-off and repressed envious and vengeful elements continuously
exercised by the ego, which then, out of guilt and fear of castration,
complies:2 there is not a more threatening scream than the superego’s
cruel and silent whisper! Another strategy is the importance of chang-
ing and enhancing the ego’s capacity to use commonsense in order to
confront the unconscious and automatic accusations made by the super-
ego, a view also portrayed by Britton (2003). I believe the ego not only
complies with the superego’s sadistic demands, but also by identifying
with it—as a form of identification with the aggressor—brings the self
to act out masochistic trends.

The Scythians’ slaves

There is a historical event recounted by Herodotus that might be para-
digmatic of what I am trying to portray about the interaction between
ego and superego. According to him, the Scythians, in war with the
Medes, were absent from their country for about twenty-eight years.
When they returned they found that during their absence their wives
had decided to intermarry with their slaves who, when knowing of
their masters return, made a long trench and prepared to fight. The
Scythians, on seeing these preparations, thought it foolish to attack
their old slaves and to kill them or be killed by them. So they decided to
use the whip. Their leader said:

“I propose, therefore, that we should stop using spears and bows,

and go for them each one of us with a horse-whip. When they saw
us armed, they naturally felt they were as good as we are, and were
meeting us on equal terms; but when they see us coming with
 T H E T R A M U AT I S E D E G O A N D T H E T R AU M AT I S I N G S U P E R E G O 133

whips instead, they will remember they are slaves”. (Herodotus,

pp. 271–272)

Neither the help from their disappointed and apprehensive women,

nor from their own children, the children of the former slave fathers,
prepared them to fight against their “alien” fathers. Though it had been
twenty-eight years, the slaves could not contain the old scars and “cas-
tration terror” induced by the traumas suffered in their youth when
they were made slaves.3
I believe the superego can behave towards the ego using strategies
similar to how the leader “used the whip, or how a castrating parent
might behave towards a powerless child”, paralysing the ego’s natural
tendencies towards mental growth, freedom, and autonomy. However,
what I wish to remark on here is that it is not only the cruelty exerted
by the superego, but also the ego’s submissive attitude, the incapacity
of producing a space where, with the use of logic and common sense,
it can fight the tyranny implemented by superego, differently from
the history of the slaves to which I have just referred. Psychoanalysis,
among other things, attempts to encourage the ego to find ways to neu-
tralise the superego in order to liberate itself from its unfair threats and
demands. Psychoanalysis, in other words, is a subversive instrument!
There is always a continuous effort in psychoanalytic therapy to
address the interpretation to the struggling ego, always exercising
cautiousness never to implicate and reinforce the superego’s cruelty.
If the ego were to employ means similar to those used by the super-
ego, it could generate unconscious feelings of guilt that could rebound
on any attempt to dissent. Very often this relationship or link, between
the ego acting out and the superego reprimand, is split and projected,
a mechanism often observed in borderline personalities who project the
superego (usually in any authority figure) and feel that they could act
out revenge against their parents, for instance, and that nothing will
happen if they are not caught. But they are overlooking the fact that
their superego is, of course, watching from the inside. Uncovering the
unconscious link that exists between any form of revengeful and envi-
ous acting out and superego punishment can often constitute a difficult
enterprise very often denied.
Donna, a patient I will return to in Chapter Fourteen, managed to
contain in her mind the presence of an envious and self-destructive ele-
ment she referred to as the “serial killer”, which for years inhibited her
134 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

maternity. Later in her analysis, at the beginning of a Monday session,

she remarked that she was feeling very guilty and anxious because of
an incident that took place over the weekend at a mall. After shopping,
she and her husband were preparing to return home. Before leaving she
went into the bathroom to change the baby, while her husband went to
fetch the car. When she came out she waited an additional fifteen minutes
without finding him, becoming extremely enraged. Recalling something
I said before, about her anger being related to fear, she said that, perhaps
she was very frightened to feel so angry. “When I saw N [her husband]”,
she said, “I started to scream at the top of my lungs, and I knew at that
moment that the baby was getting scared, but I couldn’t help it. I felt it
was too much effort to stop myself from screaming at N”. Afterwards
she felt extremely anxious and guilty about having “damaged” her child
forever. She recalled how her father often left her waiting after school for
hours, cold and frightened in the dark. It was as if an internal, powerful,
murderous, and revengeful child, entrenched inside her superego, con-
vinced her, automatically, that exercising revenge was more important
and proficient than inhibiting it; to stop herself was like giving up, sur-
rendering to the “enemy”, as if it was a revenge filled with hope, or
“revengeful hope”, as I have previously described (López-Corvo, 1995).
The problem, I said, was that this “child murderer” has no considera-
tion for anybody—not for her child, her husband, or even for herself.
She had already experienced something similar when she gave in to
an internal element she referred to as the “serial killer”4 that kept her
barren for years, until she changed her attitude and became pregnant.
Would she be able to change now, after having her child, as she did pre-
viously when she was unable to become pregnant? “Of course not”, she
answered. “Well,” I said, “do you think it is nicer to feel so guilty and
anxious after screaming, than not to feel like that at all?”
George was a young man who became the family scapegoat through
his addictive behaviour that the rest of the family unconsciously desired
but avoided acting out by projecting it onto him and making George the
receptacle of their family’s “bad objects”. Because he felt mistreated by
his parents, he abused illegal drugs as an attempt to attack the child
he felt his parents wanted to have in him. But, out of guilt, most of the
aggression he displayed was also directed against himself. The struggle
was carried out, in his mind, as a parallel between his superego that
demanded he provide his parents with the perfect son, and at the same
time, a self-destructive behaviour continuously acted out in a concealed
 T H E T R A M U AT I S E D E G O A N D T H E T R AU M AT I S I N G S U P E R E G O 135

manner in order to destroy the parents’ idealised child by destroying

himself. The guilt induced by the need for revenge against his powerful
parents, now portrayed in an internal sadistic and oppressive super-
ego, was so extreme that it encumbered the ego’s capacity to discrimi-
nate between the need for revenge and the true significance of “being
alive”.
Although this dynamic of master-slave is universal, it is usually more
obvious in borderline schizoid individuals who use psychotic mecha-
nisms to deal with castration and retaliatory anxiety. In his book Trans-
formations Bion (1965) emphasised the overpowering dominance of the
superego over the ego in schizoid personalities. He wrote:

In practice the problem arises with schizoid personalities in whom

the superego appears to be developmentally prior to the ego and to
deny development and existence itself to the ego. The usurpation
by the super-ego of the position that should be occupied by the ego
involves imperfect development of the reality principle, exaltation
of a “moral” outlook and lack of respect for the truth. The result is
starvation of the psyche and stunted growth. (p. 38, my italics)

I have stressed “appears to be”, because obviously the superego, being

a consequence of “nurturing” and relative to parental reverie, will
always be preceded by “nature” (the ego), even if there were sufficient
genetic components justifying the existence of a weak ego, as is always
the case in psychosis and schizoid personalities. I think Bion’s emphasis
in this statement about the contrast between a feeble ego and a cruel
and powerful superego is pathognomonic of psychosis; otherwise, this
statement is extremely useful for understanding the importance of how
superego internal objects continuously exercise overpowering influ-
ence on the ego’s capacity to contain the truth.

The superego: heir not only to the Oedipus complex,

but also to pre-conceptual trauma
Like a coin, there are two sides to the Oedipus complex. On one side, the
characters present in the tragedy are always the same in all individuals:
a serial killer always returning to the scene of the crime, slaying the
father at the crossroads, and then sneaking into the mother’s bed. On
the other side, the narrative of how Oedipus keeps returning, in each of
136 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

us, to the scene of the crime is always absolutely personal and unique.
This uniqueness represents the particular chronology of how the per-
sonal trauma evolves; in other words, of how in each of us the Oedipus
tragedy is always delineated by chance and repeated by compulsion.5
I have referred to this fatalistic and universal combination between
Oedipus complex and personal trauma, as the “Cain complex”.6
The cruelty sensed in primitive forms of superego is always related
to introjective identifications of a “pre-conceptual traumatic object”.
I have stated in the previous chapter that pre-conceptual traumas con-
solidate as an active, toxic, internal object that posits itself in consecu-
tive layers of identification within the ego and the superego, something
already stated by Freud in 1926, in “Inhibitions, symptoms and anxi-
ety”, where he clearly stated that

… all … symptom-formation is clearly the ego’s fear of its super-

ego. The danger-situation from which the ego must get away is
the hostility of the super-ego … But if we ask ourselves what it is
that the ego fears from the super-ego, we cannot but think that the
punishment threatened by the latter must be an extension of the
punishment of castration. Just as the father has become deperson-
alized in the shape of the super-ego, so has the fear of castration at
his hands become transformed into an undefined social or moral
anxiety? (p. 128)

In all individuals, the “traumatic object” already located in the superego,

will exercise a continuous watch over and intimidation of the ego, which
will be split by the impact of the traumatic object into at least three dif-
ferent ego domains: i) a submissive element that will comply and func-
tion as a slave to the superego, according to a narcissistic correlation of
opposites; ii) a significant attempt to protect itself from the superego
by using different defence strategies, representing the substance of all
descriptive psychopathology with which we are very familiar with.
These defences, however, are absolutely deceiving, because even if they
appear as true attempts at liberation from superego’s oppression, they
are really traps and forms of repetition compulsion that lead nowhere;
iii) a preconscious or conscious element, unfortunately not always
present, that will attempt a way out from the superego’s domination by
means of using discontinued forms of symbolism, which Freud referred
to as “sublimation” and Klein as “depressive reparation”.
 T H E T R A M U AT I S E D E G O A N D T H E T R AU M AT I S I N G S U P E R E G O 137

I will be referring now to the second domain only, leaving the first
to be considered in detail in Chapter Eleven relating to “bivalent
part objects”, and the third already pondered in Chapter Five on
“symbolism”. The phenomenology of the defences used by the ego will
vary, depending mainly on the violence and characteristics of the pre-
conceptual trauma, as well as gender, culture (family culture included),
and genetic factors, among other variables. A weak ego, as we might
find in the psychotic part of the personality, will always induce rigid
behaviour, or behaviour of extremes, with very little middle ground:
all or nothing, zero sum, or black and white, with almost no grey zone
at all. Just as there are sphincters in the soma that separate internal
from external milieus, we can also consider the existence of a “mental
sphincter” that separates total internal freedom from outside restric-
tions imposed by reality. We are absolutely free to imagine anything, and
creativity will always sprout from that inner freedom; but our actions
must always be limited according to the characteristics of reality we
might be facing. The self can be master of phantasies but might also be
the slave of actions. The ego then can be equated with an organ capable
of handling this contradiction between “absolute internal freedom” and
“the restrictions imposed by reality”. In other words, a “weak” ego is
dominated mainly by “bivalent part objects”, low frustration tolerance,
projective-introjective identifications, beta elements, and, metaphori-
cally, Manichaean solutions of “black or white”; while the strong ego’s
muscle, on the other hand, will rely on alpha function, high frustration
tolerance, and “univalent” or total objects,7 which can be measured by
the flexible and wide extension of “grey’s” good judgment and com-
mon sense.
In 1923 in “The ego and the id”, Freud established that the id has to
give up its libidinal cathexes with external objects, in order for these
relations to become incorporated and to form internal identifications
that, eventually, will create the structure of the ego: “it makes it possible
to suppose that the character of the ego is a precipitate of abandoned
object-cathexes” (1923, p. 29). The concept implicit in this statement had
already been used in 1914 in the description of “secondary narcissism”
as a shift of cathexis from the external object to the ego. At this time,
however, it did not occur to Freud that cathexes and objects were just
like “a thing and its shadow”, impossible to separate one from the other,
making secondary narcissism an unattainable fact.8 This difficulty, nev-
ertheless, did not lessen the importance Freud had given to the process
138 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

of parental identification and repudiation of incestuous oedipal desires

in the construction of the superego, an insight that helped him produce
his well known maxim that “the ego ideal is the heir of the Oedipus com-
plex”. Such a statement, I believe, could be broadened by adding that
the superego is heir to both the Oedipus complex and pre-conceptual
traumas, or better still: “an Oedipus complex, twisted and shaped
according to the specific profile of the trauma in question”.

Bion’s “container–contained” model

Bion’s model of “container–contained” appears very useful to follow
the particular dynamics of the interaction between the threatened ego
and the “traumatic object” as a superego element; a threat—as stated
by Freud—often experienced as a form of castration. The concept of
“container–contained” ( ) corresponds to an abstract model of psy-
choanalytical realisations, produced by Bion, to relate concepts such as
mouth-breast, vagina-penis, mother–child, unconscious-consciousness,
idea-thinker, analyst-analysand, and, in the particular aspect we are
dealing with now, between ego and superego. Although Bion repre-
sented them using masculine “ ” and feminine “ ” signs, they are not
related to gender or sexual matters. The interaction encompasses at
least three objects or concepts: container, contained, and the link between
them. Emulating biology, Bion (1970, pp. 95–96; 1962, p. 91) described
three different links: commensal, symbiotic, and parasitic:
By “commensal” I mean a relationship in which two objects share
a third to the advantage of all three. By “symbiotic” I understand
a relationship in which one depends on another to mutual advan-
tage. By “parasitic” I mean to represent a relationship in which one
depends on another to produce a third, which is destructive of all
three. (1970, p. 95)

“Contained” can be understood in the sense of being “held”, “taken”,

“controlled”, “overpowered” by something acting as a “container”. In
the “commensal” form, the mother, guided by intuition (“reverie”),
is capable of containing or metabolising her child’s fear of dying, by
inducing emotions compatible with hope and a wish to live. In the
“parasitic” form, on the other hand, the container–contained interaction
will be driven by destructive envy, something Bion (1962, pp. 96–99)
represented as “minus container–contained” or—( ), where “the
 T H E T R A M U AT I S E D E G O A N D T H E T R AU M AT I S I N G S U P E R E G O 139

content, subdued by a container (− ) will be denuded of every meaning,

until useless remains are the only thing left” (López-Corvo, 2003). This
condition could be found in attacks made by an envious mother against
her baby’s demands; for instance, instead of the mother metabolising
her child’s fear of dying, she might remove, out of envy, any remnants
of hope left in the child and change it into a “nameless dread”. Bion has
referred to this situation as −K (minus knowledge), representing a form
of “parasitic contained-container relationship” (Bion, 1962), something
he described as “without-ness”:

It is an internal object without exterior. It is an alimentary canal

without a body. It is a super-ego that has hardly any of the char-
acteristics of the super-ego as understood in psychoanalysis: it is a
“super” ego. It is an envious assertion of moral superiority without
any morals. (Ibid., p. 97)

The dynamics present in Meltzer’s (1992) concept of the “claustrum”

that I discuss in Chapter Fifteen, could be considered an expression of
this form of container–contained interaction.
In a “commensal” form of container–contained interaction, the
capacity of a mother to metabolise her child’s anxieties could neutralise
a given event and induce it to become transient and disappear, while in
a “parasitic” interaction or—( ), a temporal event could be structured
as a permanent traumatic fact, as an absence or “without-ness”, capa-
ble of containing the ego forever. This, of course, is just an abstraction,
because there is infinitude of traumatic events, as we often see in the
consulting room, that no mother will be capable of containing—in a
“commensal” manner—in order to avoid it becoming a permanent trau-
matic condition. There are pre-conceptual traumas that because of their
own nature, could never be contained by the mother, and will always
contain both instead, the mother as well as the child. This reminds me
of a patient I have described previously (López-Corvo, 2006) who at
seven years of age, went through a major surgical intervention on her
spine due to a congenital malfunction of her bladder, which made her
incontinent and created unpleasant and shameful problems for her with
her peers at school. She presented dreams and material reflecting deep
feelings of despair, mistrust, and a sense of total hopelessness related to
memories from the time she went into hospital. She remembered beg-
ging her mother to take her back home and not leave her there alone,
140 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

and also then feelingdeep sorrow and anger, because of her phantasy
that “her mother was an accomplice who took her to the hospital to be
terrorised and tortured by strange men who sexually molested her by
introducing things into her genitals.” The mother, on the other hand,
felt she was dutiful and lovingly, who provided her daughter with a
therapy that was indispensable and absolutely unavoidable.
The ego competently uses different means in order to deal with cas-
tration threats exercised by the superego: some are well known in psy-
chopathology, such as splitting, projection, identification, identification
with the aggressor, denial, reaction formation, intellectualisation, con-
crete thinking, and so on; others, perhaps less common, which I have
encountered in my clinical work, I will now illustrate.

Procrustes’ bed
The traumatic object always accumulates in layers within the superego
and the ego structures. From there the superego will exercise a power-
ful and cruel tyranny over a subjugated ego that feels restricted, hope-
less, threatened, diminished, helpless, and terrified. The superego can
reach high levels of sadistic aggression, and the ego of masochistic sur-
render, as can be seen in what I have previously referred to (2006) as
“Procrustes’ bed”.9 This condition also reminds us of the well known
aphorism: “damned if you do, damned if you don’t”. In this situation the
ego usually responds with paralysis, terrified of any form of resolution;
in other words, the “tyrannical superego is a Procrustes par excellence!”
A widower in his late fifties, who originally consulted me about
his daughter’s compulsive use of hashish, started therapy because
he was unable to convince her to attend by herself. His wife had died
about three years before, and shortly thereafter he started to feel over-
whelmed by loneliness, compulsive work, a masked depression, and
ambivalence towards his conflictive daughter. Although still young,
good-looking, and well off, he feared to seek out a new relationship.
He appeared somewhat inhibited, depressed, and rather sober: “I am
too shy to approach a woman”, he said. “But you were married for
many years.” “Well, “M” was a childhood sweetheart, she was the
only woman I have been with, and I think we married because she
decided the whole thing.” As the therapy progressed, he confessed
with great reluctance, shame, and guilt, to having been sexually abused
as a child by a nanny and how he also sexually abused his younger
sister. He felt so bad and dirty that no woman would ever want to be
 T H E T R A M U AT I S E D E G O A N D T H E T R AU M AT I S I N G S U P E R E G O 141

with him. There was an obvious attempt to induce an active role in the
countertransference by acting out in the transference a kind of compul-
sive passivity or “shyness”, as he referred to it, so as to create a form
of mutual, perverse “masturbatory collusion”, similar to what he had
experienced with his nanny. It was clear also, that this shyness was
directly related to feelings of guilt and shame induced by the power
of an internal superego’s threat of universal scorn that paralysed him
because of the complicity of an ego largely subdued. Out of terror from
an internal castration threat, he had to always remain absolutely pas-
sive and immobile in order to avoid being castrated by a Procrustean
superego projected everywhere.

Shylock’s pound of flesh, or the “Faustian pact”

Some patients make use of certain organs in order to search for a “pri-
mary absent object”, such as the breast or the penis. Mechanisms of
internal projective and introjective identifications, directed into these
organs, are used in order to set up a kind of somatic and narcissistic
dialogue of action to address parental superego imagos. A variety of
somatic pathology, usually related to disturbance of the immune system,
appears to represent forms of atonement or tribute, unconsciously used
by the ego in order to placate tyrannical coercion from the superego. It
is similar to Shakespeare’s Shylock demanding as a revenge a “pound
of flesh” from Antonio, or the “pact” between Satan and Dr Faustus,
where the latter offers the former his soul and body in exchange for
the experience of the very best that life has to offer (Grotstein, 2004;
Lefebvre, 1988). I have previously referred (López-Corvo, 2006) to a
woman who developed an acute rheumatic symptomatology after her
husband’s sudden death. Her symptoms eventually disappeared once
she was able to establish an insight into her unconscious manic sense
of triumph over her dead husband. There was a strong sense of guilt
about the unconscious feeling that, deep inside, she really felt it was
better for her husband to be dead than for her to be dead. The sudden
paralysis induced by her rheumatic ailment was the “pound of flesh”
paid to her accusing superego.
Roberto was an intelligent, twenty-seven-year-old, psychiatry res-
ident, who was referred when he developed a high level of anxious
depression after being diagnosed with neurological symptoms com-
patible with “MS”. He was the last of eight children in an economi-
cally limited family and went through a rather traumatic surgical
142 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

intervention when he was approximately eight years old. He grew up

feeling extremely envious of his older siblings, mostly those who were
considered financially successful. In order to compensate for his feel-
ing of insignificance10 and sibling rivalry, he became the only one in his
family to attend university and eventually became a lawyer. After two
years in analysis, it emerged that most of his emotional symptomatology
was related to an inner sense of insignificance, which induced an enor-
mous ambition that unconsciously guided him through his continuous
academic achievement. These accomplishments carried unconscious
desires for revenge from the insignificant child element in him, inducing
terrible anxiety and a deep sense of guilt. He became trapped between
the desire to compete and the desire to exercise revenge by intellectual
accomplishment and guilt. There was an obvious association between
his academic accomplishments and his neurological pathology, giving
the impression of an unconscious “Faustian bargain”.

The salamander’s tail

There are some forms of salamanders that when threatened, split off
part of their tail, which wiggles rapidly in order to get the attention of a
possible predator as the salamander slips away to safety. Some patients
provide the analyst with something they feel the analyst might be inter-
ested in, while at the same time another split and sheltered element is
kept away from the analysis. It is a form of defence common in patients
presenting important “compliant” behaviour (López-Corvo, 2006a).
With this kind of defence there is always a danger of perverse collusion
if the analyst shelters any sort of “desire” related to the outcome of the
patient’s analysis. At the beginning of the analysis a patient, who used
intellectualisation as his major defence, read some of my books, and in
order to avoid speaking about some sexual perversions and very pain-
ful childhood memories, he brought the books to analysis, along with
other related ones. Another patient brought “gift” dreams as a way of
evading the investigation of envious feelings towards the analyst. After
referring during a session to his desire to translate one of my books
into his mother tongue, he presented three dreams. In one of them, he
was following a car I was driving, which suddenly made a turn and
disappeared into a deep ditch. I said that there was some contradic-
tion between the relevance given to my book and the outcome of the
car I was driving. In order to deal with persecutory anxiety and guilt
 T H E T R A M U AT I S E D E G O A N D T H E T R AU M AT I S I N G S U P E R E G O 143

from his split and projected superego, he was consciously enticing my

narcissism, like a salamander’s tail, although unconsciously he was
doing the opposite. Through the dream his unconscious alpha function
revealed a rather conflicted intention.

Weepers and self-flagellators

Perhaps a variation of the previous dynamic is what I refer to as
“weepers” or “self-flagellators” to describe patients that continuously
complain and whine in order to induce pity in the therapist (projected
superego) as well as a desire to be rescued. The main purpose would
be to control the analyst in order to placate the projected superego. In
a perverse variant of this form of defence, similar to the “salamander’s
tail”, there could exist another part, hidden away, that feels, at the same
time, triumphant at being able to deceive the “castrator” placed in the
therapist, who remains “occupied” in rescuing the “weeper”. There are
also significant melancholic elements and unresolved mourning proc-
esses that remain repudiated from consciousness. The therapist should
become alert if experiencing an endless need to continuously calm or
reassure a complaining patient. This particular form of defence could
also be related to dynamics of “self-envy” (López-Corvo, 1992, 1995),
because the act of “self-beating”, even if it has been produced with the
purpose of controlling a projected superego element, is in the end expe-
rienced by the ego—similar to “the boy who cried wolf”—as a “true”
source of suffering. I often say to these patients that if they are experi-
encing the need for the therapist to be “nice” to them, why not ask for
it directly. An intelligent psychoanalytic candidate always started the
session by attacking himself using rather unfair accusations about how
he performed in his work, terrorising himself either by confusing his
pessimistic thoughts produced at the moment with what might take
place in reality in the future, or by going back to previous decisions and
endlessly wondering if he could have done things in a different manner.
I always said that he wished to bring back to life a dead loving mother,
by inducing me to stop the self-beating.

The “faecal phallus”

There are patients,—often young borderline schizoid males with chronic
dependency on marijuana—who sometimes resort to concrete actions in
order to deal with restrictive and iniquitous demands from a tyrannical
144 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

superego, a condition that reminds me of the myth of Sisyphus.11 I have

devoted Chapter Fifteen to the exploration of these patients, who use
this form of “mental paralysis”.

Conclusion
Psychoanalysis is a subversive system that attempts to encourage the
submissive ego to fight back the cruel demands made by a superego,
which has been fashioned by successive identifications learned at the
time when the pre-conceptual trauma took place. Using the story I
shared at the beginning of this chapter, it is like helping the Scythian
slaves to finally fight back against their masters, in spite of the memory
of having been subdued by the whip. The superego relentlessly repeats
on the ego a cruelty similar to that originally exercised on the child by
a reality that was not properly digested due to the absence of a sophis-
ticated alpha function. I have attempted to share some defences I have
observed during my clinical practice, used by the ego in order to deal
with such superego demands.
CHAPTER TEN

Acting out pre-conceptual traumas:

interruption of therapy and “catastrophic
change”

Catastrophic change
Bion (1965) referred to two forms of catastrophic change, one whose
consequences involved persons outside the consulting room, the other
remaining as a “controlled breakdown” within the analytic dyad (p. 8).
I believe the difference between these two forms will hinge on the seri-
ousness of the psychopathology involved. I will be referring to the sec-
ond kind of catastrophic change, the one taking place inside the analytic
setting.
Bion borrowed Thom’s concept of catastrophe theory to develop
his own dissertation about catastrophic changes.1 Following this model,
we can infer that interpretation—introducing integration by changing
bivalent part objects into univalent total objects, as well as changing dif-
ferent kinds of equilibration2 (from symmetrical to asymmetrical)—
could result in a discontinuity of the mental system and, sometimes,
in a catastrophic change. In other words, catastrophe could be induced
by the introduction of time, space, and symbolisation into a currently
steady or levelled state of equilibrium, which is assembled and sus-
tained by the repetition compulsion of childhood traumas. In Chapter
Two I have alluded to how pre-conceptual traumas eventually organise

145
146 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

the existence of every human being, becoming a selected fact that

progressively determines their own specific idiosyncrasy. The continu-
ous action of the interpretation (alpha function) will erode the given
structure of the “traumatised state of the personality”, working its way
to a point where some structures might collapse, producing a turbulence
and giving place to a new state of equilibrium, which often results in a
catastrophic change. Discontinuation of therapy is frequently induced
by uncontained catastrophic changes.
Catastrophic change can be illustrated with numerous clinical exam-
ples. Elsewhere (López-Corvo, 2006a) I have referred to patients suf-
fering from “false-self” psychopathology, who feel trapped between
opposite false selves: one complying, obvious, initially present in the
transference and related to oral fixations; the other negativistic, hiding,
initially present in the countertransference and related to anal fixations.
When the analysis progresses and the hiding negativistic false self
becomes obvious, there is the possibility of a catastrophic change and
of premature interruptions of the analysis.
For instance, a supervisee expressed her concern that her patient was
“getting worse”. The patient was a man in his fifties who displayed an
excessively compliant attitude related to ambivalent feelings induced
by a cruel, castrating, and punishing father. As an attempt to strug-
gle with his repressed murderous wishes and to keep his dead father
“alive”, he now continuously and compulsively travelled to places he
used to visit as a child with his father. After continuous interpretations
linking his compulsive driving to his repressed aggression, the patient
portrayed a change of attitude, epitomised in the session presented by
the concerned supervisee. He started the session as follows:

“I’m not doing well. I drove yesterday, and I’m still driving.
Yesterday afternoon I went into the office but I didn’t stay long.
I seem to be on a course of disaster. I want to be on this course of
disaster. There is something about it that I find appealing. I have this
feeling like, yes, I want to do this. I suppose it is a form of rebellion
that I couldn’t act on as a child and now I can rebel. I just don’t care
anymore. All the normal checks and balances are thrown out the
window: consciousness, work ethic … I just don’t care anymore.”

This was a style of discourse completely different from his usual com-
pliant demeanour, a drastic change towards a negativistic kind of false
 AC T I N G O U T P R E - C O N C E P T U A L T R A U M A S 147

self, a form of protest that introduced the danger of a catastrophic

change and the possibility of the treatment being “thrown out of the
window”.
Catastrophic changes can also occur in the analysis of borderline
adolescents who have been used by their families as a depository of
undesired projective identifications. Once they refuse to play that role
any longer, another member of the family, usually the mother, becomes
symptomatic.3

Clinical case
I will now follow in more detail the psychoanalytic course of a case
illustrated in Figure 2, as a topological model based on Thom’s catas-
trophe theory (Poston & Stewart, 1996). The model moves from right
to left and contains three stages. Stage one corresponds to the initial
state of equilibrium representing the patient’s psychic state when she
arrived for consultation. Stage two is divided into four sequential sub-
stages: “A” to “D”, standing for the time the analysis lasted, depicting
transformations in the patient’s mental structure, that eventually led to
a “stage of catastrophe” and to interruption of therapy. Finally, stage
three represents the patient’s psychic state after discontinuation of anal-
ysis. “Attractors” signify a series of matters considered to be the subject
of successive interpretations, and possibly responsible for dissipation
of the original state at the time of consultation.
A thirty-year-old, single woman I will refer to as Francis, the young-
est of five siblings and born ten years after her next older brother, ini-
tially consulted because of chronic and unspecific anxiety. From very
early in her treatment we managed to understand the importance of her
age difference with the other siblings, a situation that induced in her a
sense of “total insignificance”. Paradigmatic of this state of affairs was a
repetitious situation she remembered taking place at dinnertime, when
her parents and her older siblings would engage in political or philo-
sophical discussions, leaving her out, making her feel painfully ignored.
She complained of chronic insomnia as well as great anxiety as soon as
she awakens. It seemed that her “omnipotent conscious mind” found
it difficult to delegate to her “unconscious mind” in order to be able to
sleep. Also, she felt so indispensable that she harboured the delusion
that nothing could be solved while she was “away” sleeping, and that
as soon as she woke up, she had to face all those predicaments that, left
148 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

Final state d 2
of equilibrium c
b 1
CA
TA a
3 ST
RO
PH Stable equilibrium
E
ATTRACTORS: INITIAL STATE
interpretation of:
insignificance, fear
of dependency … ATTRACTORS:
interpretation of:
sexual abuse,
sado-masochism,
mother’s sadism … .

Figure 2. A topological model based on Thom’s catastrophe theory.

unsolved, were now worsened because of her absence. I believe that

in general this arrogant reluctance to delegate to the sleeping part in
ourselves is the centre of the conflict in any chronic insomnia.
As a very early form of defence, she attempted to reach “signifi-
cance” by excelling in any field in which she became involved, to such
an extreme that she often got hurt. She started piano lessons at six years
of age and did very well, later winning prizes and executing public
performances with success; however, she had to stop because of painful
cramps in both hands. Similarly, she had to give up tennis because of
a serious injury in her elbow. I would like now to follow a diachronic
progression of her analysis (see Figure 2).

Initial state of stable equilibrium

During the first two years of her analysis, Francis arrived, lay down on
the couch, and continuously complained of how little time she had for
herself, feeling under stress, experiencing a high level of anxiety, usu-
ally in the morning after waking up, and recounting her boss’s irrational
and inconsiderate demands. She usually expressed her complaints with
a contrasting smile that seemed to cover up a feared and concealed rage.
Her discourse was very much the same, representing a plateau or form
of equilibrium where, on the one hand, she was dealing with strong
 AC T I N G O U T P R E - C O N C E P T U A L T R A U M A S 149

ambivalent feelings between her emotional need to depend on her

parents, and, on the other, her desire to find her independence. Domi-
nant superego demands, guilt, and self-castrating impositions pointed
to a disparity between a symbiotic attachment to a very critical and
dominant mother, and a distant father who failed to rescue her from the
mother’s powerful control. It seems that, as a way of avoiding mental
pain and of dealing with such a continuous castration threat of insignifi-
cance, she split her emotions between debased feelings of dependency
as an expression of undesired insignificance, on the one hand, and ide-
alised supra-significant feelings of self-sufficiency and independence,
on the other. She projected the insignificance, while at the same time
she felt supra-significant, but she did so with such cruelty that her own
state of well being was not considered. She became, out of guilt, para-
lysed by anxiety and hopeless despair, and eventually felt utterly insig-
nificant. But even this mechanism was insufficient, because she felt then
like an “infra-insignificant” disguised as a “supra-significant,” terrified
of being discovered and always feeling false, an impostor.
The analysis at this time reflected all the characteristics of a negative
therapeutic reaction. She used mechanisms of inanimate identifications
and was convinced that she came to therapy to be mended, because I
was a sort of “mechanic” and she some kind of broken machine. She
had her own theories about her paralysing anxiety that she shared with
me as a form of instruction or blueprint. There was an attitude of dis-
dain towards me and the analysis. For instance, she paid a fixed amount
every month, and I had to compute the exact amount she owed because,
as she stated, she “did not know how to calculate her payments”. At
other times she projected an omnipotent and powerful maternal object,
personifying the oracle, capable of providing the “ultimate unquestion-
able truth”—a situation that at the same time induced anger and frus-
tration because she felt my interpretations could not be questioned or
regarded as simple hypotheses to be explored together.
Francis’ level of anxiety was always very high because of the superego
demand to outshine herself in order to carry out an envious vengeance
against her parents and siblings, by projecting into them her feelings of
insignificance. Therefore, consequent guilt and an unconscious need for
punishment resulted in a sort of paranoid-schizoid circularity, which
was always translated into a greater anxiety. Over the years, she became
aware that this condition was in fact homeomorphically4 extended to all
of her everyday activities, and she continuously carried on with her
150 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

life as if in a deadly form of competition. The feeling of insignificance

was always split and projected, thus remaining threatening and hid-
den around every corner—at home with her parents and siblings, at
work, with friends, and in the analysis. At about this time, her mother’s
previously diagnosed cancer of the colon metastasised and required
immediate surgery. At the beginning of every session she stated how
extremely anxious she felt about her work and about her mother’s
condition. Although she became involved and repeated with evident
interest the content of the interpretation given to her, she never referred
afterwards to whatever hypothesis we had elicited during the previous
session. It seemed that she was extremely ambivalent, caught between
the desire to free herself from her anxiety, and to enviously attack what-
ever the analyst had to say in order to render the analyst completely
insignificant. I had the phantasy of the interpretations being nicely and
carefully wrapped and then placed aside and forgotten.
At one point, she said after a short silence that she was trying to
remember something she wanted to talk about, something she had
thought of before coming. “I think that I am not able to remember
because the days I come here I also have a massage and I feel very
cloudy. I cannot think very clearly but I also feel less anxious and more
relaxed.” I said that perhaps she did not need a mind, because she
wished for me to use my mind to give her a massage. “Well,” she said,
“I come to find directions of how to get rid of my anxiety.” “The prob-
lem,” I added, “is that if you come to see me to give you a ‘massage’ in
order to find directions to get rid of your anxiety, we will be leaving you
out, and that, I think, will be rather unfair to you, because it will make
me very important but it will make you very insignificant.”

Catastrophic change: stage A

In the second year of her analysis, she referred, with great pain, dif-
ficulty, and hesitation, to the kind of association she established with
her piano teacher, who was old enough to be her grandfather, when she
was around eight years old. It was a sort of sadomasochistic relation-
ship, in which he manoeuvred their liaison in a rather perverse manner,
with sexual manipulations and promises of complete success (supra-
significance), combined with cruel threats and coercion of abandonment
(insignificance), if she did not abide by his demands. At the same time he
became her “champion,” someone “who was going to provide her with
 AC T I N G O U T P R E - C O N C E P T U A L T R A U M A S 151

worldwide recognition,” a complete manic triumph of supra-significance

over the rest of her idealised older siblings. It was an alliance, like Bonnie
and Clyde; since she felt that a part of her became his lover in order to
rescue another part of her she felt was like a “speck of dirt”.
In the transference something similar took place: she believed she
had to become my lover and I had to act like her teacher, in order for
her to become somebody—a prospect that frightened her because of
the incestuous-revengeful nature of her sexual association. As a result
of that fear she remained distant. It was all or nothing: either we
became lovers, as with her piano teacher, or she would remain distant
and indifferent. She said she felt sexually attracted to older men and
feared being rejected by me for what she did, or being abused again by
my establishing with her a sexual bond similar to the one she had with
her teacher.
A primary complication of sexually abused children is their experi-
ence of confusion, terror, and isolation, because those who should have
provided them with unconditional protection and efficient instruments
to symbolise oedipal issues had become their executioners. In situations
like this, the oedipal space instead of being symbolised in order to bring
about mental growth and autonomy, is acted out, inducing a sense of
hopelessness, a condition very difficult to overcome. Another danger is
what I have referred to as “iatrogenic splitting” (López-Corvo, 1995).
The therapist, pressed by the countertransference anxiety of acting out
the erotic transference, can resort to inducing further splitting in order
to preserve the distance, then reflected in behaviour known as multi-
ple personality. In the analysis of these patients, the only alternative is
the continuous use of transference interpretation in order to provide
a space where repressed emotions can be investigated although never
acted out.

Catastrophic change: stage B

It became clear that there was a masochistic trend related to oedipal
guilt, and it was difficult for Francis to imagine that nothing in her eve-
ryday reality justified the degree of anxiety she was referring to, and to
see that she was unconsciously and incessantly inventing ways to tor-
ture and punish herself. By the same token, out of her own ambivalent
desire to be sexually abused, she attacked and destroyed any hypoth-
esis provided to her through the interpretation. Another alternative
152 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

she considered was her wish to find somebody else to rescue and free
her from the anxiety state she had created, but without her taking an
active role in the search, instead being quite passive in order to avoid
superego accusations about incestuous sexual desires: “if she is pas-
sive she is a victim, she will be fine; but if she is active in any way, she
will be suspicious”. For instance, one important part of her generated
a chronic state of anxiety, while at the same time, she split and pro-
jected her “thinking apparatus” in order to use the analyst’s mind, so
she could experience being “passively” and “sexually explored” by the
interpretation. The main splitting could be epitomised as the correla-
tion between the “nun and the whore.”
During the first day after Easter holidays, she pointed out a change
when she was away with a girlfriend at a beach resort: “I felt very good
and had a wonderful time.” While there, she met a nice man and spent
one night with him. It was something she had never done before in such
a short time and with an unknown man:

“My friend is a very good-looking and sexy girl, very successful

with men, very different from me, because I usually feel uncertain,
that they don’t like me. This time it was the opposite. I don’t know
exactly why, but I felt more at ease and it seemed that men were
more interested in me than in my friend. The guy I am telling you
about. we were dancing at a discotheque, then he suggested going
to another one, and I knew what he was planning but I went along
with it. At one point he suggested going to his apartment and I
consented, feeling very relaxed. It was like a new experience, as I
was not frightened as I previously felt with men.”

I agreed that it was a new experience, since she was not complaining
about feeling stressed, anxious, or ashamed, as she had done before in
similar occasions. Previously, she felt she had to protect herself from
men she presumed were trying to use and hurt her, and then, as a
defence, she tried to make them useless, like—as she often stated—“the
fox and the grapes”. She listened carefully to what I said and agreed
with it, and then, as if she had not heard, and thinking about something
else, she added, “I think my mother wants me to stay with her because
she does not feel comfortable with my brother and sisters.” There was a
serious change in her psychic state at the end of this plateau, coinciding
with a rapid decline in her mother’s health.
 AC T I N G O U T P R E - C O N C E P T U A L T R A U M A S 153

Catastrophic change: stage C

After her mother’s death, Francis’s ambivalence became more present
and strong. Transference and dreams supported the existence of an
internal object representing the phenomenon of a foetus or a sort of
“unborn being”. She again presented the concrete unconscious phan-
tasy of being like an inanimate object that an “analyst-mechanic” was
failing to “fix” by not being able to liberate herself from a maternal
entrapment. I said that she was feeling very guilty about her mother’s
death, because she was not sure if her angry phantasies had something
to do with her mother’s terminal disease. She continued dating men
who were living in distant cities or were in transit, as if she feared the
possibility of a stable relationship.
A part of her felt like an “unborn element” that faced an infinite and
powerful mother from whom she could not free herself, because the
only way to be born and be herself was to kill her. Her dilemma was
black-and-white or like a seesaw: she had to either be an unborn foetus
in order to keep her mother alive, or kill her in order to be born. As
a consequence, she also experienced intense guilt due to serious envi-
ous attacks against linking, such as the sight of a harmonious analytical
couple, representing a relationship very different from the one she had
with her mother. Fear of dependency that had lessened during the pre-
vious stage now worsened and the signs of envious attacks appeared
in the transference in the form of a negative therapeutic reaction. It
seemed as if she sometimes rejoiced at my failure to mend her continu-
ous state of unresolved anxiety. She started to come late and to delay
her payments. It was obvious that the mother had been projected in the
transference, and I said to her that she was plotting to get rid of me as
if I were her mother.
At the end of Chapter Five I have suggested that difficulty to break
away from the ego’s dependency on parental imagos is a direct con-
sequence of a failure in the process of symbolisation or the incapacity
to discriminate between separation-individuation and murder. In other
words, continuous reiteration of early traumas represents a mechanism
used by the ego in order to keep the “internal traumatic parents” alive.
Breaking away or changing early emotional links towards the internal
parents, with the use of “discontinuous symbolisation”, could stand
for a painful and depressive process towards mental growth often dif-
ficult to endure. Parental links are maintained alive with the use of
154 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

progressive “homeomorphic symbolisations” that will avoid “tearing

away” from internal emotions that were attached to dependency on
parental figures.

Catastrophic change: stage D

Francis complained that she was very anxious and wished to see
someone else and to start cognitive therapy: “Psychoanalysis is not
helping me, it is not enough.” She went to see a psychiatrist and started
to take medication, but stated it was not working either. It seemed she
feared her displaced transference desire to “kill” me, similar to her
ambivalence and repressed wishes to “kill” her dying mother.
On Mother’s Day her brother and his wife—who was pregnant—
and her divorced sister with her children came to her house for dinner.
She felt bad and went to visit her mother’s tomb and was angry at her:
“She did nothing to protect me from the piano teacher.” I felt her anger
at me and her wish to get rid of me by taking medication and seeing a
behaviour-modification therapist. She also said she was using medica-
tion from a psychiatrist and was planning to investigate the scope of
psychoanalysis by going to the psychoanalytic society. I said it seemed
she felt capable of questioning what I was doing, in the same way she
felt about questioning what her mother failed to do for her.
At the next session she arrived late and talked about her new boy-
friend, who was going abroad for the weekend. He was unpredictable,
sometimes very nice and at other times rejecting. Whenever she insinu-
ated herself, he mistreated her, but was nice if he was the initiator. (I had
stated earlier that the reason she became involved with him was that
he was leaving shortly.) She had gone to see the psychiatrist who pre-
scribed medication and was feeling less anxious. She thought this state
was foreign to her because she had always been anxious. She would see
him again next week. She remembered a dream, which was more like
a memory from real life: She is helping her mother, who has cancer and has
a colostomy to defecate through, by pushing the stool until it comes out. Five
minutes to the hour she said that she could not afford to continue com-
ing because one of her bursaries had been cut short. She could come
once a week but she knew I would not agree. I did not have a chance to
even tell her she was treating me and herself as if we were stools. She
was trying to free herself from a dying mother, by pushing herself out
from me like a stool.
 AC T I N G O U T P R E - C O N C E P T U A L T R A U M A S 155

She paid the cheque and said that she owed me sixty dollars because
she did not have enough. I felt—but did not say—that she could be using
this debt to convince me that she had reduced her sessions because she
hadn’t enough money, rather than because she was attempting to kill
me as a representation of her mother. She had seen her sister-in-law
who was pregnant and so young: “Only twenty-three. I am seven years
older and she is already pregnant, very self-sufficient. She makes me
feel as if I were the youngest.” Her father had asked her yesterday if she
had worked at the weekend: “Did you work hard, Francis? Were you
very productive today?” She had an argument with her boss because
she did not agree with something he said, and he was very negative,
and she got very angry and stormed out of his office, but later felt
guilty. She had also had a dream: She is packing her luggage to participate
in gymnastics as she did as a child but, being an adult as she is now, this makes
her feel very anxious. I said that perhaps the problem was that although
her unconscious speaks using metaphors, her consciousness does it in
a concrete manner. She said she did not understand. I said that that
was exactly what I was saying, that it is difficult for her to follow the
metaphorical way her unconscious seems to be talking to her, and that
perhaps her dream is not referring to gymnastics in a concrete way, but
metaphorically she cannot cope with the gymnastics of her life as she
feels her sister-in-law is doing, disagree with her boss without feeling
bad about it, or tell her father to leave her alone, to find her own way.

Final state of equilibrium

The reiteration of pre-conceptual traumas as a repetition compulsion
is the product not only of those mechanisms stated earlier, but also of
an attempt to be liberated from the trap, or captivity, imposed by the
mother’s desire. It is as if we are all born wrapped, as a caulbearer, in
our mother’s desire—a dictum established by Lacan (1959). One option
is to comply and become the desire of the mother, while the second is to
rebel against that desire. The central complication of these two possibili-
ties is that they are really two sides of the same coin. Either to conform
to what somebody else wishes, or to do the opposite, implies remain-
ing completely attached to that desire, because complying will induce
a sense of disappearing in the Other’s desire, of being nothing. It will
generate feelings of anger, envy, and revenge, promoting the need to
rebel, which will then generate feelings of guilt, thus closing the circle,
156 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

because guilt will promote a need to comply, and so on. The only exit
from this predicament is the capacity to find what Winnicott (1960)
referred to as the “true self”, meaning the “true desire of the self”,
which is really a virtual desire, because by the time we are able to find
our true “forgotten self” (López-Corvo, 2006a), if we ever do find it,
we will discover that the most practical outcome will be to continue
being what we have been so far, but with the inner feeling that now it
is our choice, and not our mother’s! The only approach to find the true
self is through symbolisation, in the discontinued or heteromorphic
form, as has already been alluded to in Chapter Five, where I stated
that this form of symbolisation—different from the homeomorphic or
continuous—is the only true door to mental freedom.
Not being able to make use of heteromorphic symbolisations in
order to free herself from her dependency on her mother’s desire, by
either complying or rebelling, Francis resorted to homeomorphic sym-
bolisations with the use of the mechanism of displacement, narcissisti-
cally projecting her mother through the transference onto me. It was
easier to “murder” her analysis than to contain the guilt induced by
the internal representation of her already dead mother. She attempted
to negotiate in the transference a way out of her dilemma without suc-
cess. I explained that people can carry on with their search in different
forms; some might do it in just one analysis, while others might resort
to breaking it up and taking some free time in between and continuing
later on and perhaps this format was more helpful for her. She agreed
and left on good terms.
CHAPTER ELEVEN

Pre-conceptual traumas: inflicted by

chance and repeated by compulsion

Zeus ordered Thanatos, god of death, to chain King Sisyphus

down in the Underworld. King Sisyphus slyly asked Thanatos to
demonstrate how the chains worked. As Thanatos was granting
his wish, Sisyphus then seized the advantage and trapped the god
of death instead. No human could then die with Thanatos out of
commission, something that exasperated the God of war, annoyed
because his battles had lost their fun since his opponents would not
die. He freed Thanatos and turned King Sisyphus over to the god of
death as well. As a punishment, Sisyphus was made to roll a huge
boulder up a steep hill that would always roll back down, forcing
him to begin again forever.

—Homer

B
ion has produced a dual conception of the mind integrated by a
psychotic (traumatised) and a non-psychotic (non-traumatised)
part of the personality, as a possible extension of Klein’s meta-
psychology of affects or paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions,
respectively. Bion, however, using the metaphor of the digestive appara-
tus, filled the missing hiatus between cognition and affect with notions

157
158 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

such as alpha function, beta and alpha elements, as well as links, among
many other mental constructs. In this chapter, I will try to conceptual-
ise dynamics related to the interaction between the traumatised (psy-
chotic) and non-traumatised (non-psychotic) part of the personality
and its association to Klein’s positions, as well as to distorions of time
and space.
In previous chapters, I have reiterated that transient absences change
into permanent presences due to a series of circumstances such as frustra-
tion intolerance. Once a permanent fact is established, it will endlessly
repeat, in a fashion that brings to mind what has been stated by French
Nobel laureate Jacques Monod (1971), that “what takes place by chance
will continuously repeat by compulsion”, or in Freud’s own words, by
way of the “repetition compulsion”. At the same time, as the permanent
fact repeats synchronically it also mutates diachronically—with age—in a
fashion I have described in Chapter Five as “homeomorphic” (continu-
ous) transformations, where the phenomenon changes but the noume-
non, the “thing-in-itself” or meaning, remains. “Repetition compulsion”
also stands for a form of time distortion within the traumatised state of
the personality, together with other time alterations such as “deferred
action” (Chapter Six), transference-countertransference, and the influ-
ence of present realities over pre-conceptual traumas (Chapter Twelve).
I will now consider two aspects I regard as significant in the
mechanism of pre-conceptual traumas’ incessant compulsion to repeat:
1) speed and size of the circularity; 2) emotional correlation as a form
of communication between “bivalent” part objects, different from
communication between “univalent” or total objects.

Speed and size of circularity

These two variables, speed and size, determine the prognosis and con-
scious level of the conflict within the pre-conceptual trauma. If the
size of the argument between inner split parts is larger and the speed
slower, the conflict might be closer to the preconscious, so will have a
much better prognosis. But if it is the opposite, faster and smaller, it will
be more persistent and difficult to interpret and to mutate. Correlations
between opposite affects displaying extreme differences that could be
depicted as “all or nothing”, “black or white”, and so on, are usually
expressions of serious psychotic or borderline pathology. Bion referred
to something similar as the “circular argument” and stated that
 PRE-CONCEPTUAL TRAUMAS 159

… the difficulties that arose depended (to extend the use of the circle
as a model) on the diameter. If the circular argument has a large
enough diameter, its circular character is not detected and may, for
all I know, contribute to useful discoveries such as I understand
the curvature in space to be … Conversely, the diameter can be so
reduced that the circle itself disappears and only a point remains.
(1997, p. 18)

And, further on:

There is implicit in this [in the diameter’s size] the possibility that
there must be distance between the correlated statements if mean-
ing is to be achieved. If ‘madness’ is feared, the operation that leads
to meaning is avoided. The circular argument must therefore be of
small diameter to preclude the conjunction of meaning and feeling
of madness. (1997, p. 20)

In other words, the diameter’s size represents a defence against the

awareness of madness, something I consider of great importance in
the prognosis of borderline pathology. When the diameter is small and
the speed faster, there is less possibility for realisation of being ill and
less danger of acting out. The opposite, on the other hand, when the
speed is slower and the diameter greater, is that the argument or corre-
lation between inner split elements will acquire a sense that could lead
to awareness of madness, inducing perhaps the danger of acting out
(López-Corvo, 2003, p. 57).
Examining some clinical material could be helpful. A forty-five-year
old married woman was sent by her mother to live with her grand-
parents when she was three years of age. She consulted because pro-
gressively, and due to different reasons, according to her, she had been
experiencing serious animosity towards most of her relatives, leaving
her rather emotionally isolated. I felt that in her mind, she was continu-
ously living as if a part of her was “still placed” with her grandparents,
inducing the need for someone to “rescue” her. But at the same time,
anybody capable of becoming emotionally close enough to display
the characteristics of a true “rescuer” became, after a short while, also
suspected of being the “placing mother”, inducing her to rapidly and
aggressively move away. But it was a circularity produced with such
speed that it was difficult to see the mechanism with the “naked eye”.
160 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

It was both, at once: a “rescuer-placer”. Articulated in chromatic terms,

it could be inferred that, if the traumatised part is “black and white”,
the non-traumatised is mostly “grey”.
An obese patient grew up with a depressive mother and a nice but
absent father. In the analysis he had the compulsive need to present
himself as if he knew everything, to the point that he often lied and
exaggerated. Whenever an interpretation was given, he would state
that he knew that or that he had already thought about that previously.
I believed the issue was of a little boy’s dilemma of trying to cheer up
his depressed mother by convincing her—and himself—that he was
his absent father. When I tried to make him aware about how much
he feared “not knowing”, he would take it as an accusation and tried
to dismiss what I said by often raising his voice. At the same time, he
never missed a session and was always on time. I had the phantasy of
a hungry baby who needed to feed but, out of envy, had to continu-
ously destroy his need of the breast by feeding in secret, as if he were
his own breast. But it was such a tight conflict between these split ele-
ments (small diameter) and happened so rapidly (great speed), that it
was hardly noticeable; the result was his obesity in mind and body.

“Bivalent” and “univalent” objects

In Chapters One and Seven, I described, following Klein (1946), differ-
ent forms of splitting within the paranoid-schizoid position. The emo-
tions attached to both, the “good-idealised” and the “bad-persecutory”
part objects, are opposite and correlate. If a part object symbolising
the bad-persecutory contains, for instance, a sense of “being left out”
or excluded, the good-idealised might symbolise a sense of “inclu-
sion” or importance, and there will always exist a correlation between
the opposite emotions present in these two part objects, emotionally
attached but separated in distance: if the “exclusion” is projected, the
“inclusion” will be introjected and vice-versa. I refer to this combina-
tion of both emotions, which are opposite and correlate, as “bivalent
part objects”. These part objects represent preconceptions in search of
a realisation—like a moth to the light—by means of correlation. Some-
one who feels intra-psychically the pain of “exclusion” will search for
somebody who acts as important and “included”, with the envious pur-
pose of inverting the situation. Following the specific emotions present
in every person’s pre-conceptual trauma, there will exist different
forms of correlating pairs as well as the specific penumbra of emotions
 PRE-CONCEPTUAL TRAUMAS 161

associated with them: masochist-sadist, voyeur-exhibitionist, rich-poor,

dependent-independent, significant-insignificant, courageous-coward,
nun-prostitute, and so on. This form of emotional correlation is also
what determines transference-countertransference: if one pair decides
the transference, the opposite will define the countertransference. These
concepts will become clear when the clinical material is presented at the
end of this chapter.
I now wish to establish that “repetition compulsion”, as origi-
nally proposed by Freud, is the immediate consequence of a series of
mechanisms of which “emotional correlation” between “part objects”
is decisive. Pre-conceptual traumas are accumulated unconsciously
as unprocessed memories, undigested sensory experiences, or “part
objects” waiting for thinking a mind to “contain” them. These mem-
ory traces, representing Bion’s notion of “beta elements”, are the stuff
that structure the traumatised state of the personality and the paranoid-
schizoid position. They represent a world made up of what I am now
referring to as “bivalent part objects” that can only be used as projectiles,
which, via projective and introjective identifications, evacuate the mind
from accretion of stimuli. The “depressive position” or non-traumatised
state of the personality, on the other hand, represents the capacity for
containing or understanding and metabolising these repudiated memo-
ries, using an “alpha function”, capable of digesting “bivalent beta ele-
ments” and changing them into “univalent objects” or alpha elements,
which can be used for thinking and to induce mental growth. What
fails is the absence of an alpha function capable of producing dream
thoughts, changing bivalent beta elements into total objects.
There is another very important unconscious interaction, associated
to mechanisms of reality testing, which also facilitates the production
of repetition compulsion. I have previously stated that “reality testing”
habitually attempts to discriminate between “conceptual” and “pre-
conceptual” traumas. This mechanism fails often, allowing emotions
related to pre-conceptual traumas to invade and overcome the adult
ego. Such a failure in reality testing induces an unconscious need to
regress in order to relive a condition that we all experienced as chil-
dren, when we felt protected by the “good parents” (good object) from
the “bad traumatising parents” (bad object). The problem, however,
is that this kind of regression carries with it another important com-
plication: to experience ourselves as helpless children in the hands of
powerful parents, something that will induce even more anxiety as well
as a greater need to regress, in an interminable circular repetition.
162 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

Seven absences in “bivalent part objects” (beta elements)

Transforming “bivalent part objects” into “univalent total objects”,
involves an array of phenomenological implications that I think were
not completely described by Bion. These “bivalent part objects” consti-
tute repressed or repudiated mental representations of early traumatic
situations or pre-conceptions, which remain unconscious, waiting to be
contained by a mind. There are at least seven important absences in
“bivalent part objects” (traumatised state), which are present in “univa-
lent total objects” (non-traumatised state).

i. Part objects are beta elements lacking the status of a total object—
although not all beta elements are part objects. They lack the
qualities of identity and predictability, meaning the capacity of the
object to be recognised in spite of its transformations, as well as
predicted; like knowing that the “pleasant” and the “angry mother”
are the same, or having the capacity to learn from experience.
ii. Part objects are bivalent (see Figure 3, first part), because they carry
within themselves mirror-like affects that oppose, but correlate

1st Part 2nd Part 3rd Part

Bivalent object Mechanisms Emotions
internal
world introjective
identification = transference
contempt,
I anxiety, fear
G IL
GU T
O
Separation
failure,
helplessness,
D hopelessness,
ENVY
B
GE
O projective identification AN R
external = countertransference
world

Figure 3. Bivalent part objects.

 PRE-CONCEPTUAL TRAUMAS 163

with, each other, creating a condition responsible for these objects

to compulsively and endlessly repeat in a sort of perpetual or
“circular argument” that I will now attempt to explain. As I have
stated elsewhere (López-Corvo, 2006), pre-conceptual traumas
result from the transformation of a temporary absence into a
permanent state, as a consequence of the ego’s incapacity to tolerate
frustration and to contain the absence. Permanency, in other words,
is the result of a compulsion to repeat, caused by distribution of
affects during primitive splitting. All traumas could be reduced to
a matrix represented by the dynamic interaction between the self
and the breast, as explained by Klein (1946).
Traumatic events are always experienced as a threat to the child’s
integrity, inducing aggression and, as a consequence, fear of retali-
ation and a need to split the breast into “idealised good object”
(IGO) and “denigrated bad object” (DBO) (see Figure 3, first part).
The main purpose of this split is to project the bad and preserve
the good, which has been idealised in order to resume feeding and
avoid starvation. There is always the fear of the bad destroying the
idealised, inducing the need, as stated by Klein (1946), to maintain
a distance between both, similar to what we observe when analo-
gous poles in two magnets repel each other. Separation from both
bivalent part objects, the “idealised” and the “bad”, is absolutely
necessary: if the former is introjected, the latter must be projected,
and vice versa. The introjection determines the transference, while
the projection determines the countertransference (see Figure 3,
second part).
A patient might act “self-sufficient” (ideal object), as a defence
against the terror of being “needy” or “dependent” (bad object),
an element that will be projected into the analyst. In this case, for
instance, the patient might delay payment, take holidays ahead of
the analyst, come late for the sessions, and so on. In other words,
there will be a correlation between both bivalent extreme emo-
tions: “self-sufficient” and “dependent”. A similar situation takes
place in other correlations or reciprocal dynamics, such as voyeur-
exhibitionist, masochist-sadist, hungry-abundant, abandoner-
abandoned, helpless-rescuer, and so on. It means that if the patient
acts as the voyeur in the transference, the analyst must experience
the exhibitionism in the countertransference, and vice versa. Such
endless repetition is the consequence of how the emotions attached
164 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

to each of these part objects are distributed. If the ideal object—in

any of its displaced metaphors—is introjected, it will establish the
transference according to emotions such as contempt towards the
bad object projected—a condition that will then induce guilt, fear
of retaliation, or castration anxiety, and, as defence, the need to
invert the relation by projecting the idealised object (countertrans-
ference) and introjecting the bad one (transference), which will in
its turn produce feelings of depression, belittlement, debasement,
and so on (see Figure 3, third part). The introjection of the bad
object will then induce envy and anger towards the idealised object
now projected, and the need, as a consequence, to change again
the nature of the introjection, in an incessant and continuous reit-
eration. It is not different from the mechanism in a rotor or electric
engine that propels toys, in which magnets successively attract or
repel each other; similarly, the ideal and the bad object are at all
times correlated: emotionally bonded but always spatially sepa-
rated; if one emotion is inside, the opposite is projected, and vice
versa.
iii. In order for these “bivalent part objects” to continuously
repeat themselves, they must be ruled by a symmetrical form of
internal equilibration, or equilibration by inversion, in which one
movement (projected bad object) is equal to but the opposite of
the other movement (introjected ideal object), like one mirroring
the other. The relationship could be represented mathematically
as: +n −n = 0, meaning, for instance, that if we were to advance n
steps, and then return the same number of steps backwards, we
would arrive at the place from which we started. Geometrically,
this form of equilibration corresponds to a circle (circular thinking,
repetition compulsion, and pathological narcissism).1
iv. Another aspect of the bivalent part object is the absence of time, or
confusion between past and present, responsible for the presence
of transference, representing a timeless presence, a narrative that
must be dreamed in order to provide meaning to unwelcome
painful emotions.
v. Another dimension is the absence of space, which induces
confusion between inner and outer worlds—or between phantasy
and reality—arousing the presence of projective and introjective
identifications. Projection is a direct consequence of the need for
the bivalent object to maintain separation between the idealised
 PRE-CONCEPTUAL TRAUMAS 165

part object and the bad one, because if one extreme is projected,
the other must remain inside, and vice versa. One important aspect
to consider is the communication between both “bivalent part
objects” with the use of negative emotional links such as minus
love (−L) minus hate (−H) and minus K (−K), as described by
Bion (1967). I have considered this aspect in Chapter Eight when
discussing how split parts communicate.
vi. The fact that bivalent part objects are ruled by a symmetrical
(circular) equilibrium also implies that they are closed and
saturated structures, so “empty” that they cannot contain anything
else. For instance, any correlation, such as “included-excluded”,
is so empty that anything in general could be either “included”
or “excluded”, but itis so saturated in relation to a particular
individual, that only specific things could be considered either
“included” or “excluded”.
vii. Finally, these part objects or beta elements represent concrete
structures that lack the capacity to achieve “discontinuous”
forms of symbolisation, and follow instead a continuous or
“homeomorphic”2 type of symbolisation, which does not allow
discrimination between past/present as well as subject/object
and symbol/symbolised. Symbolism signifies the faculty to
represent the absent object, or to “contain” the absence of the
object—the place where the object used to be but is no longer—
instead of being “contained” by it. The incapacity to create
“discontinuous symbols” is translated into concrete thinking,
as in psychotic individuals, or in the psychotic part of the
personality, a condition Segal (1957) conceptualised as “symbolic
equation”, whereby the “symbol-substitute” is experienced as
the original object.

“Univalent total objects” (alpha elements)

Univalent total objects are the products of transformations of “biva-
lent part objects” or beta elements by the alpha function into “alpha
elements” within the non-traumatised part of the personality. They
represent sensual impressions that could be stored as conscious
memories—or preconscious ready to become conscious—and eventu-
ally employed to create dream thoughts, dream formations, creative
thinking in its various forms.
166 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

Let me now outline the features or characteristics of the “univalent

whole objects”:

i. In “univalent objects” there is integration of part objects and

consolidation of total objects capable of sustaining a recognition
in spite of the apparent transformation, for instance to know
that the angry mother and the pleasant one, are the same, or that
transference love or negative transference are not emotions related
to the analyst.
ii. Bivalent part objects are integrated into emotionally univalent
objects capable of containing frustration and dispensing with the
need to use projective identification as a form of communication.
iii. They are structures dominated by asymmetrical mechanisms
defined as “resemblance” represented by the following logic: A > B,
B > C, A > C: or if A is older than B, and B is older than C, then A
will be older than C. Geometrically it could be represented by a
spiral, because the second movement is not equal but resembles
the first. It is, in other words, the formula of symbolisation.
iv. They are capable of discriminating between past, present, and
future. Transference acquires a sense of temporality instead of
“empty compulsive repetitions”.
v. They are also capable of discriminating between inner and outer
worlds or between reality and phantasy, decreasing the need to use
projective identification in order to free the mind from accretion of
stimuli.
vi. The fact that they are ruled by equilibrations by resemblance, make
them unsaturated, flexible and open to change, capable of learning
from experience and achieving mental growth.
vii. While consciousness can use concrete thinking as a form of
defence, the unconscious only speaks a symbolical language, as
can be observed in dream thoughts. Alpha elements are capable
of structuring “discontinuous” forms of symbolisation, different
from beta elements found in “homeomorphic”3 symbolism as
stated above. The language structured using alpha elements is a
language of liberation and autonomy, different from repetitious
and compulsive forms of communication as observed with beta
elements.

In the last analysis, what the proper use of these seven instances really
represents is the capacity to mourn the separation from the power
 PRE-CONCEPTUAL TRAUMAS 167

of the original object, the breast; meaning, the capacity of the self to
constructively “contain” human dependency. This process can often
translate itself into a subversion of the status quo, which Bion has referred
to as “catastrophic change”. Beta elements represent a form of equilib-
rium that contain important aspects of the mind that, under the impact
of the analyst’s alpha function, can, as I have just summarised, change
into alpha elements, and produce new forms of equilibrium that at times
can have catastrophic consequences for the treatment. However, if toler-
ated and endured, valuable results will be provided for the patient.

Homeomorphic transformation of emotional correlations,

illustrated with some clinical examples
Libya was a thirty-two-year-old woman, the third of eight siblings,
married, and in analysis for three years at the time of the present
description. She had married a very wealthy man and felt that there
was a great financial difference between her family and that of her
siblings whom she often tried to help. She consulted because of some
asthmatic-like symptoms, including a feeling of suffocation and fears of
dying, something I considered as manifestations of hysterical psycho-
pathology. I will use a series of sessions from a period of around three
months, when we were dealing with issues related to her father’s death
from lung cancer when she was about six years old. After a while, the
initial compliant attitude present at the beginning of her analysis had
given way to a more negativistic form of transference, manifested by
arriving late, prolonged silences, difficulties freely associating, and her
desire to diminish the number of weekly sessions or of giving up the
analysis completely. This condition was worsened after I mentioned my
intentions of increasing the fee for the sessions. In the contratransfer-
ence I often felt invaded by strong somnolence.
During one of these sessions, Libya started talking about a party
that had taken place at her home, which her mother and siblings had
attended. She wondered why during the gathering she felt very tense,
in spite of all the family being present, including an older sister who
had lived abroad for several years and had recently returned. She felt
everyone, in their own way, was trying to impress the others; however,
what disturbed her most was her mother’s “insistence” about having
mass on the anniversary of her father’s death. She then remembered
her father’s funeral and a comment one of her sisters had made that,
with so many people in the house, the situation appeared more like a
168 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

party. I thought there was a polarisation between two “bivalent part

objects”: one that could be conceived of as a “party-space” and another
as a “funeral-space”. I also thought that she became anxious and angry
at her mother for mixing these two objects when, in the middle of the
celebration, she had insisted on a mass for her father’s funeral. She was
also experiencing in the transference that I, similar to her mother, was
insisting on investigating painful memories about her father’s death.
Preserving herself inside the “party-space”, narcissistically fused and
experienced as a manic triumph, she felt driven to reduce the number
of sessions or to end the analysis altogether. It was a manic denial of the
pain experienced for such a loss at such an early age. At the same time
she projected the “funeral-space” in the transference, and I experienced
it in the countertransference as if I was dying in my somnolence. I said
that the anxiety she experienced in the party with her siblings, where
she felt they were trying to impress each other, was perhaps related to
the unconscious guilt induced by the need to project in the other the
“funeral-space” of an absent father, while preserving inside a “happy
party-space”. I also remembered that such “bivalent” conditions often
alternated in the transference-countertransference interaction, because
she had previously experienced, while in analysis, a terror of dying by
suffocation. At this time, while she appeared to be dying, I remained
quite awake and alert, thus different from other situations when I had
felt sleepy. It was at this particular moment that the polarisation had
changed.
When at the beginning of the next session, I told her I was thinking
of increasing my fees starting next month, she remained silent for quite
a while. She then said she was feeling furious that I was placing her in
a difficult situation with her husband, by requesting more money for
her therapy. She was also aware that the intensity of her anger was not
entirely justified and said she felt there might be other issues not yet
clear. Then she said I was only interested in money and was leaving
her completely abandoned. She shared a memory from the day previ-
ous to her father’s death, when he gave a doll to her younger sister,
who “sat on what was my chair and slept in what was my crib”. After
a short silence, she stated that she was thinking of keeping something
from me. When she started the session she said to herself: “I am going
to fuck him up (the analyst), I will come for a while, and then I will say
that I will reduce my sessions.” Countertransferentially I felt a desire
to apologise, to talk about inflation and asked myself if I had done the
 PRE-CONCEPTUAL TRAUMAS 169

right thing by telling her about the increase of the fee, and if I should
have waited for another moment, and so on. I thought that again the
polarity had changed: she presented herself as an “angry-jealous-child”
filled with homicidal and omnipotent intentions, while I felt “guilty,
bad, and vulnerable”. She missed the following session and did not
call, but arrived on time at the next one. She said she could not make
it, but did not try to communicate with me and felt very guilty. I said
that perhaps in her phantasies she felt she had attacked and hurt me,
similarly to how she might have felt about what she had done to her
father before he died, out of jealousy and anger because she felt her
younger sister had taken her place. Then she said that she could not
tell her husband P. about the increase of the fees. “Saturday, P. went
to play tennis and came home with a back-ache, very upset, throwing
doors, breaking things. This analysis has really helped me, because I
was patient and gave him a massage.” There was now a polarisation of
internal part objects between an “angry-frustrated” and a “placating-
massager”, where she could have been “the massager” and I the “mas-
saged placated one”, or vice versa. It was also possible that she was
“trying to massage me” when she came on time after having “thrown”
an “absent session” at me the previous day. She continued: “My anger
is because you created a difficulty by increasing the fee and forcing me
to talk to my husband about it … I have tried to tell him about your pen-
sion, I mean, your session, about the payment, and I don’t know why it is
so difficult. On the one hand I understand that the analysis has helped
me, but on the other hand, I feel so angry, and I don’t understand why
and why it is so difficult to tell P., although I could tell him that it is for
a dress or could steal it from him, but I don’t want to do that.” When I
asked about her confusion between pension and session, she said that
pension was a room in a house, something sad and lonely and “pension
is also the money I give to my mother”.
The polarisation now introduced another vertex, which had moved
in a homeomorphic fashion from a “rich-independent-happy-pension
giver”, placed inside her and observed in the transference, and a
“dependent-poor-lonely-pension receiver”, projected and experienced
in the countertransference. Increasing the fee threatened to invert the
situation, because it made her aware that, in relation to her husband, she
was just like her mother and I was towards her: meaning, three “lonely,
unhappy, pension receivers”. The feelings of anxiety, uncertainty, and
guilt I experienced in the countertransference after I had announced the
170 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

increase of the fee, represented what she had experienced towards her
husband when she tried to tell him about the increase. Such feelings were
perhaps also similar to feelings of despondency she had experienced as
a child after her father’s death, when, on the day before his death, she
witnessed how he had given her doll to her younger sister who sat in
her chair. The jealousy, rage, and feeling of revenge could have induced
extreme guilt, as she omnipotently felt she could have something to do
with his death. This could have explained her ambivalence between
her need to act out missing one session, and being on time—as a call for
repair—at the next session. I thought also that there was a narcissistic
oedipal complicity and collusion with her husband, as she felt finan-
cially powerful in relation to her “pensioned mother” as well as the rest
of her siblings, who were not in such a good financial position as her
husband. I told her that it seemed as if her marriage carried some form
of revenge against her mother and siblings, because of what she might
have experienced as a child, feeling like an excluded “lonely-unhappy-
pension receiver”, while at the same time envisioning her younger
and older siblings as “rich-happy-love receivers”. I also stated that the
anger, resentment, and desire to avenge, which she might have expe-
rienced against them, she now seemed to be experiencing against me
by wanting to discontinue her analysis, being silent, late or not coming
at all, as she was feeling I was becoming also a “rich-happy-receiver”
when increasing my fees. She reacted by blaming herself: “I feel terri-
ble, how can I be so bad? I now feel very frightened and a sensation on
my chest I have experienced other times when I feel I might be dying.”
In the countertransference I experienced the desire to be nice and to
calm her, a sensation I had previously observed during similar circum-
stances. Thinking that my feelings were the consequence of a projective
identification, I said that perhaps she felt frightened because she felt
discovered, not only by me, but most importantly, by a part of herself,
and that this had frightened her so much that she preferred to punish
herself before she were punished. I said that by attacking herself, she
was placating someone she feared that she was now placing in me. I felt
this mechanism of “self punishment” was an attempt to protect a narcis-
sistic identification with an ideal and powerful object related to P., that
she had often used in order to exercise revenge. It was very important
for a part of her to preserve inside (introjective identification) the space
of an “ideal part-bivalent-object” (party, happy, included, rich, pen-
sion giver, etc.), while projecting into the outside object, the correlated
 PRE-CONCEPTUAL TRAUMAS 171

bivalent counterpart of the bad part object (funeral, unhappy, excluded,

poor, pension receiver, and so on).
At the next session she experienced an intense crisis of suffoca-
tion with great anxiety and the sensation of dying, similar to, but less
pronounced than, those observed at the beginning of her analysis. I said
that she feared feeling inside both sensations at once: feeling attacked,
left out, impotent and furious, as well as envious, and with a powerful
desire for revenge; and that the existence of all these opposite feelings,
experienced at the same time, filled her with terror. The interpreta-
tion seemed to calm her, and she recalled a childhood memory of how
her mother always granted special privileges to her older brother. He
would have nicer desserts, or more freedom: “… in my family boys
were always treated much better than the girls, with more kindness
and all sorts of considerations.” The polarisation had now slid to
another correlation, where the “idealised part object” had topologically
(homeomorphic) changed into a “penis owner”, and the “bad one”, had
changed into a “vagina (castrated) owner”: thus, kind of bivalent part
objects. It was a significant association that slid the unconscious phan-
tasy into a different dimension, changing the profile of the part objects
within the paranoid-schizoid position. When I interpreted this correla-
tion between a “castrated, pensioned, unhappy, poor” part of herself,
and another “rich, penis owner, pension giver” element, she remem-
bered something she felt was difficult to talk about because it made her
feel ashamed: she recalled masturbating by placing objects between her
legs, as if she had a penis.
Bion used a dot (.) to represent the breast and a line (____) to stand
for the penis. The presence of the breast will be a “plus breast”, symbol-
ised geometrically as: +.; the absence of the breast, on the other hand,
will be a “less breast” and represented as: _.; the presence of the penis
would then be: + _____ and the absence _ _____. Phallic envy amounts
to a basic construct in the mind of any woman. We have learned from
Freud (1937) that,

… with the wish for a penis and the masculine protest we have
penetrated through all the psychological strata and have reached
bedrock, and that thus our activities are at an end. (p. 252)

If we were then to use the absence of a penis as the expression of a

basic and original object, from where other symbolisations depart,
172 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

we could, using Bion’s container–contained ( ) model, represent the

topological transformation of this emotion, following the material
described above. The “container” ( ) corresponds to a concept or a sym-
bol, while the “contained” ( ) will stand for a “meaningful emotion”
elicited by that concept, or “container”. I would like to say something
now about the kind of transformation present in the case of Libya to
which I have just referred. The unconscious is an organ that, similar
to consciousness, talks about the trauma—among other issues—using
different symbols, which could look different but would have the same
meaning, as if there were no rupture from the original object, similar to
how the breast changes into a thumb or a security blanket. In all of the
series of bivalent part object combinations I have just presented with
this patient, the containers slide continuously, but the hidden or uncon-
scious meaning or contained is always the same, presenting two basic
alternatives: either a narcissistic possession of the phallus (+ ____ ), as
a manic defence through the introjective identification with the “ideal
part object”; or its narcissistic absence (_ _____ ) as the identification
with the “bad part object”. I have referred to this continuous slide of
symbolical forms from an original object, such as the penis or the breast,
and its progressive and future transformations, as a “homeomorphic”
transformation. We could perhaps schematically describe in Libya’s
sessions six possible options of container/contained combinations, where
the container ( ) slides (homeomorphic) but the contained ( ) remains:

(1)
Container : funeral-space / party space;
Contained : (_ _____) / (+ ______);

(2)
: angry-homicidal-child / guilty-bad-vulnerable
: (_ _____) / (+ ______)

(3)
: angry-frustrated / placating-massager
: (_ ______ ) / (+ ______)

(4)
: poor-pension-receiver / rich-pension-giver
: (_ ______) / (+ ______)
 PRE-CONCEPTUAL TRAUMAS 173

(5)
: presence of the phallus / absence of the phallus, or
: (+ ______) / (_ ______)

(6)
: (+ ______) (_ ______)
___________ / ____________
: (+ _______) / (_ ______)

Numbers five and six, where the container and the contained are the
same, represent the proper insight related to her primitive feelings of
castration anxiety and penis envy, or bedrock status according to Freud.
In summary, when container and contained coincide, there is an insight
and the projective-introjective identifications are no longer relevant, or
the other way around.
CHAPTER TWELVE

The world of sigma (Σ)

Intuitions without concepts are blind,

Concepts without intuitions are empty

—I. Kant

Such freedom from opacity cannot be achieved during the psycho-

analysis if the intuition has already been damaged by indiscipline
at any time … What has not been recognized is the ephemeral
nature of such psycho-analytic achievements and the need for the
establishment of freedom from memory, desire and understanding
as a permanent, durable and continuous discipline.

—Bion
Cogitations, 1992, (p. 315)

The prevailing significance of the very small

The difference between consciousness and unconsciousness is simi-
lar to the relationship between the exactness present in physics of
large bodies or Newtonian physics and the imprecision observed in
quantum mechanics. It follows an isomorphic correspondence with
175
176 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

the difference in performance as well as with the structure observed

between the body and the mind.
The discovery of the presence of small particles beyond the
“indivisibility” of the atom, impelled the need for the new instrument
of measurement we know today as quantum mechanics, analogous to
the creation of non-Euclidian geometry by Friedrich Gauss, in order to
deal with very large and curved bodies.1 Newtonian exactness of larger
bodies cannot be applied to subatomic matter, because it is impossible
to know with precision the position and momentum of an electron at
any given moment in time; this incertitude inspired Heisenberg in 1927
to establish the “uncertainty principle”. Different from the predictability
observed in a planet’s orbit, which allows a spacecraft to travel from
Earth to a specific place on Jupiter, quantum physics can only provide
the alternatives and probabilities about something taking place at a cer-
tain time. It is never exact; rather it is similar to predictions made with
the use of statistics, or to the random possibilities of someone’s life span,
given his age, occupation, sex, and habits. Einstein, who once criticised
the uncertainty present in quantum theory by expressing that “the Old
Man never played dice with the Universe”, has ironically been consid-
ered, together with Planck, as one of the architects of quantum physics.2
The problem quantum mechanics introduced is that even inanimate mat-
ter has a side that is not completely exact and to understand it depends
more on statistical probability than on the general precision of physics.
Physical laws, as established by Newton, are equally determinant
of reality and consciousness. For instance, I can predict, with the same
accuracy, which patient I will be seeing at seven p.m. on a Monday,
as I can what direction and speed a spacecraft should follow on its
path to Mars. However, we will never be able to foresee what direc-
tion our dreams will pursue tonight, or what will be in the mind of
any patient during our next meeting. Such observations are not dif-
ferent from Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, which determines the
essential argument of why Newton’s equations cannot be used in the
observation of subatomic particles, because it is impossible to deter-
mine accurately either the position, or momentum, of the electron or
the content of the unconscious phantasy. The consequence of all of this
is that physics, like the mind, “ended up with two bodies of laws—
one for the world of the very small—like the unconscious—and one for
the universe at large like consciousness—leading quite separate lives”
(Bryson, 2003, p. 147).
 THE WORLD OF SIGMA (Σ) 177

The world of “sigma” (Σ)

Very similar to the diversity just described between Newtonian and
quantum physics, Bion (1992) has distinguished between “alpha” and
“beta spaces”, where “alpha-space” represents the world of reality as
it is perceived by the senses, “namely certain active constellations of
thought that are associated with the discipline of biology and spoken of
in those terms” (ibid., p. 314). “Beta-space”, on the other hand, was con-
sidered like a “multi-dimensional space of thoughts without a thinker”.
I consider that “beta space” corresponds to the “traumatised state”
and “alpha space”, to the “non-traumatised” one. Bion also referred to
the world of “sigma” (∑), a space he compared with the “noösphere”
described by Teilhard de Chardin3 and depicted as the space of the
intuitable that can be used in order to reach a close acuity of reality’s
extreme spectrum of “infra” and the “ultra real”. It is subjected to its
own terms and conditions even if these rules are not even known:

These realities are “intuitable” if the proper apparatus is available

… The conditions in which the intuition operates (intuits) are pellu-
cid and opaque … These are [the opacities] memory, desire, under-
standing. All are opacities obstructing “intuition”. (Ibid., p. 315)

In order for analysts to obtain meaning, it is indispensable to free them-

selves from these opacities (memory, desire, and understanding) “as a
permanent, durable and continuous discipline” (ibid.). Alpha function
is important only if it is “receptive or emitter” of sigma, but it could
induce a turbulence or become one of Fraunhofer dark bands4 if con-
fused with sigma. Intuition represents, for Bion, an attempt to reach the
true core of what is unconscious, because, as he stated, “unconscious
could sometimes be replaced by obvious but unobserved” (ibid., p. 316).
Eaton and Young (2010) have produced an original clinical contribution
summarising some of Bion ideas about sigma.

A children’s rhyme
When I first came to Canada, I discovered, in speaking with a colleague,
that a certain nursery rhyme I sang as a child while engaging in chil-
dren’s games, was also sung by children in Canada. In my country it
was only the music because the words were just a long chain of “nyah,
178 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

nyah … nyah”; in Canada it was both: a well known rhyme—“Ring a-ring

o’rosese, A pocket full of posies, A-tishhoo! A-tishoo!, We all fall down”—plus
the music. However, the “nyah, nyah … nyah”, without the verses, was
also played in Canada depicting the same meaning I remembered as
a child, when the nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah … tune would be
sang in triumph by a child to another in distress as a kind of sadistic
Schadenfreude. There is the belief that this nursery folksong was origi-
nally written in England around 1665 when the great black plague pan-
demic struck London and that, behind the innocent words of the rhyme,
like some kind of “spoken palimpsest”, there were hidden tenebrous
meanings portraying dreadful historical tragedies. It could be under-
stood as follows: Ring a-ring o’ roses meant the pink halo surrounding
the swollen ganglion in the “bubonic” form of the plague; A pocket full
of posies represented the moment when the ganglion opens and the pus
from secondary infection pours out; A-tishoo! A-tishoo! is an allusion to
sneezing in the pneumonic form of the plague; We all fall down!, mean-
ing we all die. I wonder if singing the rhyme alluded to someone feel-
ing healthy (triumphant) pointing out to someone else presenting the
symptoms of the plague, as a form of appalling Schadenfreude. After all,
some writers state (Bell, 1924; Porter, 2009) that most well off Londoners
abandoned the city and moved to their country houses, while those
who stayed, and whose deaths significantly added to the statistics,
were the poor and commoners. Being ignorant about the true cause of
the epidemic could have quite possibly induced people to believe that
those whose lives were “spared” could have been “chosen by God” in
contrast to the “poor devils” who had died.
I found this story extremely meaningful in relation to the subject
of intuition I am now attempting to develop. Although there were no
verses in the Spanish version of the song capable of providing an asso-
ciation to the black plague, the meaning, portrayed just by the music
of this playground game, was the same that the original lyrics were
intended to convey at the time of its creation, when people were dying
and struggling to survive some demonic curse which they lacked
the logic to figure out.5 I find it absolutely astounding how the true
sense of this song without the lyrics, the sadistic Schadenfreude voiced
by those who survived against those who were doomed, managed to
make its way and preserve its true meaning absolutely unchanged, in
spite of being filtered down through centuries, generations, language,
and different cultural contexts.6 This uncanny form of communication
 THE WORLD OF SIGMA (Σ) 179

that takes place between different people’s unconscious, is what I am

now viewing as an essential aspect in the phenomenology of intuition,
something already conveyed by Chardin in his concept of “noösphere”
and by Bion in his notion of “sigma”.

Zen and the unconscious

The philosophy portrayed by Zen Buddhism represents a different per-
spective of how the mind is conceived in occidental culture, although
there are some exceptions; it is believed, for instance, that Heidegger
was influenced by Zen Buddhism.7 The main purpose of Zen is the
search of at-one-ment with the universe, something that, if viewed from
an Occidental vertex, might represent some kind of oceanic deperson-
alization, or a state of personality dispersion absolutely dominated by
the unconscious, to which Zen Buddhists refers to as satori. I have previ-
ously referred to this subject (López-Corvo, 2006) where I stated that

If the purpose of psychoanalysis is to make the unconscious present

with the use of consciousness, the Zen purpose is to achieve uncon-
scious domination by getting rid of consciousness. Methodology of
investigation also runs in different directions; in Zen, for instance,
it goes from intuition to theory, but theory is not well viewed, and
is even regarded with a certain scorn. It has been mostly occiden-
tal researchers who have provided it with a greater relevance as
can be observed in the publications of Watts (1957), Valliet (1971),
Fromm and Suzuki (1963), LaSalle (1975), Herrigel (1953); and so
on. Psychoanalysis, on the other hand, moves from theory to intui-
tion, disregarding the latter, with the exception of Bion who tried
to make intuition a determining aspect within the analytical prac-
tice, a contribution that has induced regular misunderstanding and
criticism of his work. (p. 175)

And also:

Zen masters search for a form of illumination they refer to as satori

or awakening, through long-term daily meditations (zazen), in an
enclosed special place (dojo). Meditation stands for a voluntary
state that attempts to free the psyche from any thought, memory or
desire and, after a continuous practice, achieves a “nirvana” state
180 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

of mind. Although meditation could be practiced alone, it generally

requires the presence of a Zen master, whose non-directing attitude
bears a resemblance to the psychoanalyst’s neutrality. Suzuki (1981)
refers to this aspect by quoting a monk from Sun Dynasty named
Chosui Shiye, [who] asked the Zen master Roya Hyoryo: “How
could the mountains, rivers and the immense earth sprout from the
Originally Pure?” To which the master answered: “How could the
mountains, rivers and the immense earth sprout from the Origi-
nally Pure?” Curiously, Zen gives no importance to the analysis of
dreams, using in its place a kind of riddle designated as koan, which
students try to solve by following a similar intuitive approach that
Bion referred to as “transformations in O”. (Ibid.)

About the act of faith

“Faith” represents another dimension Bion produced perhaps inspired8
by Zen Buddhism, although some have associated his conceptions with
some kind of mystic or religious expression. In Attention and Interpreta-
tion (1970) he stated that an act of faith (F) is:

… essential to the operation of psycho-analysis and other scientific

proceedings. It is essential for experiencing hallucinations or the
state of hallucinosis. This state I do not regard as an exaggeration
of a pathological or even natural condition: I consider it rather to
be a state always present, but overlaid by other phenomena, which
screen it. If these other elements can be moderated or suspended
hallucinosis becomes demonstrable; its full depth and richness are
accessible only to “acts of faith”. (p. 36)

And a bit further on:

Through F [act of faith] one can “see”, “hear”, and “feel” the mental
phenomena of whose reality no practicing psycho-analyst has any
doubt though he cannot with any accuracy represent them by exist-
ing formulations. (pp. 57–59)

Faith has been interpreted in Buddhism as something similar to intui-

tion or “prajña-”; the difference with faith based on religion is that in
theology faith has a particular object, for instance God. In Buddhism,
 THE WORLD OF SIGMA (Σ) 181

as well as in Bion, faith does not have a particular object to be believed

or intuited—if there is one it could be just anything, from the narrative
of the dream I might produce tonight or what “O” might be in the dis-
course of my next patient.

Freud and “thought-transference”

In 1921, Freud gathered with a group of his closest followers in the
Harz Mountains of Germany, in order to discuss a paper about “Psy-
choanalysis and telepathy”. Possibly Freud’s hesitation about the
theme induced him to unconsciously forget in Vienna the third case
he intended to present, perhaps, as Strachey remarked, as a form of
“resistance” (1921, p. 175). Apparently, Freud was initially undecided
about publishing on this particular subject but eventually overcame his
hesitance and published it in his “New introductory lectures” (1933a).
Strachey observed:

… he [Freud] no longer felt the doubts about the propriety of

discussing it which are so evident … [previously]; and indeed,
towards the end of the lecture, he specifically withdraws the fears
here expressed that the scientific outlook of psycho-analysis might
possibly be endangered if the truth of though-transference were to
be established. (Ibid., p. 176)

In Lecture XXX on “Dreams and occultism”, Freud (1933a) stated that,

There is, for instance, the phenomenon of thought-transference,

which is so close to telepathy and can indeed without much violence
be regarded as the same thing … (p. 39, my italics)

However, in a previous article (Freud, 1921) he had already stated that

The event becomes completely explicable if we are ready to assume

that the knowledge was transferred … by some unknown method
which excluded the means of communication familiar to us. That
is to say, we must draw the inference that there is such a thing as
thought-transference … what has been communicated by means of
induction from one person to another is not merely a chance piece
of indifferent knowledge. It shows that an extraordinary powerful
182 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

wish harboured by one person and standing in a special relation

to his consciousness has succeeded, with the help of a second per-
son, in finding conscious expression in a slightly disguised form …
(pp. 184–185)

We could gather from what Freud stated here, that there was in him
some implicit knowledge of what later on Klein put forward as projec-
tive identification. Bion (1970) had made reference to a letter written by
Freud to Andreas-Salome dated 25 May 1916 where he

… suggested his method of achieving a state of mind which would

give advantages that would compensate for obscurity when the
object investigated was peculiarly obscure. He speaks of blinding
himself artificially. As a method of achieving this artificial blinding
I have indicated the importance of eschewing memory and desire.
(p. 43)

Or in Freud’s (1916) own words:

I know that I have artificially blinded myself at my work in order to

concentrate all the light on the one dark passage9

—a conceptualisation that impresses us as something very much in tune

with what the Zen masters have often stated, that “I will only know
when I do not know, because if I know, I will not know”.

Bion’s dilemma: the Grid and human intuition

I have stated in the introduction of this book, that if we were to
consider—following Fairbairn—Freud’s approach as a psychology of
impulses, I think Klein’s could then be considered as a psychology of
emotions and Bion’s as a psychology of intuition.
Attempts to conceptualise the mind in order to create a working
model that satisfies our enquiries—similar to the modern sailor who
needs to get his bearings in the immensity of a totally uniform sea—
would not be free from greater difficulties, particularly if there was a
demand for achieving a “perfect instrument”. Bion, for instance, endeav-
oured to produce a complicated system of coordinates he named “the
Grid”, following isomorphic instrumentations within the concept of
 THE WORLD OF SIGMA (Σ) 183

“analytic geometry” invented by Descartes, which permit one to locate

positions of a given point on a plane using a pair of numbered axes:
vertical (y) and horizontal (x). In Bion’s Grid, axis x, or the horizontal,
also known as the “axis of uses” was inspired by Freud’s well known
paper “Formulation on the two principles of mental functioning” and
portrays the synchronic architecture of a working mind. Axis y, or the
vertical, represents a diachronic dimension referred to as the “genetic
axes”, based on the systematic evolution or transformation of thinking
from sensual and undetermined experiences to more sophisticated and
abstract forms of conceptualisation.
In summary, the Grid represents the conjunction of two dimensions:
space or the synchronic (horizontal axis) and time or the diachronic
(vertical axis). However—and this is a significant “however”—Bion
soon started to envision the importance of another dimension, that of
intuition, a practical instrument to read the elusive unconscious that
he categorised as “O”.10 The conflict that an attempt to conceptualise
these three magnitudes together on the same plane could have pre-
sented to Bion was perhaps similar to Einstein’s challenge of integrat-
ing “velocity” with “time” and “space” dimensions, a challenge that
drove him to produce his theory of relativity.11 Velocity is the main char-
acteristic of intuition (Sartre, 1943), meaning that the intuition is there
already ahead of the conscious mind. Because of such speed, intuition
is used in psychoanalytic practice to attempt “reading” the unconscious
as reliably as possible, because the unconscious is an organ that inces-
santly changes, making it very difficult to grasp. What might be true
at this moment might not be true later on. It is obviously impossible to
place intuition with regard to more actual dimensions such as mental
time and space.12
If we examine the index of Bion’s four last books portraying the
main kernel of his theory, we find that in Learning from Experience, pub-
lished in 1962, neither “O” nor the “Grid” were mentioned, while in
Elements of Psychoanalysis, published a year later, the “Grid” was men-
tioned nine times and “O” was not cited at all. In Transformations (1965),
“O” is mentioned nineteen times and the “Grid” fourteen; and finally,
in Attention and Interpretation, from 1970, “O” is cited nine times and the
“Grid” only once. If I were to speculate over these numbers, I would
say that in 1962, when Learning from Experience was published, these
dimensions of “O” and the Grid were not yet completely systematised
as they were later in Elements of Psychoanalysis, a book dealing mostly
184 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

with the evaluation of the horizontal or synchronic axis, and in the

later Transformations, referring to the vertical or diachronic axis. In his
last book, I gather, Bion was becoming aware of the impossibility of
introducing intuition as the third dimension of the Grid, which then
remained as a limping monument missing a third and indispensable
leg to sustain it. His disappointment was already there in 1974, when in
Brazil he declared that

I think it [the Grid] is good enough to know how bad it is, how
unsuitable for the task for which I have made it. But even if it
inflicts a certain amount of mental pain I hope you can turn it to
good account and make a better one. (1974, p. 53)

And in 1980, when asked how difficult the Grid was, he said: “Not for
me, only a waste of time because it doesn’t really correspond to the facts
I am likely to meet”.13
Is there a possibility of placing intuition within the framework of the
Grid? In the first place, intuition is related to unconscious thinking or
dream thoughts, which means that there is no intellectual mediation of
a manipulated epistemological system, and the benefits of those func-
tions associated with consciousness, such as notation, attention, inquiry,
and action, present in the “axis of uses”, do not apply. It could either
belong to the unidentified territory of “… n”, or placed in row C of the
vertical axis, as Bion already recommended, together with “dreams”
and “myths” (1992, p. 314). I am differentiating here between intuition
as an automatic and involuntary quality of the mind independent of
the senses, and O as a conjecture of intuition. It is similar to “dream
thought”, which Bion had placed in row C of the vertical axis, a category
he suggested should amount to a grid of its own (1977, p. 3). By means
of intuition, O evolves; if picked up with an act of faith and transformed
into K, it would become substance to manufacture an insightful inter-
pretation, which will act as a kind of turbulence,14 capable of producing
a catastrophic15 change once an already established equilibrium moves
into a different one.

About intuition
Bion advocates the use of intuition during the analytic session, in a
manner similar to what the Zen masters advocate in the practice of
 THE WORLD OF SIGMA (Σ) 185

meditation or zazen. Buddhists say, for instance, that “the obscurity

of a cave changes into illumination when a torch of intuition burns.”
Bion has suggested that analysts should use intuition as a verb instead
of a noun; to “intuit”, in a similar way as “seeing”, “touching”, or
“smelling”. “How else could an analyst perceive anxiety or depression,
for instance, which has no smell or taste?” (Bion, 1970, p. 7). In a note
dated in 1970, Bion stated:

I am supposing that there is a psycho-analytic domain with its

own reality—unquestionable, constant, subject to change only in
accordance with its own rules even if those rules are not known.
These realities are “intuitable” if the proper apparatus is available
in the condition proper to its functioning. Equally, there are certain
minimum conditions necessary for its exercise. Approximately …
this activity depends on the presence of a personality, an operat-
ing intuition, a minimum degree of intuitive capacity and intuitive
health. (1992, p. 315)

But, what is intuition? The word stems from the Latin intuitio, indi-
cating the act of seeing inside (tueri in), “the image reflected on a
mirror” (Foulquié & Saint-Jean, 1966, p. 560). In Sanskrit, intuition is
referred to as cakkhu, which literarily means the “eye”. Webster (1983)
defines it as “the power or faculty of attaining to direct knowledge or
cognition without evident rational thought and inference” (p. 635).
At the beginning of the 1900s, influenced by Husserl’s contributions
on phenomenology, intuition became a subject of immense interest
and revision by several philosophers such as Bergson, Heidegger,
Levinas, Sartre, and many others. While Bergson became an advocate
of intuition, Russell argued that “ineffable intuition cannot be verified
and made coherent”. He then wittily commented that, “instincts have
been granted to the birds, to the bees, and to Bergson” (Abel, 1976,
p. 209).
“Intuition”, said Sartre (1943, p. 221), influenced by Husserl, “is
the conscious of the thing”,16 as if thinking were to come from the
“thing” and not from the mind of the thinker, who will then act as
receptor, like a sort of mindlessness awareness. In this sense, the mind
of the patient should become the “thing” for the analyst’s mind, in
order to guarantee the possibility of a true or intuitive “vision” of the
truth, and as a result, a fruitful communication between two minds.
186 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

Similarly, Suzuki (1955) emphasised the propinquity of intuition

when he stated:

Prajna [intuition] … is frequently likened to a flash of lightning or

to a spark from two striking pieces of flint. Quickness does not refer
to progress of time; it means immediacy, absence of deliberation, no
allowance of an intervening proposition, no passing from premises
to conclusion. (pp. 86–87)

Many years earlier, in Meditation II, Descartes (1641) attempted an

explanation on the same subject of intuition using his well known
experiment with the beeswax as a graphic paradigm.17 He, however,
emphasised the “identity” or “invariability” of the intuitive act in spite
of any form of transformation, allowing the recognition of the original
object, similar to the Schadenfreude found in the child’s rhyme and game
I have referred to above. In other words, using Sartre’s definition of
intuition, it is the “consciousness in the wax” or the “consciousness in
the rhyme” that allows one to follow the “presence” of the truth and not
to lose its trail, to intuit its presence in spite of all the transformations,
because as Humphreys (1951) once wrote: “once you find a knot, the
rest of the net will come with it” (p. 15). Using projective geometry, Bion
(1965, pp. 19, 31) alluded to this idea as “transformation in rigid move-
ments”, meaning a kind of transformation that shows little deformation
between the original object or “thing-in-itself” and the product of the
transformation (López-Corvo, 2003, p. 296).
“The difference between an intuitive act, which reaches its object,
and a signifying act, which only aims at it, is not the difference between
more or less clear or more or less explicit acts”, remarked Levinas (1963,
p. 66) in an important essay on the “phenomenology of intuition”. He
continues:

To say that intuition actualizes the mere intention which aims at

the object is to say that in intuition we relate directly to the object,
we reach it. That is the entire difference between aiming at some-
thing and reaching it … A signifying intention only thinks about an
object, but intuition gives us something of the object itself. [Ibid.,
pp. 66–67)

Bion seemed also to follow Husserl when he pursued this state of

“naive immediacy” with supreme interest, and strongly instructs us to
 THE WORLD OF SIGMA (Σ) 187

listen without any form of prejudice or mediation in order to access the

“hidden side” of the analysand’s mind. Levinas insists that intuition is
not an act that just opposes intellection, but instead, it is an act “which
possesses its object”:

This is what is expressed by the concept of Fülle, fullness, which

characterizes intuitive acts, as opposed to the “emptiness” of sig-
nifying acts [intellection]. The notion of fullness expresses the fact
that the determinations of objects are present to consciousness.
(Ibid., p. 69)

“Fullness”, a term borrowed from Husserl, corresponds to the form

of how, intuitively, objects will represent themselves in “full” to con-
sciousness, something I believe Bion might be portraying in his con-
cept of “transformations in O” (see: López-Corvo, 2003; Grotstein, 2007,
p. 230):

The conditions in which the intuition operates (intuits) are pellu-

cid and opaque. I have already indicated that from the intuitor’s
vertex, opacity can be distinguished sufficiently to be given names,
however primitive and defective the ascriptions may be. These are:
memory, desire and understanding. All are opacities obstructing
“intuition”. (Bion, 1992, p. 315)

I believe “fullness” then represents an act in which we free ourselves

from any form of “opacity” in order to allow our mind to be captured
and contained by unconscious meanings inherent in the patient’s dis-
course. Nonetheless, freeing ourselves from these opacities does not
guarantee a state of total “naive immediacy”, because, according to
Husserl, in any intuitive act there is always a condition he defined as a

… signifying intentionality … a set of perceptual, imaginative, and

other elements [which] delineates the concept of “the intuitive con-
tent of an act”. (Levinas, 1963, pp. 68, 70)

It is possible that this condition of “signifying intentionality” could

be present in all intuitive acts, because there is, according to Levinas,
a sense of “empty intention [for] the apparition of an object … indeed,
expectations are intentions” (ibid., p. 67); for instance, even if we try
to free ourselves from any desire, memory, and understanding during
188 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

the analytical situation, there is also an “attentive concentration”, an

“empty intention to listening with a purpose of finding a meaning” that
could conceptualise a kind of “perceptual and imaginative signifying
intention”, as Husserl has stated. However, there are some instances,
when listening free from these opacities, in which the mind is sud-
denly assaulted by an absolute “fullness”, a situation that can contest
Husserl’s notion of “signifying intentionality”.
Dr S, a supervisee, was presenting a session to me from his analytic
case with Mr X, a middle-aged homosexual. In his account of the ses-
sion, S summarised how X induced in him a frequent countertransfer-
ence feeling of “being at fault”, as if he were guilty of something. The
presentation was mostly about S notifying X he was going away on
holiday for a week, and about X’s short dream of a little boy crying
desperately because he had been separated from his mother. At this
particular moment I suddenly experienced uncomfortable feelings of
physical closeness towards S, as some kind of homosexual uneasiness,
something I had never experienced before with S, and I thought it was
related to the material he was now presenting. I then made a remark
about X’s fear of his own dependency and of how he was projecting it
onto S. Subsequently S started to talk about the session and said, to my
great surprise, something about his own sexual confusions, that per-
haps it was material for his own analysis and not for supervision and so
on. He stated that just as X lay on the couch he felt a powerful desire to
kiss him. I thought that both our feelings, S’s and mine, were intuitively
related, and said to him that X was projecting a powerful narcissistic
need for an omnipresent mother, at all times ready for him, absolutely
responsible for his pleasure and well being, without ever overwhelm-
ing him with the terror of separation. If my considerations were true,
how could I have grasped S’s feelings about his patient before he had
even uttered a word about his own homosexual countertransference
towards him? “The psychoanalyst”, said Bion (1970),

… can know what the patient says, does, and appears to be, but
cannot know the O of which the patient is an evolution: he can only
“be” it. (p. 27)

These extemporaneous sensations should always be picked up intui-

tively or with an “act of faith” (López-Corvo, 2003), used for the
understanding of unconscious material in order to manufacture a
 THE WORLD OF SIGMA (Σ) 189

working hypothesis in the form of an interpretation. Husserl extended

the notion of intuition to the point of stating that “… an intuition is
necessary before a meaning can occur” (Levinas, 1963, p. 72). In this
sense, a conscious meaning is always preceded by an “intuitive sub-
stance”. Intuition can be defined, said Levinas,

… not by means of characters that are proper to sensible percep-

tion, but by the fact that intuition realizes18 a meaning; it is defined
as evidence. (Ibid., pp. 78–79)

Dreaming the session

As Grotstein (2009) recently stated, Bion’s “major work on dreaming
was written in his private notebook, Cogitations” (p. 734), which he
perhaps never intended for publication. I believe that any reader of
Bion on this matter must struggle through an obscure path of uncer-
tainty, making Grotstein’s (2009) publication an undoubtedly needed
contribution.
“What actually happened when you ‘dreamed’ we do not know.
All of us are intolerant of the unknown and strive instantaneously
to feel it is explicable, familiar …” said Bion in 1991 (p. 382). He had
tried previously, however, to provide meaning to the main purpose
of dreaming as a form of “frustration avoidance” and “distortion as
being of the facts—notably a distortion of the fact of frustration”19
(1992, p. 54). For Bion, we must recall the main purpose of dreaming
is to avoid “frustration intolerance” produced by the facts of reality. In
this same direction, the main purpose of “dream-work” for Bion will
not be determined by the need to deceive a censorship, but to evade
frustration; and also the purpose of dream-thoughts is to modify the
reason for the frustration.
In order to facilitate an understanding of what Bion said about
dreaming, I suggest discriminating between, first, a physical and a
psychical state of sleeping and wakefulness and, second, two distinct
forms of alpha function, one conscious and voluntary, the other uncon-
scious and involuntary, which interact continuously. The physical state
would correspond to our classical understanding of what it means to
be sleeping and what represents being awake. The psychical, on the
other hand, would refer to the capacity to properly digest all of those
190 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

emotional experiences perceived by the senses in order not to lose sight

of the individual’s own reality. The instrument used by the mind to
exercise such discrimination has been conceptualised by Bion as “alpha
function”, which operates, as I just stated, while physically sleeping as
well as when physically awake. It is the alpha function that unconsciously
manufactures the dreams while physically sleeping, representing a nar-
rative or chain of pictograms that portrays an unconscious message of
a private truth that was not properly digested by the conscious alpha
function while physically awake. It is also this conscious alpha function
that while physically awake, will abide by the reality principle and dis-
criminate between outside and inside the mind, before and after, pres-
ence and absence, or being physically or psychically sleeping or awake.
Bion stated that when the ego lacks a productive alpha function and
is dominated by frustration intolerance, it will abhor reality and use
projective identification in order to invent a reality of its own; how-
ever, because re-introjections usually become intolerable, the medicine
(projection) results in something worse than the original problem (fear
of reality), trapping the ego in an endless and reverberating loop. Bion
referred to such a confusion—due to the domination of the traumatised
state—of dealing with projections as if they were a true reality, as a
failure to be psychically awake, and to be psychically—not physically—
sleeping. In other words, to deal with a “projected inner reality” as if it
were a true “outside reality” represents a form of being psychically asleep
while physically awake. This condition will be present anytime the trau-
matised state of the personality prevails over the non-traumatised and
the mind lacks enough alpha function to distinguish between inner
and outside realities. It is in this state that raw emotions related to pre-
conceptual traumas (beta elements), could become unconsciously pro-
jected, producing, for instance, the transference, as the product of a
patient being physically awake but psychically asleep; in other words,
the transference represents an undreamed fact that has been projected,
a conception that Bion has associated with Plato’s “Allegory of the
Cave”.20
Alpha function is active continuously—day and night (Grotstein,
2007)—because it alternates between two disparate dominions: one
is conscious and voluntary, the other unconscious and involuntary; this
is why Bion originally referred to alpha function as “dream-work α”
(Bion, 1992, p. 73; López-Corvo, 2003, p. 26). They seem to work differ-
ently, but interact continuously. The conscious one deals with sensory
 THE WORLD OF SIGMA (Σ) 191

impressions in the manner I have just explained above, digesting raw

sensory impressions, or beta elements, and changing them into alpha
elements. However, any time that there are facts not properly digested
while awake because of low frustration tolerance—in the sense that some
“lies” have not been adequately dealt with—the unconscious alpha func-
tion can elaborate a dream while sleeping, with the purpose of revealing
the unexposed truth. In other words, the unconscious alpha function cor-
rects the duties shirked by the conscious alpha function that, in order to
avoid frustration, was not dealt with while physically awake, a situation
equivalent to what Freud described as “day residue”. It is the unconscious
alpha function that is used by a mother in a state of “reverie”, while
attending her baby; or by the analyst who, in a similar trance, listens to
the patient without “memory and desire”. In other words, in order to
procure “O”—the ineffable, the “Form”—psychoanalysts can “dream”
the patient’s discourse using an unconscious form of alpha function, and
then use their conscious alpha function in order to change O into K to
construct the interpretation.
Meaning portrayed by the unconscious can best be conceived by
intuitive approximation because the language spoken lacks the sin-
cerity and precision of conscious significance. The interpretation of
dreams, for instance, and the interpretation of the manifest discourse
articulated by the patient using free association, follow opposite
paths. When interpreting dreams we travel from a semantic of cryptic
and abstract symbolisms depicted by the dream, towards a seman-
tic of conscious and concrete signs with easier access; but when we
interpret manifest conscious free association, we move from concrete
semantics to abstract meaning. A patient who was a middle child was
struggling with feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, anger, and
revenge against his parents and siblings. He also complained of feel-
ing unfairly criticised, belittled, and usually ignored by them, but had
been unable, up to that moment, to completely connect his anger with
his feeling of being abused. He then presented the following dream:
I was at home with my best friend, who was trying to kill me while my
parents were present; my mother was watching and my father was abso-
lutely indifferent. He only added that he did not understand how his
best friend could ever wish to kill him. I felt that the unconscious
had chosen his best friend as the possible murderer precisely because
of that implausibility, that something like that could never happen.
Disregarding the crime by making it improbable, the emphasis could
192 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

then be switched to the apparent apathy displayed by his parents.

The message portrayed by the dream could be interpreted as follows:
“It was not that his best friend wished to kill him, but that he felt his
parents did not care about him at all, even if he were to be in the pre-
dicament of being killed”.
When Bion stated that if we listen to the manifest discourse with-
out memory, desire, or understanding, we might be able to “dream
the session”, I believe he was referring to the attempt to make use of
our unconscious alpha function while being physically awake, just as we
unconsciously always do when sleeping. It is a condition that many
Zen philosophers have frequently attempted to achieve, making use of
certain means, such as meditation. Freudian psychoanalysis attempts to
reach repressed unconscious contents by making them conscious, while
the Bionian approach attempts to decipher unconscious messages by
using unconscious alpha function, similarly to how unconscious mes-
sages are manufactured using unconscious alpha function when physi-
cally sleeping. This approach is very similar to Zen’s main philosophy
of individuals “becoming-their-unconscious” by freeing the mind from
consciousness with the use of meditation, and allowing dream-thoughts
to take over while being physically awake.
Bion stated that “psychoanalysts will have to invent and manufac-
ture a way of ‘seeing’ the other person” (1974, p. 27), for what the per-
son might stand for, or at least close to that possibility, perhaps to be

… as forgetful as we can of the various facts in order that our intui-

tion, however feeble, can have a chance of seeing something, how-
ever faint and however obscure, in what the patient is saying to
us. We need a kind of mental binocular vision—one eye blind, the
other eye with good enough sight … How can I put to you that I
think you ought to use your intuition, however feeble and however
misleading and however dangerous the possible wrong path be?
(Ibid., pp. 63–64)

To interpret a dream we use logic based on either deductive or induc-

tive reasoning, moving from the parts to the whole or vice versa, dif-
ferent from the logic used to interpret the manifest discourse. In this
case, it would be necessary to “dream the session” (Bion 1992, p. 120),
using mechanisms similar to the logic present in the unconscious
alpha function, or logic by transduction,21 that moves from the parts
 THE WORLD OF SIGMA (Σ) 193

to the parts—or details to details—instead of following deductive or

inductive logic. Ferro (2009a) referred to this form of instrumentation
as “transformation in dreams”. To dream a session means to be able
to intuitively grasp—similar to how the unconscious functions—those
symbolical associations that hold together the narrative of the latent
discourse.
An example could be useful: a young patient often suffering from
depressive bouts as a consequence of cruel persecutions and continuous
debasing from a primitive superego, had started work selling newspa-
per subscriptions door to door. Unable to discriminate between the pur-
pose of his work (selling subscriptions) and a deep unconscious need to
find meaning to his existence through the Other’s “acceptance” (buying
his subscriptions), he often succumbed to “unfair” states of depression
whenever he felt he had failed his superego’s selling expectation. How-
ever, he felt that in spite of his ambivalence it was important to con-
tinue with his work. I experienced in the countertransference a similar
stance of ambivalence about the analysis that he had not yet verbalised.
Caught in a maelstrom of feeling depressed because he was not selling
and not selling because he felt depressed, he had the following dream:
His father and sister came to visit him and brought his dog, which went to
sleep on his bed, but the dog in the dream was completely different from his dog
in real life. He stated that the dream was very similar to what had hap-
pened the night before when his father and sister came to visit and did
in fact bring his dog, which he had left at his parent’s home. The only
difference was that his dog was from a completely different breed than
the dog in the dream. I said that it seemed the dream was about dogs
because the rest of the dream was equal to real life. He said he liked his
dog better than his family, and could not understand why his dog was
different in the dream, as he would never even think of changing him.
I said that perhaps the dream was about that quality of faithfulness,
about being faithful to his work and not quitting (not changing) even
though he often felt like doing so. Similarly, his analysis also brought
conflictive issues that induced in him ambivalent feelings about the
analysis and thoughts about whether to quit or continue; finding it dif-
ficult to consider such feelings in the session (projected superego), he
then dreamed about them.
Louise is another patient who has been dealing, for some time,
with unconscious envious and murderous phantasies related to sib-
ling rivalry towards her younger sister, something that filled her
194 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

with guilt and persecutory anxiety.22 At one point, and after a long
silence, she stated that she had nothing to say and that her mind was
occupied with other things that had nothing to do with her treatment.
I said that everything in her mind had to do with her treatment. She
continued: “I thought of calling my sister to tell her I was leaving,
but I changed my mind. I am thinking of cleaning the apartment
thoroughly before I leave. I washed the sheets, and took out all the
garbage. I cleaned the refrigerator very carefully and threw away
leftovers that were getting rotten. As you can see these are unimpor-
tant issues. I did not want to leave the keys with anybody; the con-
cierge told me someone else had left the keys and when they came
back, they had found several long-distance calls made from their
phone. I am thinking to leave around two o’clock. I think I am going
to drive myself instead of using my driver. He talks too much about
X [a well known politician who has been accused of corruption and
murder].”
Considering her manifest discourse represented internal elements
similar to those found in any dream, I interpreted that she was trying
her best to conceal, from herself and the rest of us (she did not wish
for her sister to know and had cleaned her apartment thoroughly “of
any trace”) about the presence of an unconscious “murderous child ele-
ment” that wished to destroy her younger sister by poisoning mother’s
milk with faeces (she cleaned the refrigerator by throwing away spoiled
food) because she wanted to have total control and did not want to have
any surprises (did not want to leave the keys with anybody because
she did not wish to find surprise calls). She wished also to be her own
driver, because she feared that I would continuously insist on the exist-
ence in her of a corrupt and murderous “Louise X” element.
A female supervisee brought the case of a new patient, a young
man with a long history of drug dependency who had been attending
psychotherapy on and off for the last few months. He was financially
dependent on his parents, and often referred to all sorts of fantastic
projects which he never followed through. The supervisee’s main dif-
ficulty was related to the patient’s “irresponsibility” and lack of con-
cern about his therapy, missing sessions regularly and not attending at
all during the last week. The supervisee’s concern was about getting
more emotionally involved, such as calling his parents or discontinu-
ing the therapy altogether. I stated that, in my experience cases like this
involved serious borderline psychopathology dealing with a powerful
 THE WORLD OF SIGMA (Σ) 195

internal, envious, and destructive element that often induced the

countertransference feeling of the patient being a foetus. I also said that
the supervisee’s extreme concern was already the result of a powerful
projective identification, as he was attempting, similarly to what he did
to his mother, to make her become pregnant with him. The supervisee
then explained that she had been very preoccupied during the weekend
and that she had had a dream where she thought she was pregnant, as
well as other women in the dream, but she was not very happy about it
because of the complications involved. I then said that she had dreamed
the interpretation.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The triangle’s entrapment: pre-conceptual

traumas and the oedipal condition

To “occupy” the place of the father, or the mother, without

having access to a suitable and substantial source of discontinuous
symbolism,1 could be, if not hazardous, sometimes fatal.

—López-Corvo

Behind the bedroom door

The Oedipus complex, the main emotional pillar upon which the net-
work of society rests, recreates fatalistically in the core of every family,
a condition portraying the absurdity of a psychotic drama. A closed
bedroom door marks the limit and the difference between two abso-
lutely diverse forms of human interaction: on one side of the door, the
parental couple requires complete freedom for the total enjoyment of
their sexuality, a requirement utterly necessary for the couple’s procrea-
tion and feelings of well being. At the same time, on the other side of the
closed door, any sign of sexual acting out with and among the rest of
the family is completely abhorred and absolutely forbidden. However,
since children always suspect something very “significant” taking place
behind the parent’s bedroom door, from which they feel painfully and

197
198 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

unfairly excluded, they develop the idea that their parents are lying.
Since they intuitively “know” but are seldom told, they will produce
their own phantasies, which could follow very imaginative patterns of
a kind Freud very early on referred to as “polymorphous perverse”;
meaning that, because they do not understand what is really happen-
ing, they will envision anything according to their own unconscious
phantasies, and this is exactly the substance of the universal phenom-
enon we know as the “primal scene”. At the same time, since sexuality
is a powerful drive—a pre-conception incessantly searching for a reali-
sation which is very difficult to restrain—it will manifest in a thousand
ways depending on the psychosexual stage of development; such as, for
instance, oral impregnation, anal sadism, scoptophilia, exhibitionism,
sadomasochism, and so on. At the Oedipus level, the command of the
sexual drive for satisfaction will contrast with the power of superego
restrictions, making sexuality something always hidden, inappropriate,
anxiety-provoking, and guilt ridden. It is this closed door or emotional
contradiction that makes the Oedipus complex an impossible situa-
tion, a blind alley which articulates at once very powerful incongrui-
ties: enticement and proscription; incestuous desires and castration
anxiety; wish for inclusion and terror of exclusion; fear of inclusion and
need for exclusion. It will allow only two possibilities, either black or
white, all or nothing, just as we see it in the traumatised part of the
personality: either to repress it and act it out, or to symbolise it. This
sense of exclusion not only induces incestuous desires, but also sadistic
attacks against the parental couple in a form Klein (1930) has already
referred to in detail:

Thus the child’s sadistic attacks have for their object both father and
mother, who are in phantasy bitten, torn, cut or stamped to bits.
The attacks give rise to anxiety lest the subject should be punished
from … The object of attack becomes a source of danger because the
subject fears similar—retaliatory—attacks form it. (pp. 219–220)

Like the detective, C. Auguste Dupin, in Poe’s “The Purloined Letter”,

Freud’s “lynx eye” discovered that Oedipus, just like any ordinary
serial killer, always returns to the scene of the crime. The outcome, of
course, will depend on how traumatic the oedipal crime was, whether
it was something temporary that, once sublimated through repara-
tion and symbolisation would become creative, or was changed into
 THE TRIANGLE’S ENTRAPMENT 199

a permanent traumatic condition that repeats forever the “historical

facts” surrounding the Oedipus complex’s specific phenomenology.
In reality it is not so clear-cut; it is much denser and diffused, where
some aspects are symbolised while others are acted out. There are two
sides to the Oedipus complex; one is universal, and the other particular.
On the one hand, characters are at all times the same, while on the other,
the drama always unfolds in a historically absolute and unique manner
depending on the pre-conceptual trauma we have been subjected to.2
The tragedy will “ideally” progress to its resolution only if the bedroom
door remains always closed and the child evolves as a character capable
of containing the pain of exclusion and frustration.
Depending on the degree of successive frustrations and satisfac-
tions, the breast, as well as the penis, split into idealised and bad perse-
cutory objects. The libido then is attached to the idealisation, while the
aggression is fastened to the denigrated; or in oedipal language, the
idealised breast (and/or penis) will be driven by “incestuous desires”
and by “murderous impulses”, the persecutory. The drama of Oedipus
belongs to the domain of the paranoid-schizoid position and interac-
tions of “bivalent part objects”.3 It will never deal with total “univalent”
objects such as parental figures, as is often believed. On the contrary,
when oedipal interaction relates to a world of real and total persons,
a significant portion of the complex is already on firm ground toward
its resolution.
Let consider a clinical example: a recently married young woman
was dealing with ambivalent feelings towards her womaniser father
who divorced her mother when she was about twelve years of age. She
had classified men as either “sexually passionate”, whom she desired
but distrusted, or “sexually neutral or detached”, whom she trusted
but in whom she felt uninterested. Although she opted to marry the
latter and had previously complained about her disappointment, she
managed, after a while, to feel emotionally closer towards him. Around
this time, she presented a dream: She was coming to her apartment where
a previous boyfriend, who epitomised men from her first group and whom she
often compared with her own father, happened to be living too. As she came
into the lobby, she saw several letters on the floor left by the mail carrier, and
noticed that one of them was addressed to her boyfriend and his wife. She had
no idea if he was married or not. She associated the letters on the floor
with her father’s office where she used to go to collect her allowance,
and to my office where she sees my mail on the floor also. She found it
200 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

interesting that the address on the envelope included her ex-boyfriend’s

wife also; “It seems”, she said, “as if I didn’t mind him being married”,
and I added, “As if a part in you is allowing a space for your stepmother
and for your mother, who seem to be now less threatening”. I felt it
was a significant step towards the resolution of her oedipal sense of
exclusion.
Deep in the dynamic of the Oedipus complex, there is an essential
paradox, a serious contradiction or trap. As stated previously, in order
for the complex to unfold, it is absolutely indispensable that the parent’s
metaphorical bedroom door remains “closed”, that the effort to contain
the pain of exclusion is conscious, as well as the awareness that such an
attempt will never be totally accomplished in reality. In other words,
what could never be attained in reality would be “accomplished” in
phantasy only; however, because in phantasy sexual (incest) as well as
aggressive (matricide/patricide) drives are unconsciously experienced
as things that have taken place, it will nevertheless induce guilt and
anxiety, but because it is never attained in reality, the pain of exclusion is
never resolved. This is precisely the tragedy of the Oedipus complex.
We may now ask the question: What happens when the door is open
and incest takes place not in phantasy but in reality? Would such an
occurrence eradicate or contradict what has been said so far, that the
Oedipus complex could never be consummated and anxiety from exclu-
sion never be resolved? Should true acting out of incestuous or homicidal
phantasies represent a true consummation of oedipal desires? I believe,
however, that the Oedipus complex, as it was originally described by
Freud, represents an absence, it exists precisely due to its implicit quality
of being impossible. To say that the Oedipus complex could be fulfilled
or consummated, implies the existence of an object capable of con-
tinuously fulfilling all needs from all drives (libidinal and aggressive)
throughout the total history of an individual—a task, obviously, abso-
lutely impossible. It would be similar to saying that gestation will be
eternal, that the “trauma” of birth will never take place, and, of course,
that we can never be born. The Oedipus complex is the reflection of
an absence, of a frustration, of something absolutely unavoidable and
fatalistically present, which can only be dissolved through a process of
mourning about the pain induced from being the impotent child who
came after. It is a biological tragedy that can never be accomplished
and it is entirely sustained by the impossible. It is in other words, the
tyrannising presence of an absolute absence. Genital relations between
 THE TRIANGLE’S ENTRAPMENT 201

parents and children does not indicate consummation of the Oedipus

complex; it is a violent psychotic action, a severe confusion between
phantasy and reality, a trap of immense dimension and everlasting con-
sequences, which I will be discussing later in this chapter.
In 1923, while referring to the formation of the superego, Freud
stated:

“You may not be like this (like your father)—that is, you may not
do all that he does; some things are his prerogative.” This double
aspect of the ego ideal [super-ego] derives from the fact that the ego
ideal had the task of repressing the Oedipus complex; indeed, it is
to that revolutionary event that it owes its existence. (p. 34)

The Oedipus complex is an epigenetic dimension, meaning that it is not

linked to internal reality only; it is, instead, the product of an interac-
tion between drives representing “empty thoughts”, and the traumatic
experience. Reality is not a dimension existing outside of the mind
either, as there is no an absolute truth, because truth is always relative
to the mind that contains it. Let examine a case:
Philip was a young patient in his last year at the university where
he was studying civil engineering. He consulted because of acute ago-
raphobic attacks and serious difficulties with his studies that reached
the point that he decided to leave the university altogether. In the sub-
sequent analysis, it was observed that his mother had projected on to
him her desire of accomplishing her own unfinished university career.
It seemed as if she was using her son’s studies as a compensation and
revenge against her domineering husband—as a displacement from her
also domineering father—who had demanded she give up her career
as an engineer as well. It was possible to observe the intense erotici-
sation Philip had projected into his studies. He stated that every time
he attempted to read his books, he became sexually aroused, obsessed
with continuous sexual phantasies that interfered with his concentra-
tion and induced him to masturbate. Later on it became clear that read-
ing represented a repressed erotic narcissistic fusion with his mother,
some kind of sexual game where his eyes were experienced either
like a mouth that devoured the breast-books, or as a penis penetrat-
ing a vagina-book. There was, in addition, a megalomanic fantasy that
he was going to discover something vital for the universe that would
make him famous, his friends and classmates were going to admire and
202 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

envy him, and all beautiful girls fall madly in love with, and struggle to
seduce, him. These phantasies represented his desire of becoming very
special to his mother as well as a manic triumph over his father—who
happened to be a builder who never went to university—that filled him
with great anxiety and guilt. He could not always discriminate phan-
tasy from reality and often felt as if he had done in reality a terrible
deed, something that induced a great level of persecution that para-
lysed him with terror.
Narcissism and its quality of “fusion between self and object”,
represents the main defence against separation and anxiety from exclu-
sion; it is the primitive extreme from which all human beings must
evolve along the path towards independence and freedom. This is why
Bion, for instance, polarised narcissism and social-ism, hyphening the
latter in order to emphasise the separation between the self and the
other as a social being. Social interaction, in contrast, often reflects not
a true “social” relationship with someone different, but a narcissistic
interaction with parts of the self placed into the “Other” via projective
identification.
Depressive4 separation and individuation5 from the breast as the
original object will require, among many other issues, a capacity for
abstract thinking and symbolisation, representing a “second closed
door” that can open to the fantastic world of freedom, something I
referred to in Chapter Five. Between these two extremes of “narcis-
sistic fusion”, on the one hand, and symbolisation and individuation,
on the other, remains Winnicott’s (1951) “space of transition”, already
representing the beginning of the “process of symbolisation”, when
an original object approximating the breast is capable, without tear-
ing, of changing form into another object, such as a “teddy bear”, for
instance.6
When the oedipal door remains closed, the adolescent will even-
tually understand that the search for satisfaction must be looked for
elsewhere—a process that when “properly” contained will lead to sym-
bolisation and independence. In real life, however, the door may some-
times be left “ajar”, allowing a peep into parental pleasure, which gives
the child a sense of complicity, that parents do like “it”. I am aware
that in this last statement I am dealing with metaphorical construc-
tions, because “leaving the door ajar” and sensing parental pleasure
could really mean anything. What I wish to portray is that sometimes
parental pleasure not only could be linked to complicity by the child,
 THE TRIANGLE’S ENTRAPMENT 203

but that the child might be always compulsively searching for that
“parental-capacity-for-sexual-pleasure” as a form of complicity as well
as of omnipotent control, and that this powerful need represents the
background where perversions are registered; the question sometimes
is to know when any parental pleasure becomes, in fact, a parental
complicity.

Impotence and a search for complicity: perversion

and the hole in the screen
A patient displaying perverse symptomatology, once responded to my
interpretation about his need to exercise omnipotent control by means
of complicity, with a recollection. He remembered observing a mosquito
that persistently and systematically hit a screen on a window for several
hours, excited, as science informs us, he said, by the CO2 exhaled inside.
After numerous attempts it was finally able to find a “little hole” in the
screen which allowed it to disappear inside the room. Similarly, I have
myself witnessed a similar situation in an infant observation unit, where
both parents and their psychotherapist talked while watching a toddler
wandering around the room, until suddenly, like the mosquito on the
screen, the child discovered the electric plug on the wall. He celebrated
again and again, approaching the plug, touching it, and laughing each
time the adults jumped to take him away. He knew nothing about the
danger of invisible electrons, but he exulted at the feeling of having
omnipotent powers7 that made all the adults jump. To find the hole in
the screen, the plug on the wall, or the complicity in the transference,
represented an action exercised by the mosquito, the child, and the
patient, as a defence and a measure for “survival”. If children feel seri-
ously threatened, and lack a practical way—like the mother’s reverie, in
Bion’s terms—of helping them to metabolise such a threat of exclusion,
the situation might result in the compulsive need to find the hole in the
screen, meaning, an omnipotent strength that would allow them not only
to control the powerful adults, but also, and very importantly, to attack,
paralyse, and destroy the link between the objects, as a revenge for being
excluded, like perversely attacking and destroying the analytical dyad.
I have previously described in Chapter Two the notion of “tropism“, of
how the pre-conceptual traumas, similar to moths being compulsively
propelled towards light, induce patients towards certain type of “trop-
isms”, of which Bion—using the notion of “basic assumptions”—has
204 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

considered three kinds: a) to murder or be murdered, b) to be a parasite

or be a host, or c) to create or be created.
In perverse behaviour, the “hole in the screen” is always related to
the child’s attempt at subjugating and controlling the parent’s “sexual
enjoyment”,8 a form of complicity with the hidden purpose of reach-
ing the place of “inclusion”. However, since such a state of inclusion is
impossible to reach, it will gradually, out of envy and revenge, attack
the “object of desire” and ambivalently change it into an object of con-
tempt. The absolute inaccessibility of such a “place of inclusion” will be
always translated into desire and longing for something that is always
receding anew, never reached, and always being looked at from the
side of “exclusion”. The sense of hopelessness that could be induced by
the acceptance of such impossibility, forces all humans to remain in the
uncomfortable and unpleasant place of “exclusion”. This mechanism,
always present in erotic transferences, is unfortunately often ignored
by the naive psychotherapist. The need to subdue a “possible castra-
tor”, projected on the analyst, makes him or her an accomplice in his or
her “sexual enjoyment”, which will determine the modality and quality
of the projective identification present in erotic perverse transference.
The compelling need found in perverse psychopathology to induce the
other’s complicity—as we observe in pornography—is based on the
paradox that such demanded enjoyment (goce, jouissance) of the par-
ent could never be completely possessed, because it will constantly fail.
Even in cases of sexual abuse, when the parent has taken part in the
action, there is always the presence of a heavy and somber feeling of
illegality, taboo, and immorality that will—like the “Scarlet Letter”—
mark one forever.
Intolerance towards silence in the analytic setting is common in per-
verse pathology, as well as the need to induce “paranoid” feelings in
the analyst in order to compel a response, not because there is an inter-
est in the content of the interpretation, but as a proof of the patient’s
anal omnipotent control. One can also observe in these patients a ten-
dency to speak in a low voice or with complicated semantics in order to
induce questioning, as a form of luring in, to achieve anal and destruc-
tive control. Manic reparation in this form of psychopathology is often
attempted with the use of a fetish.
A woman, who was sexually abused as a child, often reacted irately
to prolonged silences, and also often turned around on the couch or lay
on her side to see me. At one point she presented a dream in which she
 THE TRIANGLE’S ENTRAPMENT 205

was walking with a girlfriend inside of a tunnel and feared that I, who was
following them from behind, could have heard what she was telling her friend.
I waited for her associations and after some time, she angrily protested
about my silence, as if she wished for me to talk, possibly with the pur-
pose of exercising omnipotent control, as in previous sessions, when
she wished for me to say something in order to prove I was wrong.
I thought it was this that she feared for me to hear in her dream as well
as in the session, that she wished to keep me “behind”, in the tunnel, in
her anus, to make me appear and disappear at her will, like her faeces.
Another woman, sexually molested as a child by a “card player”
friend of her family, who often visited her house, presented a persist-
ent erotic transference. She often threatened to discontinue the analy-
sis, and used comments made by other therapists she knew who were
“more friendly with their patients and invited them to their homes”; she
often accused me of being cold and detached, and said that I, unfairly,
decided all the rules and she had no alternative but to confide. At other
times she became openly and aggressively seductive; for instance, she
would take an extra pillow and place it underneath her legs when wear-
ing a miniskirt. We came to identify an internal narcissistic interaction
between a destructive and dangerous envious element she referred
to as the “card-man-card-girl-couple”, in contrast with an “analyst-
patient-constructive-pair”, as well as other creative aspects in herself.
There was the fact, for instance, that for the last year she had been work-
ing on a historical investigation and publication about a well known
deceased architect. However, she delayed the publication beyond the
sponsor’s required time, either by senseless arguments or finding inter-
minable loose ends that she managed to identify but did not correct,
to the point of jeopardising the whole project. Around this time she
had some dreams, clearly related to envious feelings about people she
felt were of “high social position, wealth, and general sophistication”.
In one of these dreams, she was attending a party given by the architect’s
great-granddaughter who, in real life had invited her several times for dinner
in a very exclusive club. In her dream, the party was taking place in such a
poor section of the city that she was afraid she could have been knifed.9 This
unconscious desire to soil what she idealised is very much present in
the erotic transference.
Another example of this omnipotent demand for complicity can
be observed in the case of Alexis, a forty-year-old divorced man of
Italian descent and the older of two siblings. He consulted because of
206 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

chronic anxiety, outbursts of depression, and what he described as “sex

addiction”. His father was also a sort of Italian Don Juan who in order
to maintain a dissociated sexuality between “mother and mistress”,
married Alexis’ mother, a rather “hysterical” and sexually immature
woman, who feared her own sexuality and as a consequence, accepted
her husband’s infidelities as a form of sexual (oedipal) alleviation.
Around the age of five, Alexis discovered the hole in the screen, in the
form of a young nanny who used to masturbate by rubbing his erect
penis over her genitals, a situation that became very significant because
it took place around the time he felt he had “lost” his mother because of
the birth of his younger brother. The issue surfaced during his analysis
when Alexis referred to the immense pleasure he always experienced
whenever a call girl walked into the room, and, under his enticement,
pulled away the cover to see his erect penis. Because he was in the field
of psychotherapy, he often used mechanisms of intellectualisation in a
fashion similar to what he did with prostitutes. He often quoted Freud or
other authors, and then turned to look at me with a mischievous smile,
waiting for my admiration—as he did with the prostitutes—in order to
find the “hole in the countertransference”. There was a significant oedi-
pal competition, as he felt all women, including harlots, were, like his
mother, his “father’s property”, a condition that induced unconscious
castration anxiety and retaliatory fears. Any form of achievement in his
work induced apprehension, as he unconsciously experienced himself
“on the front line”, exposed to the threat of a possible castrator he con-
tinuously projected everywhere. The main resistance was a horizontal
splitting between an emotional part, usually split and projected, and an
intellectual aspect he used for manipulation as defences to conceal his
terror of an internal fragile and dependent child element. I said that it
seemed a bit naive that he could go to a brothel and shock prostitutes
by showing them an erect penis, as if he were ignoring the fact that
they handle many erect penises every day; it would be different if he
were to go to a convent and shock the nuns. The question—I said—was
the absence of the adult-father-like element. Where was the “intelligent
adult” capable of informing the “naive child” in him, about such an
innocent game? It was like attempting to “shock” his mother as a child
with his little erect penis, thinking that she had not seen his father’s
big erect one. Such a sense of failure as an adult, of being overtaken
and overpowered by such an innocent child, would be extremely sad
and embarrassing. Perhaps the problem was, I thought, of how painful
it might have been for the adult in him—who seems to disappear in
 THE TRIANGLE’S ENTRAPMENT 207

the act—to remain alert and teach the innocent child of the irrelevant
act of shocking prostitutes with an erect penis. He looked very serious.
I thought this was an important dynamic because it threw light on his
need for complicity, so crucial in perversions; meaning, the need to con-
ceal through collusion and connivance, the existence of a sense of fail-
ure, loneliness, sadness, and desperation related to a child-part element
that, very often, overpowered the logical, independent, sophisticated,
and self-sufficient adult element.
At one point in the analysis he presented a dream: He was climbing
a mountain with his girlfriend when suddenly she lost her balance and fell.
He could not see her and feared she had died. He said that he felt guilty
because the day before, after finishing work, he felt very anxious and
decided to call a woman to his office to have sex around the same time
he had his appointment with me. Asked about the dream, he said that
perhaps he felt guilty toward his girlfriend, that by staying with the
prostitute he was perhaps destroying her. I said he tried to “get me
involved” in order to convince himself that I, like his girlfriend, would
be against him having sex with a prostitute. It seems as if he needed to
place the girlfriend-mother outside, in me, to make me an accomplice
because it will be terrible for him to feel that I could be completely indif-
ferent whether he had sex, or not, with a prostitute. There is a powerless,
revengeful, hopeless, helpless, angry child that wishes to overpower his
mother by getting her involved. He interrupted and said: “Well, every
child likes to get his mother involved”. “Yes,” I said, “but not at the
age of forty-five”. Silence. Then he said: “That is hard, like a slap on
the face”. The problem, I said, was not just the search for a mother out-
side by an orphan child who wished to control her by making her an
accomplice; the problem, I thought, was the relationship between the
child and the mother inside his head (negative links), the attitude of an
indifferent mother-part of him (forty-five year old) who looked to the
other side, in order to ignore a distressed, impotent, revengeful, lonely,
confused child, similar to how he might have felt his mother treated
him when he was little.

Children of the Minotaur and Ariadne’s thread

The reason I will now allude to D. H. Lawrence, is because of the simi-
larity between his first pre-conceptual trauma, and that of a patient I
psychoanalysed several years ago. David Hebert Lawrence was one of
the most, if not the most, prolific of twentieth century British writers.
208 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

He was the fourth child and third boy of John Arthur Lawrence, a coal
miner and heavy drinker, from Nottinghamshire. His mother, Lydia
Beardsall, came from an impoverished middle class family, a school
teacher, who was considered by her parents to have married below her
social class. Working in the mines was a family matter; Lawrence’s three
paternal uncles worked as miners and it was expected the boys in the
family would follow a similar model. Sons and Lovers (1995), one of his
first novels, is considered to represent his autobiography. In that novel,
Lawrence expressed great dislike toward his father whom he portrayed
as a primitive drunkard. He had three older siblings and one younger
sister. George, the oldest, out-lived David Herbert and was a bit of a
trouble-maker; then came Ernest, who died at the age of twenty-three,
followed by his sister, Emily. Then David Herbert was born, who died
in 1930 from tuberculosis at the age forty-five. His younger sister was
Lettice Ada.
If we were to measure success in the case of this family, it would
mostly be from the perspective of D. H. Lawrence’s literary work,
which allowed them to have a place in history. Perhaps we could say
that, according to Meltzer (1992), he became a “parasite” of his moth-
er’s mind.10 We could now ask, how could Lydia, who had an intel-
lectual mind, choose to marry an alcoholic brute, a primitive man such
as Arthur Lawrence? Could it be she was unconsciously encouraged
by oedipal ambivalence of “forbidden” desires and guilt? If he was a
drunk, primitive, and sexually aggressive partner, he could have been
the “dirty” active initiator of any sexual activity that would have con-
sequentially made her a sort a passive and “innocent” prey, similar to
the dynamics present in the fairytale of “The Beauty and the Beast”.
A miner on the other hand, who digs out and searches inside the earth—
“mother earth”—could be driven by unconscious desires to search the
mother’s entrails, perhaps satisfying a need to get closer in order to
either possess her or, following Klein, to destroy inner children, or both.
We could also infer from Lawrence’s autobiographical novel Sons and
Lovers, how seductive his mother was with her sons, as a way of finding
a narcissistic completion of her own unfulfilled intellectual ambitions.
In a letter written to his editors, portraying a summary of the novel’s
plot, Lawrence (1995) presented this insightful account:

… a woman of character and refinement goes into the lower class,

and has no satisfaction in her own life. She has had a passion for
 THE TRIANGLE’S ENTRAPMENT 209

her husband, so the children are born of passion, and have heaps
of vitality. But as her sons grow up she selects them as lovers—
first the eldest, then the second. These sons are urged into life by
their reciprocal love of their mother—urged on and on. But when
they come to manhood, they can’t love, because their mother is the
strongest power in their lives and holds them … (p. xv)

Trapped in his mother’s desire, Lawrence became a writer not only to

unconsciously provide her with the outlet she so much wanted, but
also, and very importantly, to avoid the terror of becoming, like his
father and uncles, another insignificant miner in industrial England.
Obviously, his mother’s “narcissistic trap” offered him the possibility
of transcending and achieving a well deserved place in history. It is this
invisible but powerful narcissistic path, capable of inducing a form of
homeomorphic symbolisation and creativity, that fabricated the illusion
of freeing himself from the enclosure of a “labyrinth” of oedipal exclu-
sion. I refer to this form of emotional link as “Ariadne’s thread”, repre-
senting a concept that usually encompasses a form of unconscious and
perverse linkage with the mother, by providing her with a “productive
phallus” that fulfils her “narcissistic fault” or castration complex, while
at the same time providing the child with perverse oedipal pretensions,
such as the hole in the screen. I will now try to investigate this construct
further by examining the analysis of a patient.
Moses was a fifty-eight-year-old man, a successful architect who had
achieved recognition for his work and enjoyed a satisfying social and
financial position. He was the middle and only boy of three children,
and came for consultation because of a reactive depression after his wife
was killed in a traffic accident. At the age of two his parents emigrated
from Brazil to a small town in the south of Venezuela where his father
worked all his life in a gold mine. Similar to Lawrence and his relatives,
there was a contrast between Moses’ successful university and profes-
sional career and that of the rest of his family who did not, with the
exception of his mother, even finish high school.
He remembered becoming rather obese in his early teens, being often
teased and bullied by his schoolmates, although at the same time he
was often at the top of his class academically. Through university he
felt very shy and was reserved with girls, and did not remember ever
dating or even approaching any of them. He denied any homosexual
desire or interest, stating that he did not like men and had always
210 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

been interested in women: “It was absolutely pure shyness”. His two
sisters were forced to leave home after becoming pregnant at the age
of seventeen and eighteen respectively, and both got married shortly
after dropping out of high school. His father, similar to Lawrence’s,
was described as a “brute, violent, and cruel”, who continuously pun-
ished them for the slightest wrong-doing. His mother, who in her youth
worked as a teacher, was rather shy and phobic, to the extent of never
leaving the house: “She was very submissive and frightened of my
father’s aggression and powerful will.”
When he was around ten and his older sister thirteen, she started
to visit his bed at night and initiated sexual relations with vaginal
penetration in which she played the active role while he remained pas-
sive. Eventually she confessed to him that her father was also having
sex with her, and latter confirmed that this practice finally stopped
when she was about fifteen years old. Although his younger sister
never shared similar experiences with him, he guessed that it could
have happened to her too. He later commented that around the age
of twelve, he had sex with two little neighbour girls, something that
filled him with remorse up to the present day. He became the mother’s
favourite child and “saviour”, and, unlike his sisters, she protected him
from the father’s insensitive aggression. This form of liaison linked them
both in secret behind his father’s brutality. The incestuous relationship
with his sister became a displacement of his own oedipal desires toward
his mother, inducing a covert narcissistic tie, the unconscious feeling
of becoming her narcissistic completion, her intellectual champion and
redeemer from hopelessness and emotional penuries; after all his name
was Moses.
At the age of twenty-seven he married a neighbour and classmate;
however, if we were to be truthful to the facts, it would be more accurate
to state—as I once told him—that “she had married him”. He became
very religious, attended church regularly, and was very involved in vol-
untary work for the parish. Later in the analysis it became clear that
his piousness was linked to guilt and a sense of shame related to his
premature incestuous experiences. I believe that similar to Lawrence,
Moses’ narcissistic attachment to his mother provided him with a sig-
nificant desire to achieve, which in the end did not protect him from
guilt and remorse. His interest in architecture carried the childhood
aspiration of the medieval knight who fought the dragon and finally
 THE TRIANGLE’S ENTRAPMENT 211

would build for his mother, as the “lady in waiting”, a magnificent

castle.

Conclusion
The ego uses several forms of defence to protect the self from emotions
induced by repetitious pre-conceptual traumas that remain opera-
tive via the presence of active superego identifications. Among these
emotions we usually observe helplessness, hopelessness, and anxiety
in all its forms: annihilation, separation, and/or castration. The kind
of defence employed by the ego varies depending on a series of vari-
ables related to culture, family structure, age, gender, and so on. In this
chapter, I have attempted to present patients who resort to a kind of
defence that classical analysis has referred to as “perversion”; however,
this word has become a sort of tendentious expression with a penumbra
of associations that render it unreliable. I have decided to use the meta-
psychological concept and meaning that remain behind it by referring
instead to the “omnipotent desire” unconsciously present in an internal
child element that tries to make the other an accomplice of a certain kind
of sexual pleasure or “jouissance”. This omnipotent desire and need for
control represents the main solutions the internal child element uses
in order to deal with a sense of hopelessness, helplessness, anxiety,
and unresolved mourning. Using a patient’s expression, I labelled this
desire or tropism the “hole in the screen”. Obviously, the particular con-
figuration of this kind of defence results from whatever has taken place
during the structuring of pre-conceptual trauma, of how a child who
often felt lost and helpless, was able to find hope and felt rescued by the
complicity of the “sexual game” the powerful adults, who encircled this
child, were willing to play. I described it as a kind of “Ariadne’s threat”
that provides a sense of hope, but at the same time, is extremely danger-
ous because the consequences of guilt and punishment implicit in such
a compulsive and collusive desire are usually extremely significant and
behaviour determinant.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN

All pregnancies are twins: one baby

in the uterus and one baby in the mind—
pre-conceptual traumas and infertility*

Introduction
Phantasies related to pregnancy can usually be found, like several
other mental issues, in the folklore and legends of different cultures.
die Believing that men alone were responsible for procreation, Aristotle
wrote in his fourth book, Generation of Animals, that, “Anyone who
does not take after his parents is really in a way a monstrosity, since
in these cases Nature has in a way strayed from the generic type. The
first beginning of this deviation is when a female is formed instead of
a male”, and as a consequence, “the female is as it were a deformed
male”. Based on these theories, Empedocles is credited with believ-
ing that progeny would be influenced by the mother’s imagination, by
images she might have gazed upon during her pregnancy. “Thus, fol-
lowing Empedocles’ theory”, writes Huet (1993), “it was long believed
that monsters, inasmuch as they did not resemble their parents, could
well be the result of a mother’s fevered and passionate consideration

* Read at the 46th IPA Congress, Chicago, Illinois, 29 July to 1 August 1 2009.
213
214 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

of images” (p. 5). Instead of reproducing the father’s image, as nature

commands, the monstrous child bore witness to the violent desires that
moved the mother at the time of conception or during pregnancy: “The
resulting offspring carried the marks of her whims and fancy rather
than the recognizable features of its legitimate genitor” (ibid.). In the
Renaissance, theories of the monstrous birth shift to copulation with the
Devil. The “Malleus Maleficarum”1 (Kramer & Sprenger, 1486), in Part 1,
Question XI, states that

… here is set forth the truth concerning four horrible crimes which
devils commit against infants, both in the mother’s womb and after-
wards. And since the devils do these things through the medium of
women, and not men, this form of homicide is associated rather
with women than with men.

Gaelic peasantry believes certain creatures will abduct the new-

born baby and exchange it with a horrible gnome known as the
“Changeling”.
Some analysts have suggested that certain kinds of infertility could
be related to envious phantasies directed towards procreation. Bion
(1959) for instance, established that sterility could sometimes be the
consequence of an unconscious disposition to attack links between two
objects that arouse hatred and envy, such as the link between the mouth
and the breast, “emptiness” and “fullness”, or barren and fertile. The
response of the “internal infant” to the experience, or phantasy of the
creative link—first between mouth and breast, later between the sexual
parents—“is attacked and transformed into a hostile and destructive
sexuality, rendering the couple sterile” (p. 126).
In a fundamental paper written by Marie Langer (1958) about the
relationship between infertility and envy, she considers as a reason for
some women’s infertility the presence of extremely hostile fantasies
against their mothers, as well as a lack of a reassuring reality that made
them feel that their destructive impulses against the fertile mother
had not been omnipotently fulfilled, inducing the feeling that the
loved object was destroyed beyond repair. Phantasies similar to those
described by Langer are observed in the second patient I will illustrate
in this chapter. Pines (1982) argues that some pregnant women develop
narcissistic identifications with the foetus in their body, representing
themselves as a foetus inside their own mother’s body.
 ALL PREGNANCIES ARE TWINS 215

All pregnancies are twins

I am now introducing the hypothesis that all pregnancies are “double”
or “twins”, as there is a real baby in the uterus and at the same time, an
imaginary one in the mind. The dynamic of this “imaginary baby” will
be ruled by mechanisms related to Klein’s theory of paranoid-schizoid
and depressive position (1946) as well as Bion’s theory of beta elements
and alpha function (López-Corvo, 2003), or following the focal inten-
tion of this book, by the traumatised and non-traumatised parts of the
personality. I will add that the dynamics structuring this internal object
progress between an extreme stage “A” ruled by paranoid-schizoid
dynamics, and a stage “B” ruled by depressive mechanisms. Stage “A”
is formed by split-off parts, or “beta elements”, ruled by the “trauma-
tised part of the personality”; while stage “B” is characterised by pro-
tective and nurturing reverie, ruled by depressive mechanisms, alpha
function, and contained by the non-psychotic part of the personality.
In extreme “A” the paranoid-schizoid will act as toxic thoughts that
enviously and “vengefully” attack even the desire of becoming impreg-
nated, as well as attacking actual babies already in the womb, some-
times perhaps with the purpose of inducing miscarriage. There will be a
continuous progression between both stage “A” and stage “B”, depend-
ing on the level of mental growth as explained by Klein (1946). There
will be phantasies inducing fear of a deformed baby (six fingers, cleft
lip, mental deficiency, autism, Down syndrome, etc.), who will destroy
the family, suck both parents dry, or induce murderous impulses.2
The degree of toxicity of these phantasies will depend on the exist-
ence of a function capable of metabolising them, in agreement with
Bion’s description of “alpha function”, which transforms sense informa-
tion into “alpha elements”. Such transformations will provide the mind
with material to create “dream thoughts” that allow the discrimination
between phantasy and reality or between conscious and unconscious.
When the alpha function is deficient, sense impressions and emotions
experienced by the person could remain unaltered, representing what
Bion named beta elements, “undigested or non dreamed facts” that
will organise following the paranoid-schizoid position, and can only
be used for the mechanism of projective identification. The phantasies I
have just referred to as being present in pregnant women, could either
be metabolised and experienced just as phantasies, or could remain
as undigested elements used as projectiles to prevent pregnancy or
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to attack and annihilate the baby in the uterus, as a form of projective

identification within the same individual. This baby, with which the
mother is now pregnant, could either represent child aspects of her-
self or be a form of “self-envy“ (Lopez-Corvo, 1992, 1994–1995), unborn
siblings she might have wished to destroy as a child out of anger and
revenge inside her mother’s womb, now experienced as unconscious
feelings of destructive envy towards her own inner “fertile mother”.
It would be as if now she was both—the “little daughter” she once was
and who wished to murder her siblings, as well as her own “pregnant
mother”. Significant feelings of envy, rivalry, revenge, or even murder-
ous impulses against siblings, could be found in extreme conditions
ruled by a sense of catastrophe, where the mother of these patients
(or the grandmother of the child to be) was conceived as totally impul-
sive, unpredictable, unjust, unreliable, and often psychotic.
Susan is a patient I have previously referred to (López-Corvo, 2006a)
but that I would like now to reproduce some aspects of, because of the
relevance of her case to the subject I am currently considering. She was
a thirty-two-year-old married woman, her mother’s only child and who
met her father in her late adolescence. According to her mother, at the
time of her birth her father denied that she was his daughter, something
that enraged her mother, who then opted not to see him again. We con-
versed about the importance of this lack of a father figure, evidenced
early in the transference, as a significant need to comply or a fear to
express openly what she thought or felt because she feared she would
be abandoned, rejected, or “denied of her paternity”. She described an
early history of relationships with older men whom she seduced and
then left, something she enjoyed. I said it was a form of revenge, invert-
ing the situation and taking the place of her abandoning father. Another
important traumatic issue was related to an experience of early separa-
tion. When she was six her mother moved in with a man who had four
children of his own, that she felt were very aggressive and whom she
feared, remembering one occasion when one of them cut the tyres on
somebody’s car with a knife. “There were four people against two if my
mother agreed with me, otherwise it was I alone. When I met my step-
father the first thing he said was not to call him ‘daddy’ because he was
not my father”. I said it might have been dreadful for her if her mother
had become pregnant at this time, and wondered, if this had been the
case, if she perhaps could have desired cutting her mother’s tummy,
similarly to how her stepbrother had cut the tyre. She laughed.
 ALL PREGNANCIES ARE TWINS 217

At one point, she said she had never felt very feminine and referred
to a recurrent dream in which she was chased by a very good-looking
women. I told her she feared the femininity in her, because she felt it
was dirty and vengeful, something that became more obvious after we
discussed the importance of the oedipal nature of her libidinal approach
towards older men. She also wondered if her father would have been
more loving if she had been a boy. She then reported the following
dream: She was having sexual relations with her husband when suddenly
they were interrupted by her mother who came into their room. In another
scene they were shopping and realised that her mother was following them.
She turned towards her and very angrily told her to leave them alone. I said
that an envious internal “mother part” in her was attacking her desire
to become pregnant, just as she might have done as a child towards her
own mother. As a mechanism of self-envy, she was now both—the envi-
ous child she used to be, as well as the pregnant mother she might wish
to become. She answered that she was indeed attempting to become
pregnant, but feared she might not become pregnant after all. Sometime
after this, she brought a dream she said she had never had before: She
was bitterly beating her mother, like a punching bag. I said she was trying
to destroy the babies in her, in the same manner she wanted to destroy
them inside her mother when she was a child.
At the beginning of the next session she remembered two dreams:
She is in her Madrid apartment and has three pets, a cat, a dog and a deer, like
Bambi. “But this Bambi”, she says, “does not feel very comfortable because she
is not in her environment in the forest, and appears very anxious about that”.
Then I (the analyst) appear and tell the deer not to worry, that I will take her
to my farm where she is going to have plenty of room and she feels very grate-
ful and relieved. In the second dream, she is involved in some acrobatics and
during the first act she performs very well, but in a second act, when she will
need her husband to assist her, he does not arrive. She is very concerned and
wakes up. She says it is as though there were two of her, one that could
take care of the cat and dog, and another one that is not able to take care
of the deer. Also, in the other dream there is one part that feels every-
thing is okay, but does not feel well because of her husband’s absence.
I said she feels very threatened by her desire to trust me.
After a long pause, she said she was struggling to tell me about other
dreams and fantasies about sex that she doesn’t speak about because she
feels ashamed. In a third dream she also had that night she is masturbat-
ing and her stepfather is with her in the same bed but sleeping and she cannot
218 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

have an orgasm because he is there, so she goes to another room but cannot
reach it there either. She said that she doesn’t have a vaginal orgasm and
that bothers her. Some of her friends say they have them often but she
doesn’t want to believe them. Sometimes she has an orgasm while sleep-
ing and she wonders if they are vaginal or just like masturbation. I said
that in her struggle to trust me she seems to be dealing with two other
issues; on the one hand, she wonders if I will fail her like her father or
her husband in the dream; on the other hand, there is a confused part
of her that is not clear about the limits of trust. If she shares all of her
sexual phantasies, that could mean, as in her dream, that she is trying to
seduce men in order to avenge her rejecting father, or to find a sexuality
of her own, away from her father, or to establish a trusting relationship
with men. She does not know if she should disregard men completely
and achieve an orgasm on her own, or take a chance and trust men and
use their penis to have an orgasm or to have a baby. She says, “I am
trying to find my own way out”. Two months later, she states that the
nurse called to inform her that her blood test was positive, although she
did not present any signs of pregnancy. She fears delivery because it
could be too painful, that she could have a miscarriage, or that the baby
could be deformed, having six fingers, Down syndrome, or cleft lip.
I said she is pregnant with twins. She asks how do I know, and I explain
that from what she is telling me she carries two babies, one in her uterus
and another in her mind. The one in the uterus is just “news” on the
telephone; the other in her mind seems to be an older one, envious and
murderous who wishes to get rid of the baby in the uterus. Perhaps
she experienced similar envious feelings towards her mother as a child,
when she feared she could have become pregnant with a baby brother
or sister from her stepfather (López-Corvo, 2006a, p. 119).
She seems to be beating her mind like a “punching bag”. Two ses-
sions latter she presented a dream related to what we had previously
discussed. She had given birth to a beautiful baby, who suddenly turns black.
She asks her husband if he has any black genes in him; something he denies.
Then she looks at the baby closely and realises that the black colour disappears
and the skin turns white when she rubs it. She states she does not know
why she had a dream like that; there are no black people in her fam-
ily. She remembers that the place where she lived as a child with her
grandparents was a city where a great majority of the population was
black. “Some of them worked as maids in our home. There was a little
girl, the daughter of a women who worked for my grandparents, and
 ALL PREGNANCIES ARE TWINS 219

I could have thought she was my sister, or perhaps that her parents
were my own, because after all, my grandparents looked too old to be
my real parents or perhaps I was envious of that little black girl.” She
also remembered a woman teacher when she was at the university,
who she liked very much and phantasised that she was her mother. She
even followed her once to see where she lived. After a long pause, she
stated that she still feels she could have a miscarriage, and also that a
friend told her breast feeding was very painful and she is very sensi-
tive around her nipples. She needs to have an operation involving one
of her teeth because she could lose it, but also fears that the medicine
she will need to take—penicillin, cortisone, and another she does not
remember—could be harmful to the baby. I again repeat that she seems
to be pregnant with twins, that the baby in her mind looks like a little
envious, murderous black baby who wishes to poison the uterus’ baby
in order to destroy it.
At the last session before Christmas, she rings the bell in a rather
unusual manner, twice at once. I think that I should try to find out
what this ringing means; my phantasy is that she is very happy. She
said that since it was the last session she would like to pay, and writes
a cheque. She also said that a pregnant friend at work had complained
that she does not feel well, and was crying because she was afraid of
what pregnancy might do to her body. She said to her—recalling some
of what we have discussed in session—that pregnancy is a natural
thing and she should not feel threatened. She then explained that she
feels very happy because she feels more certain about her pregnancy.
Her husband has told her that because she had always been so uncer-
tain about being pregnant, he feared she could lose the baby, but she
told him that she is completely certain she will have this baby. He is
afraid to have sex with her but she reassured him that nothing will hap-
pen. She paused. She describes very feminine feelings, perhaps because
she never thought before she could have ever become pregnant, and
now she is. She feels she is too stingy with herself, and would like to
buy some new things to wear, like a nice shirt to wear at a party this
weekend. After a pause, I said that it seems to me she feels very happy
and I wonder if it is because this is her last session. She emphatically
says no. “There are several things. My husband is staying with me
for a few days, I am also going to Spain after the holidays, and will
not be back until the seventeenth of January (I am starting work on
the ninth).” Also, she described starting to enjoy being pregnant and
220 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

waiting for her tummy to grow to show it to people, wanting them

to see that she is pregnant. Her husband, who is also going with her,
has asked if she would visit her father, while in Spain, but she said
no, that perhaps she might visit her grandparents to show them her
pregnancy, but will not see him. She paused. “Perhaps I am also happy
because ‘Rosemary’s baby’ is going away, I lost it”. She laughs. At this
moment I think that because the “narcissistic conglomerate” (López-
Corvo, 1995, 2006) within the paranoid-schizoid position of “devil’s-
envious-baby vs. God’s-idealised-baby” has now switched, she has
stopped being pregnant with Rosemary’s baby by projecting it into the
external objects, such as her pregnant, frightened friends, or her father
or me; and reverting the situation by becoming now pregnant with the
opposite of “Rosemary Devil’s baby”, meaning the idealised “God’s
baby”. Now she needs nobody, she is the omnipotent abandoning one
and I am the aborted and abandoned baby, the place of exclusion as she
felt it as a child, where the object was, but is no longer.
Sometime later, she stated that she had spent the whole night dream-
ing about a movie actor she had seen on TV the night before. In the
dream she was trying to find this actor but to no avail, something she
remembers having dreamed about often. I said it seems as if it was
impossible for her to find her father. She agreed and said that when she
went to Madrid she went to Toledo where her father lives and stayed
with her grandmother, but her father never showed up, and she felt
very hurt. It seems as if her baby is experienced as a baby of revenge,
similar to a part in her; as if she would like to tell her father, “I have a
baby who is mine, so now I don’t need you because I will be giving to
my child what you didn’t give to me”. I said that perhaps something
similar is also taking place between us.
A few weeks later she tells me of two dreams. In the first one she has
labour pains and goes to the hospital by herself without her husband because
she forgot to tell him. She associates this dream with forgetting to call her
husband and her mother. She forgot to call her husband who is now in
another city because of his work, and whom she calls every day. Also,
the day before her mother called, but when she was talking to her, she
asked her if she wouldn’t mind if she called her later because she was
waiting for her dentist to call, but then she forgot completely to call her
back. I said she wished for this baby to be hers only and nobody else’s.
In the other dream, her baby is around three months old and is surrounded by
dogs that are biting and killing him. She associates this with what we talked
 ALL PREGNANCIES ARE TWINS 221

about before, that is, of a “toxic baby” in her head. She doesn’t know the
gender of her baby, she would like a boy but it would be nice to have a
girl too. “I will give her all I didn’t have myself as a child.” After a pause
she said that while she was in Madrid her uncle (her mother’s brother)
did not call her, he is a macho kind of guy who does not care very much
about his family. Also her other uncle who lived in Argentina was angry
because she did not send them an invitation to her wedding, “It didn’t
make sense to send an invitation since he was living so far away. I don’t
trust men in my family, starting with my father, they just don’t care.”
I said that perhaps both dreams are related, meaning that she is sensing
that her baby inside her now is a baby threatened by her inner dogs of
anger, frustration, and mostly revenge, because she felt so ignored by
all of her family; that her baby is being eaten by a vengeful hope against
those she felt ignored her, including her mother who placed her at birth
for four years with her grandparents. It seems as if she feels that once
she has her baby, she will not need anyone, not her husband, and per-
haps not even her analyst. It will be a “revengeful baby”. She adds that
a part of herself might feel like that but not all of her.
Sometime later, she said she does not wish to breastfeed because she
feels very sensitive to anybody touching her breasts; when her husband
tries it, she discourages him (makes a gesture like saying “go away”).
“Here in the city everybody talks about breastfeeding, but it is not the
same in Spain. I don’t remember when exactly I started to feel like that,
but I remember taking some hormones for many years because of that.
The sensation I feel on the breast is very unpleasant similar to what I
feel on my left foot after I had an accident and was operated on, as if
they might have pinched a nerve or something, and I got this funny
sensation.” “What happened?” I ask. “Well I was riding a horse and I
fell and twisted my ankle.” “And you were very fond of horses?” I ask
from a countertransference feeling that horses usually take the place of
an absent father, as has happened to her. “Yes,” she said, “I was very
fond of horses, and I fell many times and hurt my left arm and my
head, always on the left side. When I hurt my ankle it got operated on
and I had to stay in the hospital, and I remember I was on a bed after
the operation, I couldn’t move and my horse trainer came to visit. He
was much older, like a father to me, I was only fifteen, and he started
to stroke my hair and then my face and then my breast, he touched
my vagina and then placed himself on top of me and kissed me. I felt
completely disgusted for what he did”. I said: “I gather that was not
222 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

very fatherly.” “It wasn’t”, she answered. “After that I quit going for
the horses. I really loved them. I expected my mother to say something;
I told her what happened but she said nothing to this guy when she saw
him.” “I wonder if you feel that there could be a relationship between
the feeling at your foot that you were experiencing at the hospital and
the stroking of your breast by this ‘father like’ guy. For, after all, you
say that both sensations felt the same.” “Well, it could be, I don’t know,
but he also touched my vagina.” “Well, in which way is your vagina
different from your breast?” “I don’t mind men performing oral sex
on my clitoris but not in my vagina. Down there is too gross, it’s not
nice. People talk about vaginal orgasms, but I have never had a vaginal
orgasm, do you think it could be because of that?” “Perhaps”, I said, “it
is the case that your capacity to trust felt betrayed and injured in three
places, all on your left side as you said: your ankle from the horse, your
breast and genitals from your trainer, and your heart from your father.
I wonder if you might fear further injury from your child or from me.”
At her last session, the day she was supposed to have her child,
she came with her husband on their way to the hospital. She was very
upset because her doctor said he was going to induce the labour and
she wished for a natural birth. I said that inducing means to assist
the uterus; it is a natural procedure the Greeks knew over 2500 years
ago. She said that this makes her feel better, but I saw the fear in her
eyes. I said—referring to previous material—that perhaps she fears the
delivery because an “arrogant part” of her wishes to take over, to be
in charge, and it is difficult for her to think that “a baby is pregnant
with her” and not the other way around: that the baby is in charge, and
what is really happening is that it might not need her m any longer as a
hostess and could dismiss her, fire her. This, I could understand, would
make her feel sad but not frightened.
I saw this patient only a few more times because her husband was
abruptly transferred to another city. At that time she was dealing with
some signs of depression and anxiety due to ambivalent feelings about
her child. It became clear that her extreme sensitivity around her nip-
ples was already a rejection of maternity, that the presence of her baby
signified that her own phantasy of being herself forever a baby in search
of the parents she never had, was now threatened by the presence of a
child who had made her a mother.
Donna is a forty-two-year-old, married woman who consulted
due to marital conflicts and ambivalent feelings about becoming
 ALL PREGNANCIES ARE TWINS 223

pregnant. She had been in analysis three times weekly for the last two
and a half years. Her mother was a chronic schizophrenic and her father
was physically very ill; she also had a younger sister she has seen very
rarely during the past twenty years. At the beginning of her analysis
she often referred to two issues: her envious feelings in relation to a
friend who has two babies and seems very happy; and about two very
aggressive puppies. She was advised to take the puppies’ toys away, but
feared if she were to do that they might end up chewing all of her fur-
niture. Also, she and her husband might end up being isolated because
the dogs could bite some of their friends’ children. She felt M—her
husband—was also like a child, very demanding, gave no support, and
she thought that if she were to have a baby he might be too jealous. She
thought she has nobody, her mother was completely crazy, she does not
know the whereabouts of her younger sister whom she has not seen
for many years, and her father, who lives far away, is also crazy. “I feel
completely alone.” She cries. Her husband thinks if they were to have
a child, she would have to give up her work, will stop making money
for many years, and they might end up being destitute. She has the
phantasy also that she will give birth to a child with Down syndrome
or leukaemia, like a friend’s child who was diagnosed with this illness
that has cost them a fortune. I then said she felt completely alone and
helpless to deal with a very envious, angry, and destructive internal
baby that will “chew” their comfort and happiness and will leave them
penniless. The main conflict would be the terrifying combination of a
super-terrible child and completely helpless parents. Also, in her head,
she already felt “pregnant” with this baby, making it impossible to dis-
criminate between this phantasy and what it really meant to have a true
child. The problem could also be the envy they felt towards a “very
happy child and family”, with a fantastic mother who could became
pregnant any time without any trouble. Not only did they feel envious
towards their friends’ family, but also towards the inner happy family
they wish to become. It seems as if out of envy, this “inner happy fam-
ily” was viciously attacked in their heads beyond repair, by this inner,
greedy, callous, omnipotent, envious, destructive “puppy-baby”.
When she was sixteen she became very promiscuous and did not
stop until she was around twenty-three, at the time her father attempted
suicide. “I was very close to him; I was his confidante for almost eve-
rything.” I said it seemed her sexuality was in some way related to
her father; perhaps because she felt betrayed by him, she might have
224 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

attempted to attack him by prostituting the girl he might have wished

for her to be. When she was eighteen she became pregnant for the first
time, but thought she was too young to become a mother and had an
abortion. Later, at twenty, she became pregnant again and her partner,
who was much older, wanted to keep the baby, but she thought he was
too conflictive so she had another abortion. She cried bitterly while shar-
ing these memories and wondered how she could ever have had these
abortions if now she wished so much to become pregnant. “I feel like
a murderess.” I said her inner envious child would attack and destroy
any source of happiness she might wish to have. She said that her hus-
band complained because she worked too hard and too long and was
not recognised and paid accordingly. She felt her work gave her a sense
of security and that nothing else could have provided her with that feel-
ing of stability. She did not trust her husband enough to rely completely
on him. She thought he might be jealous of her having a better job and
could complain because he wished to see her jobless again. As a child,
she also worked very hard, competing with her psychotic mother for
her father’s love. I said her work provided her with something unique,
which nobody else could grant her, something she might have used as
a child to compete against her psychotic mother, and to bring her father
closer to her. It was as if working hard represented a competition and
access to her father, which would have allowed her to rob her crazy
mother of her right to possess her father’s penis. That she is already
pregnant with an envious, aggressive, and overpowering child-penis in
her head, which will attack any desire of being pregnant in her uterus,
just as she remembered her mother was in reality, as if now she were
both, her envious self and the pregnant mother. Then she stated that
every time she was ovulating she felt a terrible headache and took all
sorts of medication for the pain although she was aware that if she were
pregnant that would hurt the baby. I said she is not only a murderess
but a serial killer. She laughed.
A few weeks later she brought a dream: She was at her house, and
was very frightened because there was someone inside, like a murderer. After
a while she thought the killer was gone, but then the bell rang and a police
officer was there saying that he thought the killer was still inside. She woke
up very anxious. I said that perhaps the dream portrayed an inner strug-
gle between a part of her that wished for the killer to go away and
another part that was a serial killer still at large. This serial killer, on the
other hand, will guarantee that she remains pregnant with a phantasy
 ALL PREGNANCIES ARE TWINS 225

in her head, pregnant with her father’s penis, or that he favoured her
over her mother and sister.
Sometime later, she says, crying, that she is feeling terrible because
she thought she was not pregnant: “It is so hard to try and fail.” Her hus-
band said that she felt bad before because she did not want to become
pregnant, and felt bad again now because she wants to get pregnant.
“Why is it like that?” she asked. I say it is like going from a serial killer
to Mother Theresa and nothing in between. After a pause she stated
that she and her husband had been fighting bitterly all week. I said that
perhaps they were very frightened because they seem to be considering
pregnancy, very seriously. She recalled a long dream: She was running
because a killer in the form of her old boss, Z, was after her and she needed to
find a place to hide. She approached a hotel and felt it would be safe. Suddenly,
when she entered the room, out of one of the doors in the room, around five
children came prancing. She asked them where they had come from and they
said the bathroom and then she realised that it must have been a bathroom with
a double entrance, and then their mum came to help. They locked the door to
the bathroom so the kids couldn’t come back out. She sat back down on the bed,
but more kids came from the door on the other side of her room. At this point,
she was quite afraid as she realised she wasn’t safe and that Z could find her.
She was also afraid of the kids possibly saying something to Z. In the next
scene, she started running, and as she did, she saw her friends and family
(husband, father, possibly her sister) in front of her. She couldn’t catch up and
was frustrated and angry that they weren’t waiting for her. Afraid they were
leaving her behind with a killer out to get her, she sped up. She ran so fast she
left everyone else behind her. The scene changed. She was on the couch of a dear
friend and felt safe there, but could see this friend was already shot and was
slowly dying. The woman looked at her and said, “Oh, it’s great! You’re preg-
nant!” She asked her what she meant and she said, “Just look at your hands—
that’s a sign that you’re pregnant”. Apparently she had taken some kind of
supplement, which makes veins appear under the skin, like Middle Eastern
henna designs. The woman was a bit disgusted but she encouraged her. There
was dried blood under all of her nails. She said, “No, don’t worry, it’s a good
thing!”
She did not know why she was running from Z. The children from
the bathroom she associated with her fear of being inseminated and
then having more than one child. She was trying to get an appointment
with a specialist for a possible implantation of eggs. She felt the injured
woman could be me, but thought it could also represent a part of her
226 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

telling her not to worry, but did not know why she was shot. The henna
theme represented for her something very feminine that only women
used. I asked if she was physically attracted to Z and she said, “Yes, at
the beginning”. I said that I wondered if he might be taking the place of
her father in the dream, that perhaps she was running from childhood
confusions that frightened her, like having babies with her father or
children being born out of the bathroom, from the mother’s anus. That
perhaps she was desperately running away from childhood phantasies
(oedipal phantasies) related to the serial killer in her, in order to become
pregnant. The wounded woman could be representing the analyst, as
she said; wounded might mean that I might not have a strong voice. She
remarked: “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I were to be pregnant like the
dream says?” I say yes. The next day she called very excited, saying that
her pregnancy test was positive!
Let us consider a last example. A newlywed woman in her forties
complained sadly that she had very little sex with her husband even
before they got married, and felt that she might even end up divorc-
ing him for this reason. I suggested that perhaps she married him for
just that reason. She found a man whose sexual inhibitions allowed her
to render him useless, like an oedipal revenge against her abandoning
father. In spite of this ambivalence about their sexuality, fantasies of
divorce and concern about her age, at one point she started to make
plans to become pregnant. A phantasised baby started to develop, often
confused with a real one that demanded time from her work, the cause
of financial restrictions to the point of having to depend on her husband
whom she did not trust. In the course of attempting her pregnancy,
they started to have sex daily about a week before and a week after her
menstruation. Since she said nothing about this radical change from
before, when four or five months would elapse without sex, I said that
the baby in her head was inducing her to forgive her husband-father,
because their sexuality had changed drastically, once she decided, and
not him, to have sex in order to have a baby. She said nothing about
this and after a long pause said that she brought her cat downstairs
and told her, with “tears in my eyes, that it could no longer sleep with
me, on our bed, because it was going to bother the baby”. It is a cat she
had from the time she was single, that we identified with an internal
revengeful child in her. I said that perhaps she was remembering what
her mother could have told her when her younger sibling was born and
added that perhaps the cat represented that part of herself that felt then
 ALL PREGNANCIES ARE TWINS 227

very jealous about her mother being pregnant and that now might feel
jealous about herself becoming pregnant. She answered saying it was
an interesting idea and remembered a dream she had the night before:
She was driving at night on a country road and felt she hit something and
stopped to investigate and found she had killed a raccoon that was carrying a
baby in its mouth.
Phantasies associated to pregnancy are present in all women;
however, the configuration of these phantasies might be different on a
continuum from one extreme of favouring impregnation, to another of
conflicting with it. I have the impression that the three patients presented
here were able to become pregnant helped by the way the analytical
work evolved, predominantly by making conscious those phantasies
related to envious elements which attacked internally creative aspects
of the self, in a manner compatible with self-envy mechanisms. I found
it remarkable how Donna, the second patient, intuitively perceived her
pregnancy in her dream.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Children from the claustrum:

pre-conceptual traumas and addiction

The difference between womb and tomb is just one letter!

—López-Corvo

“Ubi nihil vales, ibi nihil velis”

(Where you are worth nothing,
there you will wish for nothing).

—Arnold Geulincx
(Quoted by Beckett in Murphy)

A “freedom drive”
The fact that totalitarianism—or absence of freedom—and creativity are
absolutely contradictory, can be deducted from the concept of “kitsch
art”. Kitsch is a German word signifying an inferior and aesthetically
poor form of talent. It was used to refer to the type of art produced dur-
ing the communist totalitarian domination of the Soviet Union; interest-
ingly, it can also be observed in the creativity of prison inmates.
At the beginning of Chapter Three I mentioned a comment made
by a patient, who described himself has having been “adultnapped”,
229
230 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

implying that we all remain imprisoned within the rigid structure of

our infant pre-conceptual trauma. Several philosophers have conceived
a similar understanding: Leibniz or Spinoza, for instance, discriminated
between “action dominated by reasoning which guarantee freedom,
and action subjugated by passions that induce dependency”, where
the idea of “passion”, I believe, portrays the notion of repressed affects
stemming from the phenomenology of the pre-conceptual trauma in
question.
I think there is a sort of “freedom drive” which can be discerned
from the manner of how nature performs. We are created within our
mother’s entrails and remain as such, just as though we were another
of her internal organs. Birth arrives and we achieve the biological sta-
tus of being “another” individual absolutely different from our parents;
but only from a biological dimension because, from a psychological
vertex, we remain dependent for many years. The continuous process
of complex “bio-psycho-social” maturation (motion, speech, concep-
tualisation, and so on) relentlessly moves us towards further states of
autonomy and freedom. Since it is difficult for children to create a men-
tal space that helps them escape from the pull of the natural maternal
symbiosis, the father will usually behave as a force capable of neutralis-
ing the mother’s gravitational pull. This is why there is the expression
that the “phallus introduces the symbol”, meaning freedom. Besides
the mother’s natural presence of a “withholding mental uterine space”,
there is also the unconscious mechanism present in a woman of using
her child as a narcissistic completion in order to solve threats of castra-
tion anxiety, following the well known Freudian formula of “baby =
penis = faeces”. In other words, just as the total presence of a mother
is absolutely indispensable for a child to achieve a psychological state
of well being, there is also the danger of the baby being retained by the
mother beyond the utterly indispensable time required for the infant to
evolve normally. The father, on the other hand, is absolutely essential
for a child to achieve a sense of psychological freedom and, most of all,
hope. Obviously men—usually—do not possess a mental space capable
of inducing a need to “withhold”, as women do.
The dynamic of the “rescuer” comes to mind, a phenomenology I
have already referred in Chapter Eight, as a form of defence against the
pain induced by the presence-absence of the original object represented
by the mother. There is the unconscious and continuous search for an
object capable of rescuing the individual from feelings of despondency
 CHILDREN FROM THE CLAUSTRUM 231

and helplessness. Whenever individuals perceive the “presence” of

“possible rescuers”, they will automatically experience a sense of con-
solation or solace, or the opposite, hopelessness and depression when
they fail. The “rescuer” could be anything, from a baby, to a place,
money, a dead person, and so on. Referring to Leo Kanner’s (1943) orig-
inal description of the “refrigerator mother”, I think autism represents
the mother’s murderous revenge against the limitations of her child,
who fails to become her own unconscious rescuer or “wise baby”.
I would like now to refer to a clinical case. Nancy started her ses-
sion saying she was feeling rather depressed. After a short silence, she
associated to the previous evening when she went out for dinner with
her six-year-old son and her husband to a nice and rather elegant res-
taurant. She and her husband wished to have a “nice” conversation
with their son; however, after approximately thirty minutes, he stood
up and went to explore the place, something that made her and the
father rather uncomfortable, even more so because no other child—
although there were not many in the restaurant—was behaving in that
manner. He came back, but shortly afterwards, left the table again; this
time he went outside, onto the pavement, and since they were sitting
in the corner and next to a window, the child pressed his face against
the glass from the outside, making funny faces. “It was outrageous
and completely embarrassing”, she concluded. Obviously, Nancy was
expecting from her son an attitude suitable to an older mind; also, her
disappointment and depression revealed the presence of an expectation
of a sort of “ideal being” demanded from the child, who was evidently
failing to provide her with it. From her history, we knew that Nancy’s
father became an invalid after a car accident when she was about five
years old. She remembered feeling awkward and embarrassed when
dining in public places and observing her mother assisting him. She
felt very envious of other children whose fathers were normal, as well
as very resentful and guilty towards her handicapped father, who left
her in the hands of a restrictive and insensitive mother. She often com-
plained about how difficult things were in general, with her as well as
her family, inducing the feeling of being in distress and needing some-
one to protect her. There was also the countertransference feeling that
she often placed herself in awkward situations in order to induce in the
other the desire to rescue her, as if she was identifying herself with her
encumbered father. I said to her that a little girl in her felt disappointed
with her son because he, like her father, left her alone and unassisted,
232 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

something that filled her with anger and sadness. She then said: “It is
too unfair to put that burden on a little boy.”
Following Lacan’s famous aphorism, we are in many ways our own
“mother’s desire”; however, this form of psychological captivity is often
brought to extremes. From a historical point of view, for instance, we
could think of the Vestals, the priestesses of the Vestal goddess, in ancient
Rome, who were taken at a very early age to remain for the rest of their
lives in charge of the “sacred fire”. Before the invention of matches, it
was absolutely necessary for any “civilised” inhabitants—in order to
survive, face harsh winters, or cook—to guarantee the continuance of an
ongoing fire. The Vestals gave way to Christian nuns, who had no need
to keep any everlasting fire—except their “own”,1 “‘married’ as they
were to Jesus in spirit, in order, I think, to exercise advocacy for parents”
sins in front of all mighty God. The history of Saint Brigit in Ireland’s
Druid mythology, for instance, followed this pattern of shifting from a
pagan priestess to a Christian saint. It was very helpful to have such a
possibility of winning indulgences and securing a place in Heaven with
the help of a “sacrificed” daughter. The virginity equally demanded of
vestals2 and nuns, as a way to remain “pure”, confirms the hypothesis
that the main unconscious purpose for their sacrifice was, and still is, to
intervene with God on behalf of their relations, in order to forgive them
from any sexual wrongdoing. A similar sacrifice was also demanded in
the Catholic Church, for sons to become priests, possibly for the same
unconscious reasons that their sisters became nuns.3
Unresolved particular traumatic patterns projected on to the chil-
dren, become a dominant narcissistic bond that powerfully induces the
child to take over the role of rescuer of his/her parents, who felt them-
selves entrapped by their own particular pre-conceptual traumas. The
bond then narcissistically established, becomes an entrenched mission
impossible for the child to break, so as to eventually achieve a needed
sense of autonomy and independence indispensable for mental growth.
In other words, the “child hero” is really a “child slave”, a “narcissistic
appendix” entangled in his/her mother’s desire, like an insect in a spi-
der’s web.
I have very often observed, in the treatment of adolescents with
drug dependency, the existence of a familiar equation resulting from
the interaction between the type of drug in use and the seriousness
of the dependency, on the one hand, and the ascendancy or absence of
the parents on the other. The severity of the case usually moves along a
 CHILDREN FROM THE CLAUSTRUM 233

continuum, from the extreme of single mothers, where I have observed

the most serious cases, to the existence of a sort of “present-absent
father”, meaning someone either presenting serious schizoid defences,
or who is very often absent “because of his occupation”, or both.
In other words, the severity of the case gives the impression of being
directly proportional to the dominance of the mother and the absence
of the father. I am not saying with this that children from single moth-
ers are always drug addicts; but individuals with serious dependencies
are often observed to be children of absent fathers. This issue has been
elaborated by Meltzer in the phenomenology of “the claustrum”, which
I will now summarise.

“Anal children”
Samuel Beckett started psychotherapy with Wilfred Bion in 1934. It is
said that he was suffering from a “crippling neurosis” as the result of
being “inextricably tied to a rejecting, harsh, and demanding mother”
(Stevens, 2005, p. 631). On Bion’s invitation Beckett attended a lecture at
the Tavistock given by Carl Jung. An important aspect of the conference
referred to a ten-year-old girl who presented a dream that Jung felt was
an uncanny premonition of her early death, because “she had never
been born entirely” (Jung, 1968, p. 107). According to Stevens (2005) this
remark had a profound significance for Beckett, who

… found in it an explanation for his need to continue to go back to

his mother, his desire to stay in bed, and his memories of his birth
as “painful.” He felt that his own sense of incompleteness was due
to never having been born properly. Beckett was in fact physically
born in a town called Stillorgan, an ironic name that shows up in
“Murphy” [novel]. (p. 614)

And further on:

… This idea of being alive but not “born” is used explicitly in

Beckett’s 1956 radio play “All That Fall”; however, one can see
it in his repeated conjunctions of birth and death—for example,
“wombtomb”—throughout his works. The notion of being psy-
chologically “unborn” is a key to understanding the character
of Murphy as being drawn inexorably to a pre-birth womb-like
234 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

experience of nothingness, which is a kind of comfort in its

idealized form. In addition, if Murphy has never been psychologi-
cally “born,” he exists as neither alive nor dead, but someplace
in-between. (Ibid.)

Meltzer (1992) has referred to metaphorical spaces or claustrum inside

the mother’s body where individuals may remain mentally “confined”.
He has described three of them: a) head/breast, b) genital, and c) mater-
nal rectum. I believe however, that from a clinical point of view, there is
always a combination of all of these possibilities, with predominance of
one claustrum over the other. The first claustrum can be represented by
the attitude or behaviour present in a person or a culture often associ-
ated with

… richness, at first concrete and related to urgent need of nourish-

ment, becomes diversified in its nuances: generosity, receptiveness,
aesthetic reciprocity; [If seen from inside] … generosity becomes
quid pro quo, receptiveness becomes inveiglement, reciprocity
becomes collusion, understanding becomes penetration of secrets,
knowledge becomes information, symbol formation becomes
metonymy, art becomes fashion. (pp. 72–73)

The head/breast as a form of interaction, I believe, is different from

the genital or rectum, in the sense that someone trapped in the former
could become a resourceful writer or a successful entrepreneur. The
second space or genital claustrum, related to sexual perversions, has
been defined by Meltzer as having the following characteristics:

The inmates of this space are more obviously disturbed and

turbulent … they live in a space dominated by a primitive priapic
religion … seen from the interior is Mardi Gras … for the essence
of this interior view is that the entry of the father’s phallus is
celebrated and enjoyed voluptuously by all the babies, while the
mother calmly receives this homage. (Ibid., pp. 88–89)

In the maternal rectum

… we are essentially in the world of addiction, where the individ-

ual has consigned his survival to the mercy of a malignant object.
(Ibid., p. 92)
 CHILDREN FROM THE CLAUSTRUM 235

A significant feature present in this last mechanism is the idealisation

of faeces, where the child represents the mother’s phantasy of an envi-
ous and revengeful internal object, depicted by the symbolism of a
“faecal penis” or the “empty plenitude”. Remembering Freud’s well
known statement of “penis = child = faces”, the oedipal “child-faecal-
penis” is eternally hidden in his mother’s rectum where he will remain
motionless as a dead object. I have previously stated the following:

The figure of the “child-faecal-penis” represents a crucial

mechanism exercised by the mother towards her child, usually
boys, and constitutes a condensation of two different needs: i) the
mother’s need to resolve her own castration anxiety by providing
herself with the phantasy of an imaginary penis; ii) and at the
same time, to enviously attack (self-envy) this needed penis by
rendering it useless and degrading it to feces, often related to
Freud’s concept of the “cloacae theory” or zonal confusion between
the vagina and the anus. In other words, the future addict—
usually marijuana dependent—identifies himself with his mother’s
desire by becoming her useless “fecal-penis”. (López-Corvo, 1993,
p. 59)

And also:

Faeces are experienced not only as babies who live inside the anus,
but also as food to feed them. The mother could also be preserved
inside the baby’s anus in the form of mother-breast-faeces-baby,
withheld, controlled, or expelled omnipotently at their wish.
(Ibid.)

Some characteristics present in these patients appear to be universal,

beyond the limitations imposed by culture, and I have observed them
in my analytical practice in Latin America (Venezuela) as well as in
North America (Canada). They are usually adolescents or very young
adults, most of them males, chronic abusers of marijuana colloquially
described as “potheads”, school dropouts, unemployed, with little ambi-
tion, living with their parents and financially dependent on them. Very
often there is the presence of a domineering mother and an emotionally
absent father. Clinically these patients experience dissociated states,
displaying phantasies of grandeur that are never accomplished, where
phantasy is confused with reality, and which could be summarised as
236 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

“how to do everything in order to end up doing nothing”.4 Let us now

examine some clinical material.
Martin was a fifteen-year-old, highly intelligent boy, who was
adopted when he was approximately four days old. He started to have
difficulties in school at around eight years of age. Psychological tests, as
well as psychotherapy, were indicated; however, five years later the sit-
uation was so unbearable to his parents and the school, that out of anger
and impotence, they decided to place him in a military school where he
stayed for a year. After being discharged, Martin’s behaviour worsened;
he became resentful and verbally and physically abusive to both parents,
his performance at school was very poor, and he was now part of a gang
and very much into drugs. By this time the whole system was involved:
school, social worker, police, judge, and probation officer. There was
long-standing chronic use of marijuana that sometimes he “garnished”
with alcohol, cocaine, and/or amphetamines. When they came for treat-
ment, the parents were at their wits’ end, angry, desperate, and willing
to place him in a boarding school again. A few months into therapy we
arrived at a crucial point. In the last session before Christmas holidays
the father, in a very angry tone, screamed in desperation at his son—
while the mother listened in silence—about issues related to “my wife,
my house and my parents”, instead of “your mother, your house and
your grand parents”. It was an attempt to “erase” the child; he was not
a son, but a younger sibling who had robbed him, the father, from being
“his wife’s only child. I also felt they were angry about my departure,
leaving them both alone with the problem, and, instead of screaming at
me they screamed at the boy. I learned that same night that the parents
had called the police because Martin had threatened to either cut him-
self or his father with a machete. Shortly after resuming therapy it was
clear that the point of view from which the situation was approached
was not the best one. Martin was a “true natural” boy, born out of a
“natural” womb, from a true mother; while his parents were not set up
for parenthood because they were “adopted parents”, and since they
had not experienced the natural and intense process of a true pregnancy
and childbirth, they were not properly prepared. This change of vertex,
from “natural child” to “adopted parents”, proved to be extremely use-
ful in the understanding of the main conflict, as well as in the significant
transformation of the family’s difficult dynamics.
Around a year into this family psychotherapy—once a week with
the family together, and another weekly session with Martin alone—the
 CHILDREN FROM THE CLAUSTRUM 237

aggression between them had receded considerably, as well as some

of Martin’s acting-out behaviour. The school issues, however, in spite
of his efforts, remained very conflictive. In one session the mother
explained that the day before, she was invited to a meeting with the
principal, a teacher, the probation officer, and her son. The teacher said
that a classmate of Martin’s told him that around a year ago, at a previ-
ous school, Martin had been carrying a gun. “It didn’t make sense”, said
the mother, “this was brought up a year after taking place”. The father
then stated that “this was an excuse because they just wanted to find
another school for Martin”. “Finally”, the mother continued, “it was
decided the school would not tolerate Martin’s absences any longer; the
first class he missed he would go into detention.” I said that I wondered
if Martin felt that the only way to deal with his fear of attending school
was to carry a gun. He laughed.
One day, the mother was sitting on the couch and Martin, as usual,
was lying down next to her with his eyes closed and his legs on her
lap pretending to be sleeping; the father always sat on a chair by him-
self. Very often during the session both parents would complain about
Martin’s attitude of apparent disinterest, while he would always give
the same answers: “I am awake and listening”. The mother remem-
bered a long dream: She was in a classroom writing a history exam. “I had
missed the exam but the teacher gave me a chance to do a makeup exam, how-
ever, I was still not prepared. I was given twenty-one questions to answer, but
I realised I did not know very much. A second teacher came in. The first teacher
asked the second one if he could monitor me because he had to go. The second
teacher said he would read the questions to me. I argued with him and the first
teacher came in and told me to be quiet and to listen. It was then I realised the
second teacher was giving me the answers. Two or three men (all friends of
the teacher) came into the room interrupting everything. I did not know them,
but I realised that they were members of the same golf club as my husband’s
partner X. At this point the second teacher told me my answers made no sense,
so why did I not review them. I realised I had written two separate exams.
At that point I decided to leave and take the exam home and correct answers
against my text books. On the way home I met up with my girl friend F [who
has the same name as the patient]. She decided to come home with me. On
the way a cart of some sort went by. I told F we should take this to get home
faster. She jumped on and I missed it. I ran to catch up and F was trying to
stop it but it did not stop. It veered wildly down the street (like a car in a police
chase—where they drive in and out between cars). Next thing I knew I was at
238 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

home alone with the exams and several different textbooks. I began to correct
answers when another girlfriend, B, dropped in. At that time, I was trying to
find answers, but I dropped my sheet and had a hard time finding it. At this
point, I am not sure what happened. I think I gave up and brought the exam
back to the teacher.”
I thought, as stated once by Freud, that this dream represented a
summary of the whole family dynamic.5 She said she did not know
what the dream meant and I said that it seems as if her dream was tell-
ing us that she was taking Martin’s place, because in reality, different
from him, she was not writing any exam. It is a long dream where the
main theme of her writing an exam persists through the whole dream
in spite of the different scenes. It seemed as if Martin did not exist at
all and as if she was continuously “pregnant” with him. The mother
approved and added that she did want for him to be her real child.
She had attempted several fertilisation procedures without any result.
I said, “So, you flunk maternity”. She associated the teacher with the
therapist. I asked, why two teachers? “I don’t know, perhaps you are
the first teacher and my husband the second. The people that came into
the room are in reality friends of my husband and in the dream they
were friends of the second teacher”. I said it was a much diluted father
because his presence was very distant and his friends were making
noises and disturbing. The father added: “She made of Martin her own
project”. About the “twenty-one questions” in the exam, she associates
this with the age she was when her own mother insisted she take a job
distant from the town where her family was living, indicating perhaps
a form of breaking away from her mother’s dependency. At this point
the father asked Martin to wake up, while he protested, saying he was
completely awake. I then said that Martin was such a good child that
he has provided his mother with a kind of foetus, always sleeping, not
interested in issues in which he ought to be interested and not being
able to look after his school obligations. It seems also that his mother
took over as if she remains pregnant with Martin, as if he was not yet
born, and the father was so “diluted” that he was unable to step in and
“rescue” or “deliver” the child from the mother’s strong symbiotic pull-
ing, perhaps because he felt that after all, Martin was not his own bio-
logical child, not “his own project” or he felt jealous of Martin and his
wife’s relationship. I also said to the mother that maintaining the inten-
tion throughout the whole dream of finding a way to pass the exam
could have portrayed a strong and persistent desire to “give birth” to
 CHILDREN FROM THE CLAUSTRUM 239

Martin. A few minutes after this interpretation, Martin sat on the sofa
for the first time looking very surprised, but said nothing.
It was very painful for the mother to accept that Martin was adopted
because that implied she was unable to become pregnant, was barren,
and had failed becoming a mother. On the other hand, she was deal-
ing also with the psychotic delusion of confusing a phantasised child
with the real one.6 She destroyed the true child in order to keep alive
the imaginary one, as she was unable to mourn for her “empty” womb,
and Martin became an “unborn child to be born”. If this were to be
true, what exactly induced the mother, with such intensity, to become
unconsciously pregnant with Martin? From previous information she
had provided, we knew that she had two ectopic pregnancies and later
feared becoming pregnant because she thought it was too painful.
She associated this fear with the memory of being ill with meningitis
around the age of twelve, when she suffered an unbearable pain she had
never again experienced. The doctor who was treating her at that time
also abused her sexually by manipulating her vagina with his finger.
“I was also abused by my older brother around this same time, and
many years later on I was raped by a fellow worker.” In order to avoid
mourning the narcissistic injuries left by such abuses, she resorted to
the manic denial of becoming mentally pregnant with Martin, who also
disliked being adopted, something he attempted to deny by providing
his mother with an eternal foetus who remained unborn. Martin had
often shared the phantasy about his desire to remain a child all of his
life. Where in her mind had she kept this child for so many years? In
which cryptic space different from her uterus? After all, the uterus is an
organ that sets the exactness of time: menstruation every month, and
birth after nine months, as well as the distance in space by establish-
ing at birth the difference between the thou and the I. I believe Martin
unconsciously attacked any kind of success that could have resulted
in independence and freedom, such as school achievement or psycho-
therapy, struggling to identify with and to provide his mother with the
condition of a “faecal phallus”.
Unable to produce a child of her own, perhaps due to a nameless
oedipal terror (as consequence of being sexually abused), she decided
not to adopt but to “steal” a baby, as if she could become pregnant in
her mind only, by confusing her phantasy with her reality. The father, on
the other hand, remained distant not only as a way to give the mother
sufficient room to freely exercise her need “to fulfil her project”, but
240 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

also and very importantly, because he felt threatened by Martin who

represented more of a sibling and a rival than a son, something rather
obvious at the time he had screamed “My wife, my mother and my
parents”. In other words, in the face of his powerful need for a “wife-
mother”, he remained distant, sheltering a murderous rage, and as a
consequence failed to rescue the child from the maternal symbiosis.
I would like now to refer to Lily, a patient at the end of the third year
of analysis. She was the youngest and only girl of three siblings and had
been able to achieve a series of important changes: she had found a part-
time job and was attempting to move away from her parents’ house to
an apartment she had rented. In the session before she finally moved,
she shared that she had stolen a vibrator from her mother’s bedroom
and taken it to her new apartment to masturbate with it. After a long
pause, as if waiting for me to say something, she continued. There were
clauses in the lease she did not agree with—parties not permitted, the
TV set could not be turned up too loud at night, and one could not
have a dog. She could not sleep the night before, thinking of how she
wanted to change these clauses, although she also felt she did not have
the courage to do it. However, that same morning she went to talk to the
property owner and was bewildered because he had accepted all her
suggestions. She wanted to have the key to the apartment right away
because she could not believe she was moving. The owner told her she
could paint the apartment any colour she wished. She already knew
the colour, something different, livelier. At the end, she remembered a
dream: She was walking with a former boyfriend towards a hill, where there
was a bar and very happy women dancing, they were like whores. She then said
to her boyfriend that now she was not as jealous as she used to be, that he could
look at other women if he wished. Then she went to the bathroom to defecate,
but once she finished she could not remove some faeces that were stuck to her
buttocks like a scab.
She remembered a former boyfriend who used to make her very jeal-
ous due to his tendency to look at other women, especially those with
big behinds. “One day”, she said, “he really killed me when he said
I was completely flat, that I did not have a nice ass … in the dream it
was different, I felt more sure of myself … that is why I said that I was
not jealous and that he could look at other women.” “Not being able to
clean the faeces”, she associated with the difficulty of ridding herself of
her parents’ powerful influence. To leave her house definitely, would
have been be similar to cleaning her behind; even more, she felt that
 CHILDREN FROM THE CLAUSTRUM 241

everything in her parents’ house was old, dark, and dirty, completely
different from her new apartment, newly painted, and where every-
thing would be arranged by herself.
From the perspective of this material we could infer, that she was
attempting to break away from her parents’ pull by parting from the
mother’s “idealised anal claustrum“: from “a house old, dark, and dirty”
to a new place of her own that she could “paint” as she wished, some-
thing “livelier” instead of “dead faces”. She discovered that her internal
struggle against the “authority” (“the landlord’s forbidden clauses”)
was not so difficult after all; it was more the consequence of her ego’s
submissive and not-daring attitude towards her superego. The dream,
I think, portrayed additional fine details about her attempt to break
away from her internal need to remain in the maternal claustrum. We
could interpret, following her dream, that she ventured into the “hill-
breast-behind” in order to convince a “masculine” part of herself that
she is no longer jealous of her father-brothers’ penises, which were used
to penetrate her mother’s idealised behind. The presence of the “happy-
faeces-whores”, that had previously been experienced as powerful and
attractive, capable of enviously degrading the “good-breast”, are also
an expression of this anal idealisation she is trying to break away from.
However, there is still at the end, the stubbornness of a “scab” that
resisted being removed, resisted facing the painful separation, the lone-
liness of trying to go on her own, to give up the ongoing happy party of
the idealised “whore-faeces” and of the resourceful manic triumph of
stealing the father’s penis from her mother (vibrator).

The phantasy of the “faecal phallus” or the “empty plenitude” 7

I have so far referred to the dynamics of patients who were psycho-
logically retained inside the maternal claustrum. I will now examine
the vertex related to the other “side”, meaning, the mothers, and their
particular forms of identification. During the analysis of mothers of
addicts, I have often found envious and paralysing sadistic transfer-
ence attacks, acted out with the purpose of defending a fragile internal
part object representing a baby. Such a fragile element is also projected
through powerful projective identifications, with the purpose of deal-
ing with fear of dependency, often manifested as a reluctance to use
the couch, denial of any need for therapy, missing sessions, and so on.
At other times, the transference contains distinctive anal features, such
242 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

as a need to implement sadistic and omnipotent control of the object,

intrusive, denigrating, and paralysing projective identifications usually
portraying the general motto of: “Say whatever you wish, to show you
how wrong you are”. When these means are sensed as a failure, then
other mechanisms are then used, such as seduction, a need for complic-
ity, perverse transference, etc. On the other hand, feelings of impotence,
paralysis, hopelessness, and anger are often experienced in the counter-
transference. Let us now consider some sessions with such a mother of
a drug addict son.
A fifty-year-old widow, the mother of an adolescent who presented
with chronic dependency on marijuana and was hospitalised abroad
due to his addiction, consulted me with the purpose of discussing her
son’s troubles and to provide her with assistance once her son was back
in the country. Once he came back, he demanded, as a form of contract,
that not only should he receive help, but that his mother should do
it as well. I will now review two sessions that took place around one
year after the beginning of her analysis. By this time, we were work-
ing on her aversion to silence as a reaction to separation and weaning
anxiety from an internal, needy, and fragile element, terribly envious
about the omnipotent penis-breast projected through the transference,
which she ambivalently also attacked. She often demanded that I say
something, just anything to confirm my presence, then immediately
rejected everything I interpreted, something that produced counter-
transference feelings of being trapped, paralysed, and impotent. At
the beginning of the session she stated that her son had become angry
when she had poured on his meal, without asking, the same sauce she
was eating. “He didn’t like it that I wanted him to have the same taste
that I did.” Then she said that her sister had accused her of being ambi-
tious, something she did not like because she felt it was not true, or like
me (analyst) also, who had accused her of being envious and distrust-
ful. She gave her sister equal partnership in her business, though she
only contributed thirty per cent of the capital. When they could no
longer get along together, she “fired” her, but paid her everything she
demanded. “So, how could she say that I am ambitious? … Anyway
… Could you look it up in the dictionary? … You are not going to look
for anything … And you are not even going to answer?” After a short
silence, which I judged as a test, I said that she did not like the fact
that we did not have the same taste, and that I did not do exactly as
she wanted. She would like for me to become her partner so she could
 CHILDREN FROM THE CLAUSTRUM 243

fire me afterwards. She then became very upset and stated that she
understood nothing.
I felt she was incapable of freeing herself from the “narcissistic
weight” of the other. She resisted with terror anything she conceived
as “heterogeneous”, as different, like the outside space, the unlike-
ness; it was like a true form of “heterophobia”, or fear of “otherness”.
It was essential to capture and withhold the object in order to expel it
afterwards.
She was the eldest of three girls, and very early, together with her
mother, were all abandoned by her father when he left the country for
political reasons. She grew up with a deep sense of responsibility for
her two younger sisters and her frightened, insecure, and economically
dependent mother. This feeling, together with an aggressive sibling
rivalry, induced in her the need to identify with the absent father as a
form of denying the painful lost. At one point, she revealed with great
difficulty and anxiety, a masturbatory phantasy where she felt in pos-
session of an artificial penis.
At the next session, she talked about her brother-in-law, and of his
need to take sleeping pills, and asked if I could give her a prescription.
“He is so … skinny, so insignificant, always depressed. He was the eld-
est of three brothers, was never wanted by his mother and was born
with a fractured arm. When his mother died they found him huddled
in his apartment, sleeping on a mattress on the floor, with a candle illu-
minating his own picture when he was a baby, several Teddy bears and
dolls scattered around, plates, clothes throughout the garden. It was
horrible … [pause] … F [her son] is travelling to the USA and he wished
to take his girlfriend with him, and I said it was unnecessary to take her
because he is going there to work, and I don’t know what is he going to
do there with her.” At that moment, she lifted her head off the couch and
said jokingly: “You should put something on the pillow so I don’t get
contaminated from other patients.” Then I said to her, that she wished to
be the only child, without other “couch” sisters, or perhaps she wanted
to be different from her own sisters, perhaps to be a boy, although she
was becoming more aware, with great sadness and horror, that she was
not a boy. She did not wish to be such an “insignificant” boy resembling
her brother-in-law, who like her, was born with a fractured arm-penis,
with a fabricated penis, a lie. It was difficult for her to imagine, or possi-
bly filled her with envy to think, that there were other men who received
a real penis and wished to use it, like her son F with his girlfriend.
244 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

“Penis envy” seems to result from the woman’s inability to imagine

a vagina that possesses its own biological attributes as a complemen-
tary receptacle for the penis. We know from very early theorisations
(Horney, 1933; Klein, 1932) about the defensive character of penis envy,
something that is modified by the mental representation of a legitimate
and orgiastic vaginal receptacle. It is necessary that the mother foster
the creation of such space for her daughter, the legitimisation of the
oedipal phantasy, the desire to be a licit member of the family with
all her rights. When circumstances conspire to the contrary, when the
maternal superego forbids the creation of such mental space, of such a
right for sexual pleasure, penis envy will appear as a form of “revenge-
ful hope” (López-Corvo, 1995) against the father’s penis, and, as a con-
sequence, fear of retaliation, guilt, and persecutory anxiety. These entire
circumstances act as a defence against envy, originating the unconscious
phantasy of a hidden phallus as compensation, illegal but omnipotent,
concealed in the anus, within the idealised faeces, in order to avoid
being discovered. The fascinating paradox of the transitional space is
then established, the feeling of “empty plenitude“, the presence of an
absence, the fantastic penis made of faeces, a “faecal phallus”, usually
displaced to a child. It follows unconsciously the Freudian equation of
penis = child = faeces, that becomes the mother’s transitional object or
plaything.
Usually, identification in boys takes place following the association
of two main processes: first, symbiotic ties with the mother are bro-
ken based on anatomical differences and a fear of incest; second, the
importance of the father’s influence due to his need to identify with his
son, plus their own physical similitude. Later on, oedipal feelings are
resolved when both parents are internally symbolised and a significant
difference is established between the ego’s wish and the Other’s wish.
When realisation of any of these two processes fail, or even more, when
their direction is reversed, usually due to mutual (parents and child)
conspiracy, the space is then corrupted. Such sense of inversion is usu-
ally due either to the mother’s psychological predisposition or to the
father’s absence, or both; in such cases, the normal process of develop-
ment is not possible, cannot be achieved. In reality, however, couples do
not join by chance. On the contrary, unconscious forces already prede-
termined very early on by their own pre-conceptual traumas (trauma-
tised state) will always drive them. I believe that women’s unconscious
phantasies are more responsible for this selection, according to their
 CHILDREN FROM THE CLAUSTRUM 245

own oedipal mental representations. The resolution of the girl’s oedipal

feelings depends to a great extent on her relationship with her father.
In this chapter I have considered a paradigmatic characteristic of pre-
conceptual traumas in general, something I have regarded as a form of
“time entrapment”. It means, in few words, that traumas imprison the
ego by unconsciously forcing it to repeat eternally the same childhood
patterns, very often at the immense cost of total loss of freedom as well
as of significant mental pain. I used Meltzer’s model of “the claustrum”
in its three modalities, mind/breast, genital, and anal, in order to illus-
trate these theoretical formulations using clinical material.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Pre-conceptual traumas and somatic

pathology: the body’s attempt to dream
a repetitious undreamed dream

Her pure and eloquent blood Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly
wrought that one might almost say, her body thought!

—John Donne

Hallucinosis, hypochondriasis and other mental “diseases” may

have a logic, a grammar and a corresponding realization, none of
which has so far been discovered.

—Bion (1991, p. xi)

The sorrow which has no vent in tears may make other organs
weep.

—Henry Maudsley (1872)

Introduction
When dealing with psychosomatic disturbances, we could consider
Henry Maudsley’s famous maxim shown above, as a masterful sum-
mary of psychosomatic dynamics. It is not by chance that the French

247
248 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

language chose the same root to designate the pleura, the membrane
that covers the lungs, and pleurer, the verb meaning “to weep”; more-
over, the association between clinical depression and respiratory ail-
ments is well known. I have observed in the unconscious phantasies
of certain patients, how some symbolism is linked to specific forms
of psychosomatic ailments. For instance, the existing relationship
between unresolved mourning and rheumatoid arthritis; between
hyperthyroidism and a compulsive need to maintain control over
feared murderous oedipal inclinations; or between relentless, hid-
den, murderous, envious, and retaliatory attacks on the object and the
banishing of the spoils in ulcerative colitis. I agree with McDougal’s
(1989) statement, that careful listening might often help us find psy-
chosomatic symptoms otherwise overlooked. We could distinguish,
depending on the degree of somatic compromise, between sporadic
somatic symptoms, and somatic structures we refer to as psychoso-
matics. Transient psychosomatic symptomatology is rather common
in the consulting room, in contrast with chronic and well structured
somatic disorders, which appear to a lesser degree, possibly because
patients presenting this kind of pathology are usually retained within
medical facilities and seldom referred to analysis. In fact, most of the
patients I have observed with somatic disturbances had come for
other reasons, and only afterwards have we discovered this form of
pathology.
Some researchers have used the Faustian pact1 as a metaphor
to understand some dynamics in psychosomatic patients, such as
Lefebvre (1988), who used it in a case of ulcerative colitis. I believe
there is a similar mechanism between the superego acting as
Mephistopheles, and the ego acting as Dr Faustus, where the “sacrifice”
is represented by surrendering some somatic function in exchange for a
certain achievement or amenity, similar to Faustus’ demands of power,
wealth, wisdom, women, and so on. There are two important aspects
to be considered: i) the superego’s primitive brutality is heightened
or demonised by the effect of the cruelty present in the identifications
from pre-conceptual traumas; ii) the “somatic concessions” made by
the ego to the demonised superego in order to ease castration fear, are
meaningfully related to the physiology of the organ selected, a situa-
tion that was present in a patient who became paralysed (“dead”) with
rheumatic pathology because of guilt experienced for being alive after
the death of a loved one.
 P R E - C O N C E P T U A L T R AU M A S A N D S O M AT I C PAT H O L O G Y 249

Alexithymia, or the incapacity to be aware of emotions or to name or

distinguish them, has been described as a germane symptom present in
individuals suffering from psychosomatic ailments (McDougall, 1989;
Nemiah, 1978; Taylor, Bagby, & Parker, 1997). I believe this clinical man-
ifestation represents a form of defence that seems to be predominantly
culturally bound, possibly related to other defences found in individu-
als who use obsessive mechanisms. “Dismantling”, for instance, is a
form of defence described by Meltzer et al. (1975) in autistic children,
which can also be observed socially in non-autistic but obsessive indi-
viduals. I have had the opportunity to practise psychiatry and psychoa-
nalysis for many years in the tropics (Venezuela) as well as in Canada.
Although I have never observed autistic children, or dismantling
defences or alexithymia in Venezuela (López-Corvo, 1995), I did see
several cases that used these forms of defences in Canada. I can think of
one particular patient who has been in analysis three times a week for
the last six years, who never presented psychosomatic pathology and
yet showed alexithymic defences in order to protect herself from the
terror induced by strong feelings of dependency resulting from early
and significant pre-conceptual traumas. I strongly believe alexithymia
is very often a consequence of this kind of mechanism, through which
projective identification is used in order to place in others, unwanted
internal feared “needy” elements, as a way to avoid being hurt. How-
ever, not all individuals who present this unconscious dynamic develop
alexithymia (McDougall, ibid., p. 37) or psychosomatic illness. Perhaps
we require further investigation about the relevance culture, as well as
weather, might exercise over the ego’s choice of defence. There is some-
times the danger of gathering information more related to the vertex of
the observer than to the phenomenon we might be observing.2
Bion (1948) was a psychiatrist at the time of his experience with
groups. He produced then an interesting theory about the determining
role that “basic assumptions” had in the physiopathology of human ill-
ness, not only in those we might consider psychosomatic, but even infec-
tious diseases produced by pathogenic elements such as bacteria. Bion
stated that any existing group created for any specific purpose, what-
ever that purpose might be, was always threatened by hidden emotions
that could surface and take over the purpose of the group. The specific
purpose he referred as the “working” or “sophisticated group” (W)
and the hidden emotions as the “basic assumptions” (ba). He described
three forms of basic assumptions: the “dependence baD”, the “fight and
250 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

flight baF”, and the “pairing baP”. All ba have a leader, although in
the pairing group it would be “non-existing”, that is, “unborn” or not
identified with a person, but with a metaphor—such as a messiah—or
an idea, even an inanimate object; whereas in the dependent group,
sometimes the leader may be filled by the history of the group or “the
bible”. The group could only be dominated by one ba at the time, while
the other two remain hidden within a virtual space Bion referred as the
“proto-mental system” (pm), which he depicted as:

… the system or matrix where differentiation of physical and

mental states began. It contains precursors for emotions present
in all basic assumptions including those that remain latent. When
any of the basic assumptions became manifest and its feelings
predominate in the group, the others that remain latent stay con-
tained within the proto-mental system; for instance, if fight-flight
is manifest, dependent and pairing emotions will be latent. (Ibid.,
p. 105)

Bion attempted to explain, with the use of this system, the appearance
of diseases, regardless of their aetiology. Diseases were manifested in
the individual according to the group to which they belonged (city,
family, work, etc.); that is, they would be the product of the relation-
ship between the proto-mental system, the dominating basic assump-
tion, and the latent basic assumption. In all diseases there will be three
dimensions: a) the “matrix”, corresponding to the undifferentiated or
proto-mental system; b) a determined “affiliation” to the latent basic
assumption; c) a “cause” determined by the dominating basic assump-
tion. Usually they will be psychosomatic pathology as well as infec-
tious. Tuberculosis, for instance, due to the need for the patient’s care,
would be associated (matrix) with a dependent basic assumption (baD);
it would have an affiliation with a pairing basic assumption (baP) and
would have as a cause a flight-fight basic assumption (baF). Clinical
experience has shown me that exophthalmia present in hyperthy-
roidism could be interpreted as the watchful monitoring (dependency)
of a projected “internal murderer” and thus corresponds to a flight-fight
ba where baD and baA remain latent.
Bion never referred again to these concepts after his analytical train-
ing, although we could presume they evolved into other ideas. The
interaction between the “working group” and the “basic assumptions”,
 P R E - C O N C E P T U A L T R AU M A S A N D S O M AT I C PAT H O L O G Y 251

for instance, became represented within individual psychology as the

“non-psychotic” and “psychotic” parts of the personality; while the
“basic assumptions” corresponded to those emotions originated from
different points of fixation. Dba was equivalent to the oral stage, Fba to
anal, and Pba to genital. However, following this line, I would prefer to
think that these basic assumptions represent emotions elicited by pre-
conceptual traumas that took place around the same time these specific
sexual developmental stages (oral, anal, and genital) were occurring.
The “proto-mental system” became equivalent to what Bion later
referred to as the “beta space”, a primitive space he extended back to
intrauterine life. Referring to this last statement, Meltzer (1986) said:

This evocation of primitive, perhaps tribal, life in the depths of the

mind, which can surface as group behaviour or, conversely, express
itself through bodily processes, has a frightening, even haunting
impact … these primitive parts of the personality do their thinking
with the body and obey laws that are closer to neurophysiology
than to psychology. (p. 38)

And also:

At the boundary between the proto-mental and the mental, he

[Bion] has placed a hypothetical, “empty” concept, alpha-function,
the mysterious, perhaps essentially mysterious, process of symbol
formation. (p. 10)

Sensory experiences and emotions resulting from pre-conceptual trau-

mas, which have taken place at different stages of development, remain
stored as active and repetitious beta elements. According to Bion, there
is always, as a form of defence, a tendency to evacuate these elements
using three different paths: i) via projective identification; ii) evacuation
through the sense organs reversing their purpose by releasing sense
instead of taking it in, which produces hallucinations; iii) evacuating
beta elements through body organs giving place to psychosomatic dis-
order. I have previously stated that

[v]iewed from a different perspective, somatic language displaces

speech unconscious scotomas that have been suppressed, filling
them with soma. (López-Corvo, 2003, p. 171)
252 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

What makes repudiated unconscious emotions, or beta elements, resort

specifically to somatic paths instead of verbal means? Even more,
why are some organs more privileged than others? It is amatter that
has troubled endless numbers of researchers up to the present time.
McDougall (1974) has alerted us to the dangers of oversimplifying
conceptualisations of somatic pathology in order to provide meaning.
Although several theories used to explain psychosomatic disturbance
may be true, such considerations have not yet provided an understand-
ing of what exactly brings a particular mind to choose, or not, a given
somatic path. I have stated previously that I believe all forms of existing
psychopathology are always traumatic; however, this statement does
not explain the mystery of why some individuals would unconsciously
opt for a “somatic expression”, while others might use a “language of
action” or select proper “verbal means” of communication. I believe
that intense mental pain, originally determined by early and severe
pre-conceptual traumas that have not been contained due to low lev-
els of frustration tolerance, could induce more primitive and power-
ful kinds of splitting and repression as a form of defence against such
pain, making re-introjection of projective identifications much more
frightening (López-Corvo, 2006). The intensity of these defences will
divert the direction of projective identifications that instead of been
aimed at external objects, or toward other part objects representations,
or achieving a level of symbolical or verbal communication, are then
forced, due to low frustration tolerance, to use a somatic path of dis-
charge or expression. It is very similar to Maudsley’s famous dictum:
“The sorrow which has not vent in tears makes other organs weep”.
The selection of the organ will depend on several variables, such as
the particular physiological characteristics of the organ compromised
(McDougall, 1989, p. 28), and/or its genetic background, as well as the
particular nature of the pre-conceptual trauma in question. Genetics,
as is well known, plays a determining role in psychosomatic disorders
by establishing virtual somatic paths that are eventually followed by
stored beta elements as they search for an outlet and expression.
In summary, the hypothesis I am presenting now is that stored beta
elements (proto-mental system), due to low tolerance to mental pain,
are used as missiles, or internal projective identifications, against cer-
tain organs, inducing a kind of private or hidden communication
between the particular mental representation—usually as a superego’s
part object—and the selected organ. I also believe that the continuous
 P R E - C O N C E P T U A L T R AU M A S A N D S O M AT I C PAT H O L O G Y 253

unconscious dialogue established, will make the organ answer back or

“talk”, according to its own physiology, producing signs or symptoms
that will alter its normal somatic way of functioning. Depending on the
persistency of this process of interaction, the somatic pathology could
be either transient or permanent, inducing, or not, serious formats of
somatic pathology. This internal dialogue will be similar to how trans-
ference and countertransference interact, or how two individuals can
communicate using mutual projective-introjective identifications of
internal part objects representations that correlate with each other and
are capable of inducing a form of discourse.
For instance, we may speculate that a particular pre-conceptual
trauma can induce the unconscious sense of “a helpless child lost among
powerful adults”, which could provoke, as a form of defence, the atti-
tude of an always “diligent pleasing child”. Such an attitude in turn,
might give room to “impatience”, and because of a genetic predisposi-
tion, induce “high blood pressure”. Perhaps the need to free the mind
from knowing about the spoils of an ongoing revengeful oedipal mur-
der might trigger chronic colitis; and also, guilt about the unresolved
mourning of a loved one’s death, could induce alopecia3, or rheumatoid
arthritis as an unconscious form of “paralysis” simulating death. How-
ever, not all who deal with the unconscious need to comply or to free
the mind from knowing about oedipal murder wishes, or unresolved
grief, will develop somatic pathology. It is probably easier to establish
a psychological significance to an already established form of somatic
pathology, than to predict from a given kind of unconscious dynamic
what type of somatic pathology might take place. It would be similar to
dreams, in the sense that it is easier to analyse a dream after it has been
structured than to predict what a person will dream about any given
night. We can again speculate that perhaps psychosomatic disorders
represent a “repetitious dream” never dreamed by the mind that the
body is trying to dream!

The case of Alfredo

Very depressed after been diagnosed as suffering from polyneuritis—
even multiple sclerosis was considered—Alfredo was preparing him-
self to retire from his work as a psychoanalyst and to move to a small
town, and, possibly, to remain in a wheel-chair for the rest of his life. He
was absolutely convinced he was living the last days of his life. Later
254 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

we were able to associate the beginning of his present complaints with

a very important award given to him as a recognition for his work.
He complained of chronic pain in his legs and feet, which restricted
his actions, as well as dysesthesia (pins and needles) in both arms and
hands. Because of unspecific depressive anxiety he had had a previous
analysis in his country of origin. He felt this had been helpful, although
it was not sufficient to protect him from his present pathology. He had
studied medicine, trained as a psychiatrist, became a psychoanalyst,
and for a while, worked as a surgeon practicing tonsillectomies in chil-
dren. “Mobility” was a particular theme in Alfredo’s life. Different from
the rest of his family, he emigrated from his original country to the US,
then to Europe, and finally to Venezuela. I felt this mobility was per-
haps linked to the unconscious choice of his original symptom: pain
and restriction of movement.
There were some significant events in his family history: he was
the middle child, with an older brother “favoured by his mother and a
younger sister preferred by his father”. He was circumcised a few weeks
after birth and subjected to a very traumatic and complicated tonsil-
lectomy when he was five, as he was “tricked and slyly seized” by his
parents, held by force, and put to sleep by a woman doctor who used a
face mask and ether on him. He remembered feeling great pain and dis-
comfort when convalescing after surgery, suffering from dysphagia or
difficulty swallowing, and was aphonic for several days. I considered
his tonsillectomy as a central “pre-conceptual trauma”.
An important quality of this patient was the way in which his capac-
ity to remember dreams was used as a form of resistance, or self-envy,
of attempting to use his creative “dream-work α” or “unconscious
alpha function” as a kind of “revengeful transference” (–K), in order
to render the “analyst-castrator” useless. This mechanism of self-envy
was also present in relation to his physical complaints, as there were
many medical doctors who “failed” to provide a satisfactory cure for
his neurological ailment. I have often found some somatic pathology
as a highly secret or deeply repressed form of envious revenge against
the good breast, something I saw in Alfredo’s use of dreams, or alpha
function (–K), as a kind of transference aggression (–H). There was also
a major contrast between his significant academic achievements and
those of the rest of his family, who lacked university education. I felt he
unconsciously used his intellectual achievements as a form of revenge
against his less educated family.
 P R E - C O N C E P T U A L T R AU M A S A N D S O M AT I C PAT H O L O G Y 255

Homosexual forms of identification also appeared as a type of

feminine surrender to the “castrator”. In a dream, for instance, he found
himself in a ménage with a male friend and a woman he associated as
“Dr Dolores”,4 a candidate who told him she was in supervision with
me; he linked with his own pain. I suggested that perhaps he felt envi-
ous of her and felt I was nicer to Dr Dolores than I was towards him,
similar to what he might have experienced between his mother and his
older brother, as well as his father and his younger sister. It was as if
“Dolores” (pains) was the consequence of feeling not only ignored but
also assaulted. He grew up feeling an unnoticed middle child, who also
felt tortured to death.
Further on, this “child element” became more obvious as a circular
ambivalence in the transference: feelings of terror induced him to com-
ply as a form of placating the “castrator”. This feeling then provoked
more terror because he felt he might “disappear” in the analyst’s desire,
something that forced him to use intellectual means (dream-α), to envi-
ously debase (castrate) the analyst in order to deny his dependency. This
attitude made him feel orphaned and lonely, inducing further compli-
ance, in a kind of circularity. Some of this was present in a dream: He is
in a conference room waiting for a university professor who will give a seminar
on pain, but after waiting for a while he gets tired and decides to leave. He
did not know whether to walk or to drive as he thought his house was too far
away; at the end, he decides to walk and the street reminds him of one in his
native town. He cries when he remembers that in that particular street a
family was living who, when he was delivering newspapers as a child,
gave him presents and candies and were especially kind. The univer-
sity professor was in fact coming to the city and he was planning to ask
him to evaluate biopsies taken from nerves in his legs. I told him that
there was an “adult medical professor element” in him that induced
him to have a “medical dialogue” with me about his ailment, but he felt
very impatient because in this dialogue a child element is left excluded,
abandoned (house too far), lonely, and in need of feeling wanted. It was
as if a part of him wished to change an intangible mental pain for a con-
crete physical one to deal with his terror of dependency. I also added
that perhaps he became a doctor as an attempt to fix his inner pain, but
got tired of waiting and then became a psychiatrist, and due to similar
feelings became a psychoanalyst. He remembered that in his teens he
sometimes would take off his clothes and hang himself from a rope,
“not to kill himself”, he clarified, but because this excited him sexually.
256 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

“I was always afraid that my father could have found out.” He added
that in his previous analysis this was interpreted as a homosexual long-
ing for his father. I then said perhaps there was an element in him that
felt he could have solved his fear of castration by stealing his father’s
penis and potency, something he might also try with me but feared I
could find out.
Several weeks later, he said he had visited an acquaintance who suf-
fered from multiple sclerosis and was in a wheelchair. That night he had
a dream in which a woman gave him two flutes. The flutes, he thought,
represented a phallic symbol, as if she was giving him a penis. This
friend with “MS” was in bad shape and he thought he could die soon.
He answered affirmatively when I asked if he found himself in a simi-
lar situation when he thought he was ready for a wheel-chair, and he
added that now he felt much better and even his wife had told him
so: “She said I am more hopeful and don’t look as if someone is wait-
ing for me with a stick.” I said he resented his mother because he felt
she had not protected him from being “castrated”, and that he did not
know what kind of a mother I was. Either a mother that would not pro-
tect him and would wait for him with a stick, or a mother who could
teach him how to use his internal penis in order to repair his mind and
protect him from the wheel-chair and death. After a pause, he said he
had been asked from abroad to write an article for a round-table dis-
cussion. I then said that possibly in order to exercise such creativity he
perhaps had to make concessions, to self-castrate or self-tonsillectomise
and thus avoid “the man with the stick”. Perhaps there existed an
oedipal unconscious relationship between his need to create, as a form
of revenge, and at the same time, there was also guilt and a need to
castrate himself (pain in his legs) in order to avoid a “true castration”.
I felt it was like a form of “self-envy” or envy between internal parts of
the self, as if the tonsillectomised-castrated element in him enviously
attacked his creativity. It was a situation analogous to how, when ton-
sillectomised as a child, he could have envied others (siblings, parents,
and so on) who were not, a condition that became internalised and was
now experienced as envy against himself.
Some weeks later, he brought a dream: He is with a doctor who had
taken an X-ray of his head that looked clearer than a previous one, and he is
now superimposing each to evaluate the progress. The doctor then tells him
to leave because there is too much radiation in the room that could harm him.
He goes to a waiting room and then an otolaryngologist5 appears who invites
 P R E - C O N C E P T U A L T R AU M A S A N D S O M AT I C PAT H O L O G Y 257

him to come into his office, but he refuses and says he is not his patient, that he
came to see the radiologist. He associated the X-ray with the analysis and
the radiation with what we have uncovered about his pre-conceptual
trauma, which he had not seen during his previous analysis. The
otolaryngologist reminded him of his tonsillectomy. I then said that he
might be experiencing the analysis as a trap: feeling that my penis had
more curative power than his previous analysts’ did, and could pro-
mote “too much” envious feelings (too much radiation) and the desire
to give up the analysis, but then he found himself facing the threat of
the tonsillectomy again.
A few days later, he remembered another dream: He is sitting with
his wife in the living room looking at the colour of the walls (in reality, he was
redecorating his house). Suddenly Hitler appears accompanied by a woman
walking around the house and he feels uneasy and threatened. Although
Hitler disappeared, he has the hunch he is still there, even though his wife
said to ignore him. He said he often used Hitler to portray persecutory
aspects in patients. He had been feeling bad with his prostate for the
last five days because he had forgotten to take his medication. “The
question is”, he stated, “Why had I forgotten to take the medication,
is it as if I were acting against myself?” I told him that in the midst of
a pleasant moment, of contemplating the new decoration of his house,
the frightening cruel Hitler had to appear, as if he had to enviously
attack his right for a pleasant and peaceful moment. His wife in the
dream who said “to ignore it”, could represent a feminine aspect in
him that might not respond to castration anxiety and attempted to
calm the masculine part that felt threatened. He then remembered a
movie he had seen at the weekend about a motorcycle rider who was
suffering from his prostate and who found an American Indian who
provided him with a place to stay and some pills made of dog’s testes
and told him that they tasted bad but were excellent. I then told him
that it seemed as if a part of him felt that when his tonsils were taken
out, he lost his testes and now he wished for me to give him mine.
He answered that he felt I worked differently from other analysts and
he worried that he was plagiarising me with his patients. I said that
perhaps he felt he could not learn by himself but had to steal from
me because during the tonsillectomy his testes, the instrument needed
for learning, were destroyed. However, he is not very clear whether
he wishes to creatively use what he learns from me or to attack and
destroy it out of envy.
258 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

A few weeks later he brought two dreams: a) He is at a beach during

a pleasant and sunny day, when suddenly the sky becomes very dark and a
huge and threatening storm, with thunder and lightning rapidly develops. He
walks towards the road but as the beach is extremely wide, he has to walk about
four miles to reach a house that he enters by an opening in the garden fence.
There are metallic sculptures, like pumpkins, that show on one side the head
of a horse with the mouth flattened. They are like trophies. Then a woman
appears, not very good-looking, who is a senator. The woman reminded him
of a picture in a science fiction book about a woman who had a penis
coming out of her chest. The sculptures he associated with some he saw
in Peru made by Indians; b) In a second dream he notices a flat tyre and
because it is Friday night, he feels there is not an open place where he could
bring his car. He leaves the car and comes back the next day. He notices the
tyre is no longer there and fears it was stolen, but someone who is around says
Rafi has taken it. He clarified that Rafi was an old friend who owned a
travel agency and who looked after his own tickets. He gave no associa-
tions. I said the two dreams seemed to be historical. The first could have
represented the time before his tonsillectomy when everything was
nice and “sunny” and then came the threatening storm of the surgery
with an endless terror like the “long” beach, and finally he came to the
“mother-house” which he accessed like children might do, through the
hole in the fence. But he found no shelter, no protection, because there
he encountered a “horse-father”, who, instead of protecting him, was
cold, distant and “metallic” like the tongue depressors used to open
his mouth, and helped flatten his mouth with a mask and anaesthesia.
Finally, there was the terror of castration by a powerful (senator), phal-
lic “surgeon-woman-mother”. Internally, in his own mind, there was
also something similar: a “storm element” that enviously attacked and
destroyed the peaceful “sunny element”, bringing about painful and
threatening memories. In relation to the second dream, I asked about
the flat tyre and he said it could have something to do with his own
symptoms, the pain in his legs, his own “flat tyres”. I said that perhaps
he was attempting to split me in two: one whom he does not trust, and
therefore he wished to solve his symptoms by himself alone during the
weekend (Friday night), using his own dreams, for instance. However,
since he is unable to understand them by himself, he requires a trans-
lator, something that will then induce in him the need to trust me, as
he did Rafi (my name is Rafael), in order for me to provide him with
safe directions (travel agency). Perhaps he also wished for me to help
 P R E - C O N C E P T U A L T R AU M A S A N D S O M AT I C PAT H O L O G Y 259

him understand the connection between his “mobility”6 and the guilt
produced by his envious attack in the transference, which eventually
resulted in his “tyres” (feet) being flat.
In the next session he seemed depressed and said he felt very tired
because he had slept badly the night before. He talked about prob-
lems between his wife and the interior decorator working at his place
and, besides, he also had to give a seminar and prepare a conference to
present abroad. I said that I could not see how these matters could have
affected him so much; after all, they all seem like short-term problems
with tangible solutions, and that I wondered if there could be some-
thing else he had not mentioned. He was silent for a while and then,
crying, said he felt disillusioned. He was also feeling a rather painful
and strange sensation in his throat that began the day before, although
it was not so intense. I asked if he felt this sensation could have some-
thing to do with the tonsillectomy, as if his body was remembering
because of what we had talked about during the previous session. He
remembered when he used to visit his grandmother during the holidays
and felt very lonely. I also said that perhaps these memory-sensations
could have been triggered in his mind whenever he felt questioned or
rejected, as he could have possibly experienced in our previous session
when I referred to an envious element in him; this might have made
him feel questioned or even rejected by me, similar perhaps to what
could have happened when he was sent to his grandmother’s instead
of staying at home with the rest of the family, which made him feel
excluded. I also wondered if he experienced the tonsillectomy as a form
of punishment because he could have felt he was not considered a good
boy. Perhaps the memory of his tonsillectomy was registered in his
mind in such a way that any question he dares ask will automatically
lead to a threat and terror of castration. He then said he had read about
emotional memories stored in different part of the brain, that some will
be repeated continuously while others would be forgotten. He also said
he felt much better in terms of the pain in his legs. I said that his brain
was too far away from his mind, similar to the pain on his legs, while
the sensation in his throat was much closer to him and to his traumatic
memories, something that was now helping him to talk about it. At this
point I speculated that perhaps symptoms that were purely somatic,
such as the pain in his legs, for instance (which was far removed from
a “symbolical” comprehension and different in this respect from a
hysterical conversion), could have changed into a symptom closer to
260 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

a symbolical representation, once it became less repressed, such as the

feeling he was now experiencing in his throat.
At the next session, he appeared rather depressed and after a long
silence, started to sob. He remembered a dream: He has to fight against
a powerful enemy because the team from “Z” is not able to fight. It is a strong
enemy and he fears the battle could be very bloody and also that the weapon
they are using, with sharp prongs, could be used against him; then he goes to
a shop looking for a belt but they are all too short. He associated with some-
one he met who tried to register himself in a team of rugby but he was
considered too short; also, with the memory of his father who sang and
played the church organ. He felt the tonsillectomy deprived him of his
voice, and I added, that maybe it deprived him of his testicles too. I also
suggested that the dream seemed to express intense anger and helpless-
ness against powerful enemies who used sharp weapons against him,
to cut his tonsils-testicles off, after knocking him down, as they do in
rugby. I asked him what “Z” meant to him and what made them unable
to participate in the battle. He answered that it was a hospital for war
veterans in his original country and added that it could be similar to
what he experienced as a child when he used short pants and was anx-
ious to grow up and use long ones. I said that perhaps “Z” could have
also referred to a “veteran, experienced, older part” in him, with long
pants, which stayed away from the battle. Perhaps looking for neurolo-
gists to cure his pain, was induced by an envious tonsillectomised part
in him that was living out—making useless—a veteran part of himself
that could fight, find the answers, reconstruct his mind, and even win
the battle.
He recalled another dream: He comes down to his living room and finds
a sign saying that it is forbidden to enter; his wife, who comes down too, says
that someone has placed that sign there. He associated to the entrance to my
house and the door that “forbade” him to see inside; he also recalled
when the bathroom roof in the apartment where he was living when
single, collapsed because the tenant living above left the shower run-
ning. Since the landlord refused to fix it when he asked, he decided to
move away. When I inquired about what he meant by not being able
to see further inside my house, he said he remembered once listening
to voices and the cry of a child. I said his dream perhaps tried to show
that access to an internal space related to sad childhood memories (“cry
of a child”) was forbidden to his conscious mind. He recalled the time
when as a child, his mother used to put his head under the water in the
 P R E - C O N C E P T U A L T R AU M A S A N D S O M AT I C PAT H O L O G Y 261

bathtub to stop him from having a tantrum. He found that his daughter
was so different; she was very patient with her own children. I then said
that there was a distrusting aspect in him that he felt afraid to “invite”
to the couch: he wished to see beyond my door because he wished to
know what kind of a parent I am; because he was filled with mistrust
and resentment against his aggressive and untrustworthy parents. He
wished to know if I could be trusted, because if his “roof-mind” were
to collapse, he wondered how I would respond, if I would be more
like his “patient” daughter, instead of his “aggressive” mother or his
“unreliable” landlord-father because if I were to be someone like the
latter, he “will move away”, leave the analysis. He cried bitterly and
with his voice choked with emotion, said that he remembered last year
when he thought for sure his death was close, and he still feels very sad
whenever he remembers that. I said I wondered if perhaps it could be
stated in the opposite way, not that he felt sad because of the pain in
his legs, but that he had pain in his legs because he felt sad. He said it
could be possible. He said that he will present a paper in Buenos Aires
about psychosomatic medicine in which he is thinking of using the his-
tory, already published, of somebody else’s patient. I then said that he
seemed to have some resistance to using and validating his own case,
as well as my help.
On the day of our next appointment, he called to say he was in the
hospital emergency room bleeding profusely from his nose and was
being cauterised. He bled the whole night to the point that he could not
sleep or talk because of all the clots inside his throat. That Sunday was
Mother’s Day; on Friday he was with his daughter and grandchildren,
then went home and felt very lonely because his wife was away. He had
to go to the emergency room on Sunday and Monday, thought of phon-
ing me but in the end called a friend, then phoned on Monday to tell
me he could not make it. He was very concerned about the long flight
to Argentina to present his paper the next Thursday. In our next session
after this event, he shared a dream he had on that Friday: He is in a car
with a couple and their daughter who is playing inside. Suddenly she wishes to
investigate the engine and he says to her parents that this could be too danger-
ous, but they pay no attention. She squeezes herself through a hole in the floor
and starts advancing through a series of underground tunnels and he follows
her, something that pleases her. Suddenly they arrive at a new space where they
find a monster that starts to follow them. He feels there is no exit and wakes up.
He remembered when he constructed an engine for a boat he built as
262 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

an adolescent. He gave no further associations and I said that perhaps

this dream from Friday was premonitory about what happened next
morning. The girl could have represented a castrated aspect of him that
functioned as a protection for his scoptophilia, his desire to investigate
his mother’s body, to know about sexuality, coitus between his parents,
children’s birth, and about children he thought, as a child, were inside
his mother’s anus (underground tunnels). It looked as if he enjoyed the
investigation, as he might be enjoying going to Argentina to present
his paper or working with me on the secrets of his mind, to reconstruct
his engine-mind. Then, suddenly, the envious “tonsillectomy monster”
appeared, now inducing a true haemorrhage, as if his throat was remem-
bering. It was like an envious attack on our creative work. He agreed.
In another dream he calls his wife to say he got rid of the virus that was in
his computer, but she says it is not possible because there are always bits of the
virus left. He gave no associations and I said maybe the dream referred
to his feeling that it was difficult to eradicate the “virus” of the tonsil-
lectomy and castration threat completely because it kept coming back
continuously. It was like there were two important elements in him,
one that reproduced a frightened child who researched and seemed
to enjoy that; and another part represented by an internal murderous
couple that castrated him. Perhaps the “curious element” that explored
and presented papers, did this with the hidden purpose of achieving
success as a form of revenge against the murderous parents, something
that could have induced guilt and the “castrating monster”, in the form
of a haemorrhage, to appear, as a kind of “Faustian bargain”. I believe
there was a splitting between a creative aspect used as a revengeful ele-
ment in the form of a “surgeon who tonsillectomised (castrate)”, and a
correlated “tonsillectomised child (castrated)” that was projected into
others. This mechanism induced guilt as well as the consequent need to
invert the previous correlation by projecting the “castrating surgeon”
and placing it inside the “castrated-tonsillectomised-child”. I believe
that this last introjection induced a form of unconscious “dialogue”
with his locomotor apparatus, attempting, by inducing paralysis, to
placate a dangerous castrator.
Sometime later he brought another dream: He goes to see the doctor
who, after examining him says he has bad news because the pain he experiences
in his legs is produced by a hidden cancer on the apex of his lung. “In reality”,
he said, “there is a cancer that can grow on the lung’s apex that has been
considered to produce neurological symptomatology.” He remembered
 P R E - C O N C E P T U A L T R AU M A S A N D S O M AT I C PAT H O L O G Y 263

another dream: He is trying to teach a group of children about abstract

thinking and symbolisation using drawings. He associated this with one
of his patients who presented a form of “negative therapeutic reaction”
(NTR), and who recently had a dream about a “huge mammal”. I then
said that perhaps an element in his patient felt envious about the huge
breast he could have represented to a very envious (NTR) part of him,
and that something similar might be happening between us, that the
“hidden tumour” could represent a “huge” envy towards the “huge”
achievements he seemed to have reached in his analysis. In a year and a
half he had managed to change a situation, from being close to a general
paralysis, into almost imperceptible neurological symptoms. It seemed
as if it was preferable for a part of him to think that his symptoms were a
product of something concrete, like a cancer, instead of recognising that
his own capacity to abstract and symbolise had helped him to achieve
important changes in his neurological symptomatology. It seemed there
was some kind of envious attack directed on his internal creative couple
as well as the “analytic couple” in the transference.
This form of aggression was present in other dreams where an actor,
who was sitting behind him in a plane, acted in a show, but was too old
and his performance was terrible. Sometime later, he referred to a col-
league who presented a patient who died from cancer and who scarcely
produced dreams. He also remembered I once talked about psychotic
patients presenting the same difficulty. He remembered this colleague
as a rather aggressive woman; however, during the presentation she
appeared very “understanding”, affectionate, and supportive of her
patient. While listening to her, he felt she did not refer to the existence
in her patient’s mind of an internal “toxic persecutor” that could have
induced somatic pathology. As he was leaving the conference, he real-
ised he had lost the key to his car, and the presenter, who was walking
beside him toward the parking lot, found it. I then said that perhaps
there could exist in him two elements; an “affectionate and support-
ive” one that finds lost objects to placate external castrators, producing
dreams, for instance, while at the same time hiding another internal
“aggressive, envious, and toxic” element perhaps responsible for his
somatic pathology.
Several weeks later he brought another dream: Someone had taken his
blood for a medical test and had placed it in two different tubes, one topped with
a cork and the other with cotton, and he feared that the blood could leak from the
latter. He asked doctor N if it was necessary to store them in the refrigerator and
264 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

he said no. He associated the doctor with his father because they had the
same name. The blood reminded him of the bleeding he had before
attending the congress, and it also reminded him when he was an ado-
lescent and became very religious and took the Communion drinking
orange juice, which the priest said was Christ’s blood, something that
was changed for wine when he became older. He also recalled when his
father was brought to the emergency room because of a bleeding stom-
ach ulcer, and he thought he could die. Now, as he reminisced, he cried.
He remembered in a previous session I told him he was “sacrificing”
his organs to the doctors by getting ill, as a way of placating them.
Communion was like a sacrifice to God and at one point he remembered
identifying with Christ on the cross. I then said that perhaps the two
tubes in the dream represented the two formulas he had unconsciously
used to protect himself from a possible castrator: while the tube with
the cork represented the sacrifice to the doctors, which he thought was
more logical, the other tube with the cotton that could leak, might have
symbolised magic and religious defences that could leak, meaning that
they could be questioned.
At the next session, he brought a dream: He sends two men to murder
someone, but they fail and he thinks he might have to do it himself, but some-
body says it could be very risky. His brother appears and says his friend X, the
psychiatrist, is very ill; he calls afterwards and says he has died. He thinks he
will have to attend the funeral to represent his family and that there will be
many psychiatrists present. He associated with a movie where a mafia
boss sent two murderers to a town in which they must wait for further
instructions. While there, the younger murderer assaulted and shot a
priest, but the bullet also killed a child. The killer felt very depressed
and thought of committing suicide because there was a code of ethics
among them that said that anybody who killed a child must kill himself
too. He had been reading Klein about envy and voracity. He thought
the psychiatrist was in the dream because of his name that sounded
similar to Klein. I said that this dream seemed to be associated with the
previous session, when he told me about an aggressive and toxic inter-
nal element trying, out of envy and voracity, to shoot the analysis and
me. However, he feared at the same time that, by doing so, he could also
destroy an “innocent child element” inside him. Also, because he feared
to share this murderous, voracious, and envious aspect in him, he is
trying to find an answer himself (reading Klein) but fears this could
backfire (psychiatrist who died and whose name was similar to Klein’s)
 P R E - C O N C E P T U A L T R AU M A S A N D S O M AT I C PAT H O L O G Y 265

and he could become a serial killer that nobody would be able to save
(many psychiatrists at the funeral). He said nothing.
In another dream, he visits a specialist because of his neurological symp-
toms, who finds something like a capsule floating in his cerebrospinal fluid,
which might be responsible for his neurological condition. Because his symp-
toms have worsened, another X-ray was taken that showed the capsule has
broken and its content, in the shape of a ballpoint pen spring, comes out. He
believes he must see a neurosurgeon in Miami, but fears to fly in his condition.
He associated the US with some of his training in medicine, but found
it difficult to associate to the capsule and its content. He remembered a
previous interpretation about his difficulty in discriminating between
mind and brain, when he referred to emotional memories and the hip-
pocampus, and to me stating that perhaps it was a form of resistance to
know about his need to punish himself in order to achieve. I then added
that maybe his last remarks were related to the content of the capsule,
the ballpoint pen spring representing the instrument he uses for his
intellectual achievements; it seemed as if his unconscious was pointing
out the importance of his mind in the aetiology of his neuropathology.
He remembered reading about the case of a little boy who had the com-
pulsion to lick his lips after watching a news image of a man who was
hanged in Iran as his tongue protruded. He added: “I believe a psycho-
analyst would have better possibilities helping this child than a psy-
chiatrist.” Also, he recalled something very important he had referred
to at the beginning of the analysis, regarding a friend who wrote a very
nice letter about him, in order to get a very important award. His origi-
nal neurological symptoms appeared shortly after the Medical Federa-
tion had given him this recognition for some outstanding research he
produced on psychosomatics!

Conclusion
I have based the investigation of the clinical material on several theo-
retical models. They are, in a nutshell: a) the belief that all forms of
existing psychopathology are the product of pre-conceptual traumas;
b) “reversal of alpha function” (Bion, 1962) and production of “bizarre
objects” projected into the soma, where the choice of the organ will
depend on its particular physiology; c) there is an ongoing unconscious
communication between internalised part objects and any selected
organ. Such communication is established with the use of negative
266 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

links such as –H—in the form of self-envy—and –K in the form of

creativity or alpha function; d) although different organs could be uti-
lised and their physiology altered, the underlying unconscious mean-
ing will always remain. This mechanism, in some ways similar to Bion’s
notion of “transformations in rigid movements”, I have referred to as a
“continuous or homeomorphic form of symbolisation”.
After four years of analysis, I was impressed with the degree of
improvement Alfredo had obtained in relation to his original symp-
toms: his initial anxiety and concerns had receded, the pain in his legs
had almost disappeared except for a certain difficulty after walking long
distances. In particular his capacity to produce dreams that portrayed
significant meanings helped us follow closely the dynamics present in
his unconscious phantasy. Also, he had two previous analyses that had
provided him with enough analytic culture to be reflected in a robust
observing ego, a rational use of interpretations, and a fine capacity for
insight.
This analysis helped him achieve awareness of several matters that
were not thoroughly investigated during his previous ones. I have
chosen some material from the whole process in order to understand
aspects I felt were significant to his insight and to his capacity to contain
his “castration nameless terror”: i) in the first place the determining
relevance played by the tonsillectomy as the central element in the phe-
nomenology of his pre-conceptual trauma; ii) also the need to split this
experience and to project it everywhere as a form of “atomisation” of
the trauma; iii) the gender confusion and feminine identification as a
form of defence to deal with castration anxiety, which were not properly
handled by his previous analyst who misunderstood this transference
resistance as some kind of “latent homosexuality”, which obviously was
not the case; iv) a better discrimination between paranoid retaliation
and repressed or repudiated aggression; v) a better awareness about the
use of obsessive defences such as splitting and projection of his need for
affection, (alexithymia) because of fear of rejection as a form of castra-
tion; vi) finally, because of the failure of all of these previous defences
to deal with his terror of castration, he resorted to the use of the body
as the place to put an unconsciously projected masochistic form of com-
plying, the capacity to understand that most of this retaliatory anxi-
ety was linked to hidden revengeful attacks on the object by means of
his creativity and achievement, as a kind of sacrifice in order to exer-
cise his creativity. An unconscious dialogue was created between his
 P R E - C O N C E P T U A L T R AU M A S A N D S O M AT I C PAT H O L O G Y 267

revengeful pull to achieve intellectually, as well as the guilt generated

by this process, on the one hand, and his legs, on the other, possibly rep-
resenting symbolically the need to paralyse his drive to “move ahead”.
We can also use other metaphors to describe this mechanism, such as
the allegory portrayed by Goethe in the Faustian pact: his superego
(devil) was going to allow him to enjoy his creativity and prestige, but
like Dr Faustus, he was going to pay for such achievements.
There were two dreams I considered relevant that were produced
around the end of his analysis. In one dream a woman surgeon is going
to operate on his eye and he is able to see that the hand she is holding the
surgical instrument with is very uncertain and fragile. Then she says she can-
not operate on him—what he feels is glaucoma—because he is taking analge-
sics, which make the operation impossible. He associated the surgeon with
the woman who operated on his tonsils and said that in the dream she
looked fragile, as if the trauma that originally threatened him so much
was now less significant. I added that perhaps he felt the analysis had
provided him with enough analgesics to protect him from enviously
blinding himself.
In another session he disagreed with a comment I had made that
some somatic pathology was a symptom and not an entity, as he
argued. At the end of the session I felt that perhaps I should be grateful
because, after all, I had learned so much from him. At the next session
he brought a dream: He is explaining to a psychiatrist at the hospital that
what he knows from psychosomatics he learned from me. He associated this
with being grateful to me and not the other way round, as I had previ-
ously thought. I felt that for the first time I was able to guess what he
was going to dream about that night!
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Pre-conceptual traumas
and totalitarianism*
Anamilagros Pérez Morazzani† and
Rafael E. López-Corvo

Tyranny is a habit capable of being developed, and at last becomes

a disease.

—Dostoyevsky
The House of the Dead, p. 165

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the

gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the sharing of misery.

—Winston Churchill

Introduction
To our knowledge, a satisfactory and comprehensive psychoana-
lytic understanding of totalitarian or tyrannical regimes has yet to
be achieved. Thus, we would like to take on the venture of creating

* Read at the Fepal Congress of Psychoanalysis, Lima, Peru, October 2006. It was pub-
lished in Portuguese in Revista da Psicanalise, Sociedade Brasileira de Psicanálise de Porto
Alegre, Vol. 9, No 2, 2007.
†
Full member, International Psychoanalytical Association and Venezuela Psychoanalytic
Association.
269
270 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

a psychoanalytic profile of well known dictators, responsible for the

death of millions of innocent people around the world, who desecrate
human rights, expropriate properties, torture, vandalise, and kill entire
populations. This was the case with Hitler in Nazi Germany, Stalin in
communist Soviet Union, Mussolini in fascist Italy, Mao in communist
China, Perón in populist Argentina, Franco in rightist Spain, Pinochet in
Chile, Ceausescu in Rumania, Hussein in Iraq, and, until 2013, Chavez
in Venezuela; and still, at the present time, Castro in Cuba.
Tyranny is not “a habit capable of being developed, and at last
becomes a disease”, as Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1915, p. 162) once stated;
tyranny is, from its very beginning, not only a disease but a mortal pan-
demic. The problem hinges more on a pragmatic issue, because as we
have learned from history, the platonic configuration of any socialist
ideal is always put into practice by individuals who are powerfully
driven by their own personal idiosyncrasies, by their mark of Cain,1
which leads them not only to identify with those ideals, but also brings
them into practice at any cost. However, they can only attempt such
praxis within the limits of their own possibilities and motivated by their
own narcissistic needs. After all, as Protagoras in his homo mensura once
declared: “Of all things the measure is Man”.
Totalitarian regimes implement their agendas in extremes, as seen
in Nazi Germany, in the former Soviet Union, or as is taking place in
modern day Cuba. Totalitarianism represents a form of unconscious
psychopathology acted out by certain “leaders” as well as by their fol-
lowers. These are individuals who have identified with this form of
political system as a consequence of painful pre-conceptual traumas
that can be recognised in their biographies with uncanny regularity,
regardless of their time and culture. The main consequences of these
early experiences are feelings of exclusion, paranoia, anger, destruc-
tive envy, hope based on revenge, and a powerful need to conceive of
themselves as absolutely essential to the well being of their mothers.
Historically, all totalitarian systems have been imposed by men and
never by women; perhaps because mothers are more inclined to use
boys instead of girls, as an unconscious means to solve their castration
anxiety and narcissistic fault or penis envy. We will come back to these
matters later.
Tyrannical regimes are alike because they are driven by the com-
mon aim to put into practice, at any cost, private, omnipotent, and
megalomaniac phantasies of the leader. There is the psychotic delusion
 P R E - C O N C E P T U A L T R AU M A S A N D TOTA L I TA R I A N I S M 271

that the country is in immediate need of urgent rescue by a saviour,

a “super-hero” who will protect it from an immediate danger, provide
security, and straighten out all the wrong-doings, carelessness, and
incompetence exercised by inept predecessors. It represents the core of
the Oedipus tragedy, the need to prove that what the fathers and sib-
lings have done is absolutely wrong, with the purpose of convincing
the mothers that what they do is much better—the delusion that their
penises are bigger than their fathers’. There is a psychotic desire for com-
plete indispensability, and in order to put this into practice, to remain
indispensable, the country must continuously remain on the verge of
collapse and in need of “intensive care”. Such an operation demands
total control of the political, legal, social, and economic aspects of the
country. Control is necessary in order to implement the leader’s private
will, the need to exercise his determining and compulsive phantasies of
absolute indispensability. As we shall see further on, control is uncon-
sciously dogged by infantile anal concerns.
Any opposition or interference in the implementation of this totali-
tarian phantasy is considered by the regime to be a threat to the conti-
nuity of power and will be attacked relentlessly and viciously, inducing
persecution, physical disappearance of dissenters, and absolute terror.
Indispensability is sensed as an “all or nothing” kind of interaction, of
life or death, essential or disposable, and nothing in-between. There
are three main fears: a) the fear that somebody else (father or siblings)
could be a better rescuer or be considered more essential than the totali-
tarian leader; b) the fear that the leader’s true “personal intentions” of
destructive envy and hopeless revenge will be revealed; and c) the fear
that the leader is no longer essential. This last apprehension might be
sensed by the tyrant but can or must never be experienced.
In order to camouflage the true personal and pathological inten-
tion to overpower other human beings, and to exercise a perverse pri-
vate phantasy of anal control and sadism, the totalitarian system will
continuously require a massive display of propaganda, because there
is always the terror of discovering that the true personal intentions of
the tyrant have nothing to do with the true needs of the country. If the
intentions of the totalitarian leader were actually directed towards the
well being of the people, there would be no fear regarding any form of
criticism; it would be welcome indeed because such criticism would
help make corrections towards the achievement of such a purpose. The
terrifying fear of criticism simply implies that there are other private,
272 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

evil, hidden, and perverse purposes just below the surface, which are
markedly different from those necessary to help the people.
Equally, at the other end of the spectrum, we see in “savage capital-
ism” an expression of similar inner conflicts among those who compul-
sively make a cult of the power of money. While communist leaders
decree “social unfairness due to uneven distribution of wealth”, capital-
ists will employ “absence of freedom” in order “to implement the power
of riches”. In certain individuals, some pre-conceptual traumas induce
powerful phantasies, which continuously, but unconsciously, demand
realisation. Bion referred to the “real aspects of projective identifica-
tion”, meaning the way in which projective identifications are some-
times capable of inducing a real action in the object and, in this manner,
make a reality of what otherwise could have remained a plain phantasy.
For instance, for seventy million Chinese who were murdered by Mao,
and for their relatives, his pre-conceptual traumas, which determined in
his mind such a level of sadism, became a true and devastating reality.
Such statements may be construed as a form of “psychologism” or
psychoanalytic reductionism that might leave out other issues more
apparent and of “greater” relevance. Let us consider this further. An arti-
ficial dichotomy between the “individual” and the “group” in relation
to totalitarianism has already been introduced by Popper (1971), who
opposed what he calls “methodological individualism” to “methodo-
logical collectivism”.2 Marx himself opposed “psychologism” by insist-
ing on “sociologism”, as can be observed in his well known statement
that “It is not the consciousness of man that determines his existence—
rather, it is his social existence that determines his consciousness”. Marx
could have responded to Hegel’s influence, of what could be conceived
as “Hegel’s Platonising collectivism”, where the state and the nation
are more “real” than the individual who owes everything to them. We
know now that such Manichaeism between what is “social” and what is
“individual” makes no sense, that the individual will influence society
in the same fashion that society will influence the individual. Wilfred
Bion (1948) clearly proved, following his experiments with “leaderless
groups”, that the group and the leader interact according to three uni-
versal possibilities he described as “basic assumptions”: the need for
the masses to depend on a leader and vice versus; the need to produce
a saviour or messiah; and the need to deal with paranoid projections by
attacking and escaping.
 P R E - C O N C E P T U A L T R AU M A S A N D TOTA L I TA R I A N I S M 273

What we wish to convey is that Marx’s point of view, that the

problems of society are irreducible to those of human nature, is exactly
where Marx’s failure, and the failure of communism as the solution for
global poverty, hinges. The utopian naïveté present in The Communist
Manifesto contrasts markedly with the wicked selfishness present in
those men who try to implement it. However, regardless of that incon-
gruity, the true fact is that no other philosopher has ever influenced
humanity so much; the world has never been the same since Karl
Marx.

The case of Che Guevara

Let us take, for instance, Ernesto “Che” Guevara, a legendary leftist
whose early death changed him into a hero and a universal myth. He
was the oldest child of an Argentinean upper middle class family. Celia,
his mother, was an orphan from an early age, a condition that would
have induced in her a great sense of loss, loneliness, and a significant
need for affection. For someone who had lost both of her parents—her
father committed suicide when she was only two—the birth of a child
could have represented a true blood relation, a replacement for her lost
parents, quite different from the merely “political relation” she had with
her husband. In his biography of “Che”, Anderson (1997) describes
Celia as a “loner” and “aloof”, something we could interpret as a kind
of emotional withdrawal from others in order to protect herself from
further loss and pain, an attitude that could have induced her to experi-
ence her son as a narcissistic extension of herself: her only “true pos-
session”. Such narcissistic identification could very well explain why
Che Guevara suffered from asthma from the age of one. Asthma often
results as a consequence of a mother’s close, overprotective, and suf-
focating relationship with her child, an oedipal closeness that often
translates later on into some kind of sexual inhibition such as sexual
impotence (Adroer, 1996; Racker, 1948).
Led by Celia, the Guevara family continuously rambled around
the country in search of drier climates, avoiding humidity, supervis-
ing what Ernesto ate and did in order to alleviate his asthma attacks.
Ernesto did not attend school until he was nine years old and only then
because the police forced his mother to send him. “This period”, says
Anderson (1997), “undoubtedly consolidated the special relationship
274 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

that had already formed between them.” The symbiosis between them
was to

… acquire dramatic resonance in the years ahead as they sustained

their relationship through a rich flow of soul-bearing correspond-
ence that lasted until Celia death in 1965 [p. 17]. However, very
often in spite of all the efforts, Ernesto was carried out prostrated
and wheezing by his friends. (Ibid., p. 18)

Such a close relationship with his mother resulted not only in asthma,
but also in dependency, fear, frustration, and anger. Che’s father, on the
other hand, who was accused of being unfaithful, became depressed
after failing several endeavours which left him jobless and financially
dependent on his well-to-do wife. Photographs from that time show
Celia as a hard-looking woman, almost masculine, while her husband,
Ernesto Guevara Lynch, appears soft and rather feminine. An impor-
tant characteristic of fathers, within the psychological dynamics of any
family, refers to their role as “rescuers” of children from the mother’s
natural gravitational symbiosis.3 A soft father, together with an over-
powering mother, will obviously result in an enhancement and further-
ance of the symbiotic ties towards the mother, and as a consequence, if
there is a genetic disposition, the appearance of a somatic ailment such
as asthma.
As compensation for his feelings of dependency, Che resorted to
“counter-phobic” defence mechanisms. In order to get attention and
to master his fears, he behaved in all sorts of odd ways: drank ink,
ate chalk, climbed trees, and explored deep and perilous mine shafts.
Later on, after becoming a commander with Castro’s rebels in Cuba, he
changed into a dangerous and callous executioner, as has been reported
by Cubans who fought alongside of him.4 It is quite possible that he
became a doctor as an attempt to deal with his illness and a guerrilla
fighter as a way of dealing with his fear. In other words, Che’s mind was
split into two parts. On the one hand, there was an “asthmatic aspect”,
with a childlike need for dependency and tremendous fear, perhaps
even suffering from penile erection (erectile dysfunction), which could
have been seen by him as an expression of cowardice, while on the
other hand, there were tough overcompensating attempts to cloak
these fears by displaying behaviours compatible with true bravery.
During Castro’s invasion of Cuba, he performed as a continuously cold,
 P R E - C O N C E P T U A L T R AU M A S A N D TOTA L I TA R I A N I S M 275

ruthless killer of peasants accused of being government allies, those

same people that were going to be liberated from “government oppres-
sion”. Not long ago, on a television programme, the son of an army
captain angrily accused Che of killing his father in cold blood during
an interrogation in his office: “He stood up and walked around the
room, went behind my father who was sitting tied to a chair, pulled his
gun and shot him twice in his head.” At his execution in Vallegrande,
Bolivia, it is said that, attempting to hide his fear, Che, with a macho-
like statement to his executioner, boasted: “Shoot, coward, you’re only
going to kill a man”.
Che Guevara’s personality structure and unconscious dynamic pro-
file is completely different from those found in “totalitarian dictators”
such as Castro, Mao, Hitler, or Stalin, who, as we shall see further on,
instead responded to an unconscious need to “possess” and “control”.
Che was completely psychologically compromised in the attempt to
prove to himself and to others that he was not the frightened child—
or the coward—that he sensed he was. Guerrilla war, where he could
continuously prove to himself that he was not a “frightened coward”,5
was the essential enterprise that got his main concern. This is why he
presented the picture of someone completely unconcerned with earthly
possessions, giving up all the duties Castro requested he perform in
“liberated” Cuba—such as President of the Central Bank—in order to
continue fighting, first in Africa and later in Bolivia. He was obviously
not interested in attaching himself to the land he now considered free.
On 3 October 1965, Castro read to the public a letter of farewell sent
by Che:

I feel that I have fulfilled the part of my duty that tied me to the
Cuban revolution in its territory. And I say goodbye to you, the
comrades, and your people, who are already mine … Other nations
of the world call for my modest efforts. I can do that which is denied
to you because of your responsibility as the head of Cuba, and the
time has come for us to part.6

There is no question that he was doomed from very early on, because of
his own pre-conceptual trauma or mark of Cain, to die in just the way
he did.
What we are espousing, in other words, is a form of solipsistic
approach, where the mind, as Protagoras once stated, “is the measure of
276 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

all things”, meaning that, eventually, men are fatalistically bound to the
limitations of their minds, to the restriction of their own pre-conceptual
trauma. We are not stating that other more altruistic interests might not
also be present in these individuals; on the contrary, what we are try-
ing to express is how the individual’s psychological and idiosyncratic
profile can divert such altruism into more selfish and egoistic satisfac-
tions, disregarding other people’s needs. For instance, Castro could
have been motivated at the beginning of his revolution, at the time he
fought Batista’s dictatorship, by a sincere concern for the Cuban peo-
ple, their poverty and suffering. However, almost fifty years later he is
obviously driven by revenge, sadism, and the need to control, among
other human limitations, which has changed him into yet another
incompetent and dangerous dictator, just like Batista. Mao on the other
hand, never referred to poor peasants at the beginning of his struggle
as a communist, and never cared about the outcome of his abandoned
wives or children. In their book Mao: The Unknown Story, Chang and
Halliday (2005) stated:

Mao’s attitude to morality consisted of one core, the self, the “I”
above everything else: I do not agree with the view that to be moral,
the motive on one’s action has to be benefiting to others. Morality
does not have to be defined in relation to others.

And further on:

… Of course there are people and objects in the world, but they are
all there for me … People like me only have a duty to ourselves; we
have no duty to other people: Mao had little concern for peasants
and poor: There is no sign that Mao derived from his peasant roots
any social concerns, much less that he was motivated by a sense
of injustice … Mao’s peasant background did not imbue him with
idealism about improving the lot of Chinese peasants [pp. 8–9] …
He felt no more sympathy for workers than he did for peasants.
(p. 30)

Comparison between totalitarians and creative individuals

In this section we will compare the early childhoods of two different
kinds of personalities—those of well known totalitarian dictators, and
 P R E - C O N C E P T U A L T R AU M A S A N D TOTA L I TA R I A N I S M 277

those of democratic leaders and recognised creative personalities. From

the first group we have chosen Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Saddam
Hussein, and Castro. From the other group are Beethoven, Picasso,
Einstein, Gandhi, and Freud. The purpose is to evaluate what is com-
mon and what is not, between the members of each group. The com-
parison will be established using four parameters:

i. particular characteristics of pre-conceptual trauma

ii. narcissistic fulfilling of the mother’s “basic delusion” and
omnipotent feelings of indispensability
iii. physical violence, castration anxiety, and “revengeful hope”
iv. creativity and the mechanism of “self-envy”.

Particular characteristics of pre-conceptual trauma

Pre-conceptual traumas have been considered in detail in Chapters One
and Two. With such ideas as a backdrop, we will now compare these
distinct groups—A) totalitarian dictators and B) creative individuals—
with respect to their underlying pre-conceptual traumas. When we
initiated this investigation we never imagined the reliable occurrence
of certain characteristics present in early traumatic situations between
the individuals within each group. The most relevant findings were:
a) dead siblings previous to the birth of the individuals in question;
b) absence/presence of the father during the first years of life; c) order
of birth; d) childhood physical abuse; e) early parent/child emotional
interaction; f) similarity or not of the father’s occupation and that of the
individuals in question; g) significant signs of envy and revenge; and
h) the socio economic status of the families. We will consider group A
first, which includes Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Castro, and Saddam Hussein.
Previous to the birth of all the individuals in this group—except
one—there were one or two siblings that died, a situation that posi-
tioned them not only as the first child who survived, but also as the
older one. The continuous threat of also losing this child, together with
other conditions we will consider further on, weighed heavily on the
mothers, to the point of feeling very fearful and, as a consequence,
becoming extremely overprotective. In our experience from the analy-
sis of two patients who survived after the death of their older siblings,
we observed how as children they interpreted their mother’s terror
and overprotection as an expression of her fragility; as a result, they
278 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

reacted with a strong need to look after mothers as well as a sense of

omnipotent indispensability to the mother’s capacity to reach a state of
well being. Another finding was the contrast between the dedication
mothers expressed towards these children, and the violence exerted
against them—as well as against the mother—by the fathers. In addi-
tion, fathers often also remained often from the household. None of the
parents had a university education, and were usually shoemakers or
farmers. All the families came from poor backgrounds.
Those from group B were all middle class, there were no dead chil-
dren before their birth, with the exception of Beethoven, and, differ-
ent from the previous group, their fathers were significantly present,
not violent, and their professions were either similar to or the same as
those of their sons. Picasso’s father was not only an artist like him, but
was also his first teacher; Beethoven’s father and grandfather were also
musicians; Gandhi and his father were both politicians; while Einstein’s
father was so much into physics that he created an electrical and tel-
ephone company with his brother as a partner, who was an electrical
engineer. Of the five characters chosen in this group, Freud’s father was
the only one with a different profession than his son. The mothers, on
the other hand, appeared more independent that those from the previ-
ous group; Einstein’s for instance, was a pianist, and Maria Picasso was
described by Richardson (1991) as “very strong, tender and typically
Andaluz” (p. 16). Apart from Castro in the first group, and Gandhi in the
second, they all were the older child among their immediate siblings.

Narcissistic fulfilling of the mother’s basic fault, or “basic delusion”,

omnipotent feelings of indispensability and “revengeful hope”
We made reference previously to the concept of “basic delusion” as the
omnipotent phantasy present in some children who consider them-
selves absolutely indispensable to fulfil their mother’s narcissistic
fault of the absence of a penis. It is a mechanism that represents the
child’s defence to neutralise castration and exclusion anxieties. From
the mother’s side, depending on the level of fixation from her own
trauma and of her capacity for reverie, there will be the possibility of
different outcomes depending on Freud’s classical narcissistic formula
of baby = penis = faeces.7 Genital fixations will determine if the mother
will use the baby to deal with her own phallic envy, but in more regres-
sive mothers, when the fixations correspond to previous psychosexual
 P R E - C O N C E P T U A L T R AU M A S A N D TOTA L I TA R I A N I S M 279

stages, the baby could be narcissistically identified with faeces or with

the breast. Either way, the mother’s narcissistic identification with a
particular child, usually a boy, could induce in him/her either omnipo-
tent feelings of indispensability and manic triumph when he/she feels
in narcissistic union with the phantasised mother, or intense feelings of
depression and a sense of failure if this mechanism fails.
These kinds of defences are common and do not represent serious
forms of disturbance in and of themselves but they could reach seri-
ous levels of psychopathology in extreme cases, such as those individu-
als presented in group A that we are now discussing. Variables such as
death of previous siblings, which induced the feeling of being survi-
vors, also made them the older siblings. Being boys, being extremely
violent, and having absent fathers and adolescent mothers, and so on,
is also part of the picture. Stalin for instance, was the only survivor after
the death of three previous boys, which according to a Russian tradition
made him “a gift from Heaven who should return to God”, inducing
terrible dread in Keke, his mother, as well as overprotection strategies
and a strong religious fervour. Service (2004) stated that Keke

… was strict with him but also smothered him with attention and
affection … never let him out of her sight till he was six years old …
he had been a sickly infant … [which was] putting it mildly. Around
the age of six he became a victim to smallpox. His mother was fran-
tic. Smallpox was often a fatal disease and for a time it looked as if
she would lose him. (p. 19)

Keke’s narcissistic identification can be grasped in the description of

Stalin’s first day of school as recorded by Vano Ketskhoveli:

I … saw that among the pupils was standing a boy I didn’t know,
dressed in a long akhalukhi (a plain, cloth body garment) which
went down his knees, in new boots with high tops. He had a thick
leather belt tightly drawn around his waist. On his head was a
black cloth peak-cap with a varnished peak which shone in the sun.
(Ibid., pp. 20–21)

Service continues:

No one else wore either an akhalukhi or such boots, and the other
pupils pressed around him out of curiosity. Obviously his mother
280 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

was very eager to dress her son as well as possible; she had coddled
him since birth. She herself had never been to school, and probably
she did not understand that by dressing him up differently, she did
him no favours with his fellow pupils. (Ibid., p. 21)

Mao’s mother, after losing two of her children before his birth, became
devoted to Buddha and gave her son the name of “Tse-Tung”, where
“tse” means “to shine” and “tung” “from the east”, or “the one shining
from the east”, that according to belief meant “to be born exceptionally
lucky”. Not being satisfied with this, and following the tradition at that
time, she provided him with a special nickname: “Shisan yazi”, or “the
stone child”.
During Subha’s pregnancy with Saddam Hussein, she lost her hus-
band and her twelve-year-old child; in desperation she attempted first
to abort and then to commit suicide, but was dissuaded by friends in
both attempts. She named her son Saddam, meaning, “the confronting
one” in Arab, but shortly after birth suffered from postpartum depres-
sion and had to place the baby with a paternal uncle.
Hitler was Klara’s fourth child, after three previous brothers had
died, and, according to her, she had a weak constitution:

… Adolf’s health became her constant concern. She protected and

overindulged him and favoured him over her stepchildren and her
children born after him … There were other reasons for her spe-
cial closeness to Adolf. Besides Alois’s [his father] lack of interest in
her, when home was rude and abusive. Disappointed in her mar-
riage and resigned to it, she had no expectation of happiness in her
own life.

And further on:

Her hopes became centred on Adolf, whom she saw as a child of

special promise … Probably the resemblance heightened her sense
of closeness to her special child. Reportedly Klara caressed him
often and breast-fed him longer than her other children and, when
Alois was away, took Adolf into her bed. Her intimacy with him
was obvious to relatives and acquaintances.

Bloch, a friend of the family, said,

 P R E - C O N C E P T U A L T R AU M A S A N D TOTA L I TA R I A N I S M 281

“I have never witnessed a closer attachment” and “One thing is

certain: he idolized his mother …!” Klara’s attachment to Adolf
remained extreme until her death; his attachment to her remained
extreme until his death thirty-seven years later. (Victor, 1998, p. 24)

The mother’s fear of losing the child that survived, together with other
feelings of insecurity and dependency, are usually experienced from the
child’s vertex as an expression of mother’s fragility, a sense of helpless-
ness and uncertainty. Such feelings will induce in the child the need
for an omnipotent compromise to rescue and protect his mother and to
unconsciously become the ideal phallus that completes her. There exist
at least two conditions that threaten the possibile consolidation of this
“basic delusion”: a) one is the continuous threat of oedipal exclusion,
meaning that the others, father or siblings, could represent the “true”
phallus that completes the mother; b) the paradox present in the castra-
tion complex, which we will be referring to next.

Physical violence, castration anxiety, and “revengeful hope”

There is an important dilemma within the “basic delusion” as a mech-
anism used to disavow castration anxiety. If the mother requires for
her child to fulfil her narcissistic fault, it means that she does not have
a penis and castration exists. But if, on the other hand, she does not
require the child to fulfil her fault, it means that she has her own penis
(the phantasy of the phallic mother), that the child is not indispensable,
the disavowal is not possible, and castration is again feasible. Threats
induced by this dilemma, together with feelings brought about by
oedipal exclusion, can usually increase mechanisms such as splitting,
idealisation, and projective identification, which will increase the para-
noid suspiciousness that someone else might have been selected by the
mother. Such a presumption can provoke important feelings of envy
and revenge against those who feel they were the chosen ones, a phan-
tasy that is afterwards continuously projected everywhere and into
anybody representing the dynamic present in “sibling rivalry”. If, at the
same time, the child has experienced the presence of an extremely vio-
lent father, the need for revenge becomes the only hope ever of avoid-
ing the terror of castration. Klara, twenty-three years younger than her
husband Alois Hitler, was constantly beaten by him. Victor (1998), in his
psychological understanding of Adolf Hitler, stated that
282 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

[a] boy who is close to an abused mother tends to become her

champion—to have fantasies about standing up for her, rescuing
her, and providing a better life for her … Adolf became very stub-
born with his father and, according to his sister Paula, provoca-
tive … On discovering this, Alois beat him so badly he went into
a coma. For days the family did not know whether he would live.
(Ibid., p. 29)

Ibrahim al-Hassan, Saddam Hussein’s stepfather, was a petty thief nick-

named “The Liar”, who married Subba, his mother, after she became a
widow when she was pregnant with Saddam. According to Myerson
(2000), “The Liar” felt so little sympathy for Saddam that, after he was
given away to his uncle because of his mother’s postpartum depres-
sion, he prevented the child from coming back until he was five years
old, and only then because this uncle was jailed, accused of conspir-
acy. Ibrahim used to beat Saddam regularly with a stick covered with
asphalt, while the child jumped around to avoid being hit.

Lazy and cruel, The Liar used the boy to steal sheep from neigh-
bour’s farms; woke him up every morning by aggressively pulling
his hair while screaming “wake up son of a bitch”. (Ibid., p. 231)

Besarion, Stalin’s father, known as “Mad Beso”, had a bad reputation

as a drunkard and, because of his bad temper and brutality, frequently
“flared up into angry violence against his wife” (Service, 2004, p. 16).
Stalin once confessed to his daughter Svetlana that he “stood up to his
father and threw a knife at him when Keke was taking yet another beat-
ing. The knife missed its aim”. Without any exception all their friends
remember that Mad Beso was vicious toward his son. Service recounts:

What made things worse for Joseph’s subsequent development

was that his father’s violence was neither merit nor predictable.
It is scarcely astounding that he grew up with a strong tendency
towards resentment and retaliation. (Ibid., p. 19)

One of Stalin’s favourite books was Alexander Qazbegi’s story of

The Patricide, where Koba, the main character, declared that “revenge
is sweet”, and who always would “pursue to death those who have
wronged” him. Koba became his ideal,
 P R E - C O N C E P T U A L T R AU M A S A N D TOTA L I TA R I A N I S M 283

… and the image of his dreams … the meaning of his life. He

[Stalin] wanted to be the second Koba … From then onwards he
called himself Koba, he absolutely didn’t want us to call him by any
other name. (Ibid., p. 28)

Fidel Castro’s traumatic history includes patterns that differ from

those we have so far described. There were no previous dead broth-
ers and he was not the eldest son. His father was, however, violent
and his mother a dependent and adolescent mother. The main source
of childhood psychopathology stems from separation and total deser-
tion by both parents. He also endured physical punishment from
foster parents as well as abuse from schoolmates and teachers at the
Jesuit school where he remained during his early childhood and ado-
lescence. He was the third son of Angel Castro, an illiterate Gallego
immigrant, who became a rich and powerful landowner in Cuba, and
Lina Ruiz, an adolescent mixed-race servant who was the same age
as Fidel’s older legitimate daughter. She was hired at the same time
he employed Maria Luisa Argota, the teacher he had found through a
friend, to teach him how to read and write and whom he later married.
After Lina’s second pregnancy, Maria Luisa filed for a divorce, soon
becoming very bitter, and demanding half of Angel’s possessions,
something he attempted to avoid by declaring bankruptcy and avoid-
ing any contact with young Lina and her children. Fidel, who was
then only four years old, was forced to live away from his mother and
given up for adoption to a black couple, Mr Hippolyte—the Haitian
consul—and his wife, considered cruel slave drivers, without qualms,
“defenders of physical punishment, bothered by the least noise and
ready to provide corporal reprimands” to Fidel (Raffy, 2003, p. 27).
During those religiously fanatic times in Cuba, illegitimate “sinful”
children were denied Christianisation and so Fidel was contemptu-
ously addressed by schoolmates as the “Jew”, something he tried to
deal with by constantly fighting. At the age of seven he was placed
in a religious boarding school where he was reluctantly accepted
because of political influence and money. During school breaks he vis-
ited his mother’s hut but was never allowed in his father’s well-to-do
hacienda. Raffy recalled:

He [Fidel] became very susceptible. Could not stand any kind of

injustice, and often severely addressed teachers who ostensibly
284 T R A U M AT I S E D A N D N O N - T R AU M AT I S E D S TAT E S

professed any kind of preference to any pupil, an attitude that often

provoked punishment. (p. 35)

When he was finally baptised, in order to continue hiding his true

identity and connection with his father he was registered as “Fidel
Hippolyte”, the name of the Haitian consul who represented him and
was in charge of his expenses. Fidel grew up feeling absolutely alien-
ated from the school of the well-to-do Cubans where he boarded for
many years, as well as from the family he never had. Together with his
brother they were the corpus delicti of his father’s infidelity that it was
necessary to hide. He was the target of continuous mockery and con-
tempt, having nobody to turn to; he grew up filled with resentment and
envy towards the powerful father and the rich boys and families who
surrounded him, at the same time as he attempted to protect his poor
and destitute mother:

He felt resentful to everybody: his family who had abandoned him

in the hand of Louis Hippolyte whose name he carried and hated it,
with the priests who looked down at him and never accepted him,
his roommate from whom he felt absolutely different without their
good manners … (Ibid., p. 38)

“Revengeful hope” is based on the possibility of destroying any rival

presumed capable of fulfilling the “basic delusion” of completing the
mother’s narcissistic fault, such as a powerful father, violent and threat-
ening, or a favourite sibling. If the idealised object capable of making
this basic delusion possible is projected, the attack is directed towards
the external object, but if this object is introjected, then the destruction
is directed inwardly, against the creative aspect of the ego, using the
mechanism we have referred to previously as “self-envy”. About this
mechanism we have previously stated the following:

I have previously referred to self-envy (López-Corvo, 1992, 1994,

1996a, 1999, 2003), as a condition resulting from an envious
interaction between different part objects composing the Oedipus
structure. Let us suppose, for instance, that there is an important
increment in the amount of envy that a child, who is feeling
excluded, experiences towards his parents, and that this envy
is mostly directed to what the child acknowledges as feelings of
 P R E - C O N C E P T U A L T R AU M A S A N D TOTA L I TA R I A N I S M 285

harmony, love, sexuality, creativity, communication, etc., between

the couple. As the years go by, these feelings could become ideal-
ized and remain in the self as “foreign” elements not completely
assimilated by the ego. When this child grows and becomes an
adult, just like his parents were, the envious element that remains
unassimilated inside could again be reactivated, but this time, how-
ever, such elements previously envied in his parents are now part
of himself.8 This condition is always reflected in the transference
as a sustained attack against idealized links between analyst and
patient, experienced as a “creative”, “productive” and “harmoni-
ous” analytic couple. (López-Corvo, 2006, pp. 75–76)

Creativity and the mechanism of “self-envy”

Marylou Gjermes, art curator of the USA army, observing some of
Hitler’s paintings, argued that, if Hitler had been accepted into Vienna’s
Art School and become an architect, possibly neither World War II, nor
the holocaust, would have taken place. Unfortunately, the mind does
not function in such a simple manner. The castration terror experienced
by Hitler during his early life as a consequence of a violent father and
the presence of a terribly diminished mother, had already induced in
him the continuous need to have to place an internal persecutor out-
side, in order to control, defeat, and exterminate it ad infinitum, as a
form of protection from possibly paranoid psychotic disintegration. In
these circumstances, it is absolutely impossibile to repair or sublimate
the damaged object using creative means with the use of projective iden-
tifications. In other words, unless Hitler had been assassinated before-
hand, World War II and the holocaust were destined to take place.
We would like only to add that, in our experience, self-envy mecha-
nisms, depending on the structures of particular egos, can have para-
doxical effects: on one side, they can induce total paralysis of creativity,
while in other circumstances, they can bring about the historical evolu-
tion of an artist. High levels of castration anxiety can make projection
of paranoid elements so intense that re-introjective processes might
not take place at all. In other words, in all cases, totalitarian dictators,
because of self-envy mechanisms, will turn, inexorably, in the end,
against themselves. For further considerations about “self-envy” see
López-Corvo, 1992, 1995.
NOTES

Chapter One
1. We could also think that the difference between pre-conceptual and
conceptual traumas could be similar to the difference between the
Platonic Form as a primary idea (pre-conceptions, noumenon, or the
thing-in-itself) and the specific experience or phenomenon, taking place
at a later age which could become a realisation that resounds with the
original pre-conceptual trauma.
2. Perhaps monks have tried for centuries to intuitively avoid this “entan-
glement”, by controlling the environment where they dwell, building
their monasteries in isolated and bucolic locations, where sometimes
even absolute silence is compulsory.
3. Differences between “discontinuous” and “continuous” (homeomor-
phic) forms of symbolisation are described in Chapter Five.
4. Pornography would constitute the consequence of sex’s sense of
strangeness, while religion would represent the consequence of death’s
unfamiliarity.
5. “Die Destruktion als Ursache des Werdens”.
6. Copied from The Wisdom of Buddha, New York: Philosophical Library,
1968.
7. Reverie, in other words, represents the capacity to sense what Lao Tzu
referred as the Tao.
287
288 N OT E S

8. These are the words of Emilia, the patient I will be discussing.

9. I wonder if the well known neuronal degeneration present in
Alzheimer disease could be a consequence of this mechanism, the
corollary of a “mind’s self-digestion”, similar to how Bion described it
in the “reversal of alpha function”.

Chapter Two
1. A term Bion has borrowed from Poincaré, representing an emotional
experience capable of providing order and coherence to a complexity of
elements, to moments scattered and seemingly unrelated (Bion, 1962,
p. 87).
2. A concept borrowed by Bion from Hume to explain how some mental
facts that were associated by chance remain conjoined and repeat by
causality. See Chapter Eleven.
3. There is an array of defences used with the purpose of preserving the
status quo at any cost, as has been portrayed in Rosenfeld’s (1971) con-
cept of “pathological narcissism”, or Bion’s (1967) notion of anxiety
being incremented due to reversion of projective identifications (López-
Corvo, 2006, p. 54).
4. This case is presented in detail in Chapter Sixteen.
5. This dynamic will be discussed in detail in Chapter Ten.
6. For instance, in Kaltenmark’s (1969) Lao Tzu and Taoism”, he states:
“The word Tao can have so many different meanings that it invariably
imposes difficulties of interpretation in the passages in which it occurs.
A case in point is the Tao Te Ching, connotations. Often the word is used
in one of its normal meanings: Natural Law”. Or, in words attributed to
Lao Tzu, the man who supposedly introduced the notion of Tao: “There
was something vague before heaven and earth arose. How calm! How
void! It stands alone, unchanging; it acts everywhere, untiring. It may
be considered the mother of everything under heaven. I do not know its
name, but call it by the word Tao” (Alan Watts, 1957, p. 16).

Chapter Three
1. Hardin (2008) referred to lack of “validation” from the parents towards
children who have experienced significant loss or separation.
2. Here I am thinking of Darwin’s possible influence on Freud’s con-
ceptualisation of the human mind, similar to an animal’s instinctive
behaviour. See Chapter Two.
3. The true name of “Irma” in Freud’s own dream. See Masson, 1984,
pp. 55–106.
 N OT E S 289

4. Freud associated psychoanalysis and archaeology in his paper on

the “Aetiology of hysteria”, when he used the Latin dictum “Saxa
loquuntur”, meaning: “It is said that stones speak” (1896, p. 192).
5. Bion defines turbulence as a state of resistance or mental disturbance
associated with changes, in relation to communication with others, and
most of all, with what might be considered as a psychological growth of
great importance (1970, p. 34). It is similar to the way in which a stream of
transparent water remains unnoticed, until the moment it finds an obsta-
cle that generates turbulence. The noumenon or thing-in-itself remains
invisible, unknowable—like the transparent stream of water—that could
only be intuited, although it could be known through a realization—or
turbulence—with an object, giving, then, place to a phenomenon.
6. A concept borrowed by Bion from Hume to explain how some mental
facts that were associated by chance remain conjoined and repeated by
causality. See Chapter Six.
7. In the Odyssey Homer recounts how Menelaus, who was lost on the
island of Pharos after returning from the Trojan War, discovers Proteus’
secrets from his daughter. Menelaus manages to trap the god even after
he tries to avoid it happening by successively changing into a lion,
a serpent, a leopard, a pig, a tree, and even water.
8. See Chapter Seven.
9. See Chapter Eight.
10. See Chapter Fifteen.
11. The “contact-barrier” is supposed to dominate the preconscious when
the non-traumatised (non-psychotic) part of the personality con-
tains the traumatised (psychotic) one. Located amid the conscious and
the unconscious (preconscious), it will demark the contacts and separa-
tions between each other, as well as discriminate outside from inside
realities. It will perform as a kind of permeable membrane that defines
the nature of defences, deciding the form of how the consciousness
behaves in relation to the unconscious, either repressing it or allowing
it to become conscious (López-Corvo, 2003).
12. The “screen of beta elements” is placed between the unconscious
and consciousness (preconscious) within the traumatised (psychotic)
part of the personality. It is responsible for a state of confusion simi-
lar to dreams, as well as the possibility of massive projections of beta-
elements. Bion explains that the screen of beta-elements is created as
a consequence of a process he refers to as the “reversal of a-function”,
according to which, instead of sense impressions being changed into
alpha-elements for use in dream thoughts and unconscious waking
thinking, the development of the contact-barrier is replaced by its
destruction (López-Corvo, 2003).
290 N OT E S

13. Also in a note sent by Bion to Meltzer, a propos of the latter’s paper on
the subject, Bion stated: “Aesthetic (beautiful) way—Now I would use
as a model: the diamond cutter’s method of cutting a stone so that a ray
of light entering the stone is reflected back by the same path in such a
way that the light is augmented—the same ‘free association’ is reflected
back by the same path, but with augmented ‘brilliance’. So the patient is
able to see his ‘reflection’, only more clearly than he can see his person-
ality as expressed by himself alone (i.e., without an analyst)” (Meltzer,
1978, p. 126).
14. See Chapter Twelve: “Dreaming the session”.

Chapter Four
1. Ancient Latin had already established that “consciousness lies”, because
the words “lie” (mentior) and “mind” (mentis) have the same root.
2. See López-Corvo, 2003.
3. Medicine that is used to reduce benign prostate enlargement (BPH),
such as finasteride, prevents the liberation of unbound testosterone, or
DTH, a more powerful androgen than testosterone, capable of amplify-
ing the androgenic effect of testosterone in the prostate and other tissues
in which it is found. The prostate is a gland that circles the urethra, in
such a manner that, when enlarged, it will strangle the urethra to the
point that will make urination impossible and produce a medical emer-
gency. Perhaps such emergency could be interpreted as an aggressive
intervention of nature to stop procreation after a certain age—similar to
women’s menopause—in order to avoid a defective progeny.

Chapter Five
1. Quoted by Levi-Strauss (1949).
2. I am thinking here of quantum physics and of Einstein’s discovery that
light appears not only as a continuous electromagnetic wave but also as
a discontinue, discrete unit, or photons.
3. I am now using Bion’s (1970) model of container/contained, where the
container represents the sign or word (or symbol) and the contained the
concept induced by that word.
4. “Links” will be discussed in Chapter Eight. See also López-Corvo, 2003,
p. 93.
5. These individual logograms can also be grouped in order to reach
the category of a narrative, as in hieroglyphics. In this form of scrip-
ture, for instance, two open legs signified “walking”, two concentric
circles represented both the sun and “time” or “day”; a sinuous line
 N OT E S 291

simulating continuous waves, represented the letter “n”–from the river

Nile, which was later copied by the Romans, and up until the present
time preserved its original wavy shape.
6. I wish to emphasise here, however, that my main concern now is not so
much to understand the meaning of what the unconscious symbolises,
but with the fact that the unconscious itself communicates with the use
of symbols. In other words, not so much with what is being conveyed in
the narrative, but with its semiotics, of how the unconscious constructs
its particular language, because, as Lévi-Strauss (1949) once stated, “the
vocabulary is less important than the structure” (p. 184).
7. See Chapter Two.
8. “Narcissistic fusion” is a pleonasm, because what narcissism really
means is a fusion between the self and the external object, equivalent
to Freud’s “primary narcissism”. “Secondary narcissism”, on the other
hand, is not possible because the internal object can never give up its
historical roots, of how it was originally conjoined. “Narcissistic per-
sonality” represents a descriptive or non-metapsychological conceptu-
alisation of a fusion between the self and the “idealised object”, as can
be observed in manic states, leaving out the fusion between the self and
the “bad object” present in depressive states, which is also narcissistic.
(See López-Corvo, 2006, Chapter Six).
9. Proteus was conceived as a prophetic water divinity known as the
“Old man from the sea” and “Shepherd of the seals”. He had knowl-
edge of everything, including past, present, and future; however, he
would stubbornly refuse to tell the truth and in order not to do so was
capable of changing form.
10. “Take, for example, this piece of wax … it has not yet lost the sweet-
ness of the honey it contained; it still retains somewhat the odour of
the flowers from which it was gathered; its color, figure, are apparent
(to the sight); it is hard, cold, easily handled; and sounds when struck
upon with the finger … But, while I am speaking, let it be placed near
the fire—what remained of the taste exhales, the smell evaporates, the
color changes, its figure is destroyed, it becomes liquid, it grows hot
and, although struck upon, it emits no sound … all the things that fell
under taste, smell, sight, touch … are changed, and yet the same wax
remains” (Descartes, 1641).
11. “Bivalent beta elements” are described in Chapter Six.
12. “O” is elusive: when expected might not be found, but it might surprise
when not expected; however it will require, when intuited, to be gath-
ered with an act of faith and transformed into K.
13. See Chapter Three.
14. See Chapter Fifteen.
292 N OT E S

Chapter Six
1. I have previously considered narcissism (López-Corvo, 2006);
“projective and introjective identification”, beside Klein’s (1946) origi-
nal description on this subject, has been broadly studied and there is an
extensive literature (see Hinshelwood, 1989).
2. See López-Corvo, 2006, Chapter Thirteen.
3. Norman Bates is the name of the main character and serial killer in
Hitchcock’s movie Psycho.

Chapter Seven
1. According to Rotman (1987), there was a great misunderstanding and
difficulty in grasping the notion of zero. It was unknown by otherwise
enlightened Romans and Greeks, although it was used by Babylonians
and pre-Columbian Mayans. The idea of zero was not well received
in medieval Europe, perhaps as a consequence of Christian resistance
towards a concept that carried, implicitly, the notion of nothingness,
of no-existence, correlated to “absence of God”, blasphemy, heresy,
and the Inquisition. Mercantile capitalism emerging during the
Renaissance, according to Rotman (ibid., p. 5), created accountants’
need to import the use of zero from other cultures such as Hindu and
Arab.
2. Two elements are in constant conjunction, said Hume, when we infer
one from the other not by reason but from the particular experience that
surrounded them, although we might fail to penetrate inside the logic
of such conjunction. However, once the concept is established by chance
it will repeat compulsively. It is similar to the determinism described by
epigenesis (Piaget, 1968), where fatalism is present in the progression
of elements in a narrative, a history, or a myth (such as the Oedipus
complex), or in biological or geometrical structures. For instance, if we
recite the alphabet, letter N would not be present at the beginning at all,
at the level say of C, but once we reach letter M, N will be a determinant
and compulsory step. What follows at the level of the crossroads is the
murder of the father (López-Corvo, 2003, pp. 67–68).
3. See Chapter Sixteen.
4. About “tropism”’ see Chapter Two.
5. About symbolism see Chapter Five.
6. It is a play written first by Spanish Tirso de Molina, published in 1630
as El Burlador de Sevilla, and later, in 1844, by José Zorrilla, as Don Juan
Tenorio.
 N OT E S 293

7. I am very grateful to my friend Dr Judy Eekhoff, who graciously

allowed me to use this dream from one of her patients.
8. “Reversible perspective represents a form of splitting of time and
space, which Bion illustrates with the use of well known Wecker’s cube
and Rubin’s vase. Both pictures show changes of perspective depend-
ing on which aspect of the diagram is seen as ‘figure’ and what is seen
as ‘ground’ … in the vase, it would depend on whether the shape of
a vase or two profiles looking at each other were chosen. With such
double perspective, Bion attempts to illustrate during his work with
groups, the concept of duality observed between the work group (W)
and one of the latent basic assumption groups” (López-Corvo, 2003,
pp. 251–252).
9. I refer to this aspect in detail in Chapter Ten.
10. For the meaning of “turbulence” please see López-Corvo, 2003.
11. The concept of correlation between “bivalent objects” is taken up in
Chapter Eleven.

Chapter Eight
1. Perhaps “self-envy” is not the most appropriate term to describe what I
am now trying to convey, because this expression signals envy towards
the self, and I am describing “envy between the parts”.
2. Sisyphus was a king known for being deceitful and cunning. He took
his brother’s throne, seduced his niece, and believed he could outwit
the will of Zeus. For his transgressions, the gods punished Sisyphus
by making him roll a large rock to the top of a steep hill. Once at the
top the rock would roll back down, leaving Sisyphus the task of rolling
it back up, after which it would roll down again, and so on for eter-
nity. Another similar story has been offered by historian Suetonius who
explained that the nickname of “Callipedes” was given to Emperor
Tiberius on account of him asking Romans every year to make vows
for his safe return from touring the provinces. He chartered transports
and requested Roman municipalities and colonies to have supplies of
food and drink ready when he arrived; however, Tiberius never set foot
beyond the outskirts of Rome. Callipedes was a tragi-comic Greek actor
famous for his realistic imitation of a long-distance runner, who made
preparations to run but never moved from the same spot (The Twelve
Caesars, p. 122).
3. −K because her knowledge is used as a form of defence, or intellectuali-
sation, in order to obstruct, instead of using it to understand the nature
of her conflict.
294 N OT E S

Chapter Nine
1. See Chapters Seven and Nine for further discussion of these aspects.
2. I have referred to this mechanism as the “stone guest” in Chapter
Seven.
3. There is another short story we might consider, opposite to that of the
Scythians, this time from the Portuguese colonisation of Africa, when
at the beginning of 1600 they explored the island of Madagascar and
signed treaties with local chieftains and sent the first missionaries, who
found it “impossible to make islanders believe in Hell”, and were, for
this reason, eventually expelled by the locals from their island.
4. See Chapter Fourteen.
5. I deal with some of these matters in more detail in Chapter Eleven.
6. See Chapter Two.
7. See Chapter Eleven.
8. Conceptualisation of such impossibility, of separating the self from the
cathexed object, represents one of the crucial differences between clas-
sical analysis and object relations theory. (See López-Corvo, 1994).
9. Procrustes was a mythical bandit killed by Theseus because he used to
capture people and tie them to an iron bed that could be enlarged or
shortened according to his desire. He demanded ransom but said he
would let his victims go if the captive agreed to try out his bed and
could fit its length. The victim would then lie down and he would
stretch or enlarge the bed in order to make them fail to fit it. At just this
moment he would pull the victim’s legs or hack them off to make them
fit. In other words, it was impossible to win. I am now using the myth
in a form different from other previous applications, like Poe in “The
Purloined Letter”, where Auguste Dupin uses the “Procrustean bed” to
describe the conformity and rigidity exercised by the French police in
their investigations.
10. Correlation found in the youngest child between feelings of insignifi-
cance vs. significance is described in more detail in Chapter Seven.
11. I have already referred to this myth in Chapters Eight and Nine.

Chapter Ten
1. René Thom was a French mathematician who introduced the concept
of “catastrophe theory”. In simple terms the theory implies that small
alterations in certain factors of a non-linear system, can affect the equi-
librium in such a way, that it can preserve it or make it disappear, induc-
ing significant and abrupt changes in the performance of the system.
2. See Chapter Eleven.
 N OT E S 295

3. This particular form of psychopathology can be comprehended using

Meltzer’s (1992) concept of “maternal claustrum”, a concept described
in Chapter Fifteen.
4. About homeomorphic and heteromorphic forms of symbolisation, see
Chapter Five.

Chapter Eleven
1. I am referring to a metapsychological understanding of narcissism. See
López-Corvo, 2006, Chapter Six.
2. Homeomorphism is a Greek complex word, made up of homoios
(ηομοιοσ) meaning similar, and morphe (μορπηε), signifying shape. I am
using it here in a similar fashion to how it is used in the mathemati-
cal field of topology, where homeomorphism represents “a continuous
stretching and bending of an object into a new shape, without tearing
or breaking”. For instance, the breast could change into the thumb in
a continuous sliding without break. I believe Winnicott’s transitional
space follows this form of symbolisation. About a comprehensive defi-
nition of “discontinuous” and “continuous” or “homeomorphic” forms
of symbolisation, please see Chapter Eight, on “Symbolism: a door
towards freedom”.
3. See Chapter Five on symbolism.

Chapter Twelve
1. It was not the same thing to calculate the area of a square on a piece of
flat land, as to estimate a much larger surface on the curved surface of
the earth. This finding was also similar to the situation generated by
Copernicus when he discovered that the old Aristotelian concept of the
sun moving around the earth was a terrible mistake.
2. This was the result of his 1905 demonstration of the photon concept as
an interpretation of the photoelectric effect, for which he received the
Nobel Prize.
3. A word used by father Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1959) in 1925 to
explain the notion of a “sphere of reflection, of conscious invention, of
conscious souls” or “collective mind or conscious”, some kind of global
trade network, communication, accumulation, and exchange of knowl-
edge, related to fields such as economy, “psychic affiliations” and so
on, which weaves itself at increasing speed, penetrating and engulfing
each of the individuals within that media who, as time evolves, find it
much more difficult to think or act in any other non-collective way. For
296 N OT E S

many, Chardin had predicted what we know today as cyberspace or the

Internet.
4. Lines of absorption of different wavelength produced by elements
existing in the atmosphere of any planet capable of reflecting light. Bion
uses the Fraunhofer lines as a rudimentary metaphor, where the dark
bands represent interferences or turbulences in the mind, contrasting
with transparent bands indicating areas of communication or at-one-
ment with the other.
5. In 1810 in China it was believed people who saw rats dying got ill and
died too, a reason for others to close their eyes in similar circumstances in
order not to follow the same fate (Cohn, 2002, p. 9). Because of the belief
that the plague had something to do with pestilence, it was advised by
those in charge of the city’s health that people should smell and smoke
tobacco to avoid infection. It is interesting that, in 2006, a vaccine made
from tobacco to treat the pneumonic type of plague, has been produced
in the US (Biello, D., Scientific American, 10 January 2006).
6. I had the opportunity to inquire of individuals from other cultures,
such as Italian, Turkish, Iranian, French, and so on, about their familiar-
ity with the same nursery rhyme and their replies were always similar
to my own experience.
7. May (1996) quoted Chang Chung-Yuan expressing that “Heidegger is
the only Western Philosopher who not only intellectually understands
but has intuitively grasped Taoist thought” (p. 6). On the other hand,
Tomonobu Imamichi (2004), had stated that the notion of Dasein was
perhaps induced—although Heidegger did not comment—by the con-
cept of das-in-dem-Welt-sein (to be in the being of the world) expressed
by Okakura Kakuzo in his book The Book of Tea. Apparently, Imamichi’s
book was given to Heidegger in 1919 by Imamichi’s teacher who had
previously studied with him. William Barrett in his introduction to
Suzuki’s (1956) book on Zen Buddhism, revealed: “A German friend of
Heidegger told me that one day when he visited Heidegger he found
him reading one of Suzuki’s books; ‘If I understand this man correctly,’
Heidegger remarked, ‘this is what I have been trying to say in all my
writings’” (p. xi).
8. Francesca Bion once made the personal remark that Bion’s copy of Alan
Watts’ book The Way of Zen was completely tattered from him having
reviewed it so often.
9. The letter read as follows: “25.5.16, Vienna IX, Berggasse 19. Dear Frau
Andreas: I cannot believe that there is any danger of your misunder-
standing any of our arguments; if so it must be our, in this case my,
fault. After all, you are an “understander” par excellence; and in addition
your commentary is an amplification and improvement on the original.
 N OT E S 297

I am always particularly impressed when I read what you have to say

on one of my papers. I know that in writing I have to blind myself
artificially in order to focus all the light on one dark spot, renouncing
cohesion, harmony, rhetoric and everything which you call symbolic,
frightened as I am by the experience that any such claim or expecta-
tion involves the danger of distorting the matter under investigation,
even though it may embellish it. Then you come along and add what
is missing, build upon it, putting what has been isolated back into its
proper context. I cannot always follow you, for my eyes, adapted as
they are to the dark, probably can’t stand strong light or an extensive
range of vision. But I haven’t become so much of a mole as to be incapa-
ble of enjoying the idea of a brighter light and more spacious horizon,
or even to deny their existence. Your card, nevertheless, did bring me
one minor disappointment. I was under the impression that your essay
was finished and wouldn’t keep us waiting much longer. I beg you not
to postpone it and not to wait for my book to appear first. My book
consisting of twelve essays of this kind cannot be published before the
end of the war, and who knows how long after that ardently longed-
for date? Spans of life are unpredictable and I would so much like to
be able to have read your contribution before it is too late. But should
you be referring to my Lectures, they contain absolutely nothing that
could tell you anything new. Today I received the first galleys of your
“Anal and Sexual”. With many cordial greetings. Yours, Freud.” (Freud,
1916).
10. Although it could be understood as a paradox, O is conceived by Bion
as a “beta element” and located at the first box (A1) of the Grid; after
all, O presents itself as an undigested sensory impression that requires
transformation in K.
11. One of the principles involved in the “theory of relativity” is that if speed
were to reach the speed of light, space and time would be affected.
12. See Chapter Four on the unconscious.
13. I have previously reviewed Bion’s concept of O, and not wanting to
repeat myself, I would like to refer the reader to those works: López-
Corvo, 2003 and 2006; also Grotstein, 2007.
14. Bion defines turbulence as a state of resistance or mental disturbance
associated with change, in relation to communication with others, and
most of all, with what might be considered as a psychological growth
of great importance (1970, p. 34). It is similar to the way in which a
stream of transparent water remains unnoticed, until the moment it
finds an obstacle that generates turbulence. The noumenon or thing-
in-itself remains invisible, unknowable—like the transparent stream of
water—that could only be intuited, although it could be known through
298 N OT E S

a realisation—or turbulence—with an object, giving, then, place to a

phenomenon (López-Corvo, 2003).
15. A concept based on René Thom’s “catastrophe theory” that Bion relates
to abrupt changes between two stable states, as a theory to explain many
situations involving a rapid transformation of behaviour from an old
system into a new one, like the catastrophic change or injury that a new
truth might create on the old one that has not adapted. It is catastrophic
in the sense that it is accompanied by feelings of disaster in the par-
ticipant and that it is sudden and violent in an almost physical way. It
usually occurs when a change that has taken place cannot be contained,
following container/contained theory (López-Corvo, 2003).
16. «L’intuition est la présence de la conscience à la chose».
17. For a description of Descartes’ experiment with the beeswax, see
Chapter Eight or López-Corvo, 2006, p. 165.
18. “Realises” here would be similar to Bion’s notion of “realisation”
(López-Corvo, 2003).
19. Quotation dated 5 August 1959.
20. In A Memoir of the Future (1991), Bion said the following: “Plato seemed
to think that the Socratic Greeks might at least understand the parable
of the cave. But between then and now many hundreds of people have
tried, oh, ‘ever so hard’, to understand what it means. And some peo-
ple, like Jesus, have continued the naive idea. ‘If you can’t understand
the parable, what am I to tell you?’ he complained when his disciples
were not so stupid enough to be simple” (p. 47).
21. See Chapter Eight.
22. See López-Corvo, 2006.

Chapter Thirteen
1. See Chapter Five on symbolism.
2. See Chapters One and Two.
3. See Chapter Eleven.
4. I am using “depression” here in a sense similar to Klein’s notion of the
“depressive position”.
5. “Individual” origiïtes from a composed Latin word (“un-divided”)
meaning without division, similar to the Greek word “atom”
(ατομοσ).
6. See Chapter Five on symbolism.
7. Better than “omnipotent power”, would be, to feel “reduced to becom-
ing omnipotent”, as Bion once said to James Grotstein (see Grotstein,
2007, p. 33).
 N OT E S 299

8. Lacan left untranslated, in most of his English editions, the French word
“jouissance” (“goce”, in Spanish) that basically means “enjoyment”, but
with a sexual connotation (i.e., orgastic) which is lacking in the English
word “enjoyment” (Evans, 1996, p. 91).
9. For further information about this patient, see López-Corvo, 1995,
pp. 157–166.
10. I have summarised in Chapter Fifteen, Meltzer’s (1992) concept of the
“claustrum”’, related to three kinds of narcissistic links with the mother:
i) breast/mind, ii) genital, and iii) anal claustrum.

Chapter Fourteen
1. First published in 1487, The Hammer of Witches or the Hexenhammer,
is considered by many to be the classic Catholic text on witchcraft,
although it was in fact condemned by the Inquisition in 1490. The book
is notorious for its use in the witchhunt craze of the fifteenth to seven-
teenth centuries.
2. This last phantasy is also present in ancient myths; it can be found
in Oedipus, whose father King Laios attempted to kill him, because
according to the Oracle, he was going to be the reason for his own death
and the destruction of his kingdom. A similar fate is shared by Paris,
when his sister Cassandra declared he would bring the destruction of
Troy and the death of Priam, his father.

Chapter Fifteen
1. “Keeping the fire” can also imply for women not to act out their sexual
impulses.
2. The ass was goddess Vesta’s sacred animal, as it was considered that it
used its braying to keep away the lascivious Priapus. Vesta was depicted
as a stern woman dressed in a long dress and with her head covered.
3. One wonders, in relation to this last observation, if what we have been
witnessing in recent times about the existence of paedophilic behav-
iour in priests, could represent a form of protest from them—as “res-
cuer children”—against their parents, by acting out exactly what they
intuitively felt their parents feared, while at the same time remaining
children forever. After all, sexual perversion is always a result of pre-
conceptual traumas that replicate “polymorphous perversions” present
in all children. I have observed how some individuals can use their
homosexuality as a form of revenge against their demanding fathers
who projected on them their narcissistic delusion of the “child hero”.
300 N OT E S

By becoming homosexuals and paedophiles they attack the father’s

expectancy by becoming someone blemished instead of the idealised
saviour, as well as smearing the goodness of other siblings. Children
struggle towards freedom and independence as a powerful natural
drive, which forces them even to give up their gender and morals in the
forceful process of finding a “way out” by means of a kind of “vengeful
hope” (López-Corvo, 1994).
4. See “Sisyphus’s myth” in Chapters Nine and Eleven: “To do it all in
order to end up doing nothing”.
5. See “programmed dreams”, Chapter Four.
6. See Chapter Fourteen about this aspect.
7. I also refer to this phantasy in Chapter Nine.

Chapter Sixteen
1. “Dr Faustus’ pact with the Devil” is a well known seventeenth-
century religious fiction later immortalised by Goethe. It tells the story
of the exchange of Dr Faustus’ soul and body for what is thought to
be “the best life can offer”—wealth, luxury, power, wisdom, and so
on. Mephistopheles, the devil, conditions the pact with the following
clause: “be signed in Faust’s own blood, renunciation of Christian faith,
and surrendering of body and soul at the end of twenty-four years”.
It is also analogous to Shakespeare’s Shylock in The Merchant of Venice,
where a cruel and revengeful moneylender demands a “pound of flesh”
from a “helpless” Antonio.
2. I remember reading during my first year of medical school—although
I do not remember the specific reference—that some old textbooks on
anatomy described the existence, believed to be natural, of a vertical
fold on the frontal side of women’s livers, a description that disap-
peared afterwards once it was found that the reason for that fold was
the women’s habit of wearing a corset!
3. Herodotus (Histories, II.36) stated that different people in different cul-
tures, “express mourning, especially those closest to the deceased, by
cutting their hair at once …”
4. In Spanish, “dolores” means pain.
5. Ear, nose, and throat doctor.
6. “Mobility” was a term we had used colloquially in connection to
his tendency to migrate to several countries, and also in the sense of
“ambitious (narcissistic) creativity” and oedipal desires to achieve and
to “move ahead”.
 N OT E S 301

Chapter Seventeen
1. See Chapter Two.
2. This argumentation pivots on the fact that John Stuart Mill’s book
A System of Logic, used by Popper for his questioning, was published in
1875, long before Bion’s experiments on group psychology during the
1950s had taken place.
3. See Chapter Fifteen.
4. In an unpublished document, Armando Lago had reported around
216 victims executed by Che Guevara in Cuba: “The exact number of
Che’s victims in Cuba is unknown”, said Lago. “Guevara is said to
have acknowledged ordering many executions—all carried out with-
out affording the victims due process of law. Combat deaths caused by
Che in Cuba or other countries where he led guerrilla operations have
yet to be tallied.” Internet: www. futurodecuba.org/chevictimes.htm; (CUBA
ARCHIVE, FREE SOCIETY PROJECT, INC. www.CubaArchive.org).
Also from the article “How Che Murdered”, published in the news-
paper El Nuevo Herald, Miami, 28 December 1997, by San Martin,
Pierre.
5. By making this statement we are not accusing Che Guevara at all of
being a coward. What we are trying to say is that men in general, while
exposed to life-threatening situations such as war, might deal in their
human mind either with feelings of castration anxiety, which will
enhance any realistic fear of possibly being killed, or with feelings of
compensation or the need to prove themselves brave, usually by means
of suicide. When these actions are successful, it will produce a dead
or—if lucky—alive and well medalled hero.
6. CubaSolidarity.Com, February, 2007.
7. This is a formula that could be extended following all of the psychosex-
ual stages of development, as follows: baby = penis = faeces = breast.
8. It is obvious that these interactions take place between internal “part
objects”, and not against the self as a totality; in this sense, the term
“self-envy” is not perhaps the most appropriate one; however, I have
not been able to find a better expression than this one originally used by
Scott (1975).
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INDEX

Abel (Cain and) 24 boundary of mental and

Abel, Reuben 40, 185 proto-mental 251
absences xx, 49, 76–77, 98 consciousness dependent on 9
absent breast, the 88, 98, 111, 121 see deciphering unconscious
also breasts messages through 192
Adler, Alfred 5–6, 58 discriminating between
adolescence xxxi, 50 opposites 100
Africa 275, 294 dreams and xxviii–xxix, 29, 161,
aggression 5–6, 38 189–192
“Aleph, The” (Jorge Luis Borges) xx in operation awake and asleep
alexithymia 249 190
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland maternal reverie and 8–9
xx, 87 meditation and 192
“All That Fall” (Samuel Beckett) 233 of mother 36
“Allegory of the Cave” (Plato) see operational model xxvi
Plato; Cave reversal of xxvi, 3, 51–52, 265
alpha function two disparate domains xxviii–xix
alpha and beta xxviii, 11, 51–53, Alzheimer’s disease 288
97, 177, 215 Anderson, Jon Lee 273
alpha space 110, 177 Andreas-Salome, Lou 182, 296
attacks on through envy 114 Añguttara-Nikaya 7

311
312 INDEX

anxiety 37–38, 288 see also castration alpha and beta elements 11,
anxiety 51–52, 97, 177, 215 see also
après coup xxxvi, 89–90 below beta elements
Arabs 292 alpha function see also alpha
Argota, Maria Luisa 283 function
Ariadne 209, 211 attacks on 114
Aristotle 213, 295 dream-work α xxviii–xix
Attention and Interpretation (Wilfred ego lacking in 190
Bion) 180, 183 making use of while awake 192
August Rush, (Kirsten Sheridan) 122 maternal reverie and 8–9
mental and proto-mental
Babylonian Talmud 55, 66 boundary 251
Babylonians 292 primary and secondary
bad breast see breasts process and 29
Balint, Michael 39 reversal of 3, 265
Bambi 217 anxiety incremented 288
Barrett, William 296 “basic assumptions” 249–250, 272
“basic assumptions” xvii, 33, 203, basic concepts xvi–xvii
249–251, 272 Beckett invited by to Jung lecture
Batista, Fulgencio 276 233
Batman 128 beta elements 251, 289, 297 see
Beardsall, Lydia 208 also above alpha and beta
“Beauty and the Beast” 208 elements
Beckett, Samuel 229, 233 bizarre objects 52–53, 74
Beethoven, Ludwig van 277–278 breast and penis representation
being alive 8, 10–11 171
benzene 58 catastrophic change 145, 167
Bergson, Henri 185 conception of “O” xxvii
Besarion Jughashvili 282 consciousness and lies 56
beta elements container–contained model
alpha function and xxviii, 11, 138–139, 172, 290
51–53, 97, 177, 215 dreams xxviii–xxix, 29, 66, 189
beta space xvii, 110, 177 dual conception of the mind 157
bivalent part objects as 162 enforced splitting 103
creation of screen of 289 faith 180–181
evacuation of 98, 251 Fraunhofer line metaphor 296
O as xxvii, 297 Grid, the 182–184, 297
pre-conceptual trauma and 30 group dynamics xvi
stored xxvi, 29, 252 hallucinations 66–67, 180, 247
Bion, Francesca 296 Hume and 74, 98, 288–289
Bion, Wilfred Husserl and 186–187
absent breast, the 88, 98, 111 inspiration for Grid xxiii

intuition xxxiii, 182, 184–187
Jesus quotation 35
leaderless groups 272
links 72, 125
maternal reverie xx, 8–9, 36, 76
Meltzer and 290
mind and body quote 23
myths 24, 76
non-existence 96
“O”
intuition and 57, 183–184
location 297
psychoanalyst and 188
transformations 43, 111, 187
omnipotence 298
Plato and 190, 298
pre-conceptions 28, 42
pre-conceptuals and conceptuals
xv, 46
projective identification in
reverse 48
proto-mental system 250–251
psychosis xviii, 49
reality 40–41
reversible perspectives 104, 110,
293
rudimentary infant conscious 117
schizophrenic patients xix, xxv
Second Thoughts xxiv
small sigma xxxvi
splitting off 105
superego of the schizoid
personality 135
symbolic messages of the
unconscious xxxii
three mental spaces, the 109
transformation in rigid
movements 78, 266
trauma not written about
explicitly xvi
traumatised and non-traumatised
xxv–xxvi
INDEX 313
tropisms 31, 33, 203
turbulence 45, 289, 297
Way of Zen reviews 296
bivalent part objects 160–166
bizarre objects xxvi, xxxvi, 52–53,
74, 265
Black, Conrad 114
Blake, William xv
Bokanowski, Thierry 39
Bolivia 275
Bonnie and Clyde 151
Book of Tea, The (Okakuro Kakuzo)
296
Borges, Jorge Luis xx–xxi
Bos, Jaap 27
Boswell, James 7
Brazil xix, 184
breakdowns 89–90
breasts see also absent breast
primary part object, as xx
self and 163
the good breast and bad breast
9, 43–44, 96–97, 103, 254
Brigit, St. 232
Britton, Ronald 132
Brown, Lawrence J. 53
Bryson, Bill 176
Buddhism see also Zen
Buddhism
Añguttara-Nikaya 7
faith and 180
intuition in 185
main purpose of Zen 179
Mao’s mother and 280
methods adopted xxxii
Osho xxxiii
pouring liquid into empty
containers 82
Wisdom of Buddha, The 287
Burgholzli 5
Burlador de Sevilla, El (Tirso de
Molina) 101, 292
314 INDEX

Cain’s mark 31–33 “Civilization and its discontents”

Cain complex 136
Che Guevara 275
interpretation of 24
platonic configuration of socialist
ideals 270
pre-conceptual trauma 28, 42
Callipides 293
Canada 177–178, 235, 249
Carroll, Lewis 87
Cassandra 299
castration anxiety
defence against 129
disavowing 281
ego split by xxxvii
Hitler and 285
induction of 102
men in life-threatening situations
301
mothers and 230, 235
projection of paranoid elements
and 285
totalitarian systems and 270
Castro, Fidel 270, 274–278, 283–284
catastrophe theory 26, 145, 147–148,
294, 298
catastrophic change 145–148, 150–
155, 167
Catholics 79, 232
Ceausescu, Nicolae 270
Chang Chung-Yuan 296
changelings 214
Chardin, Teilhard de 177, 179,
295–296
Chasseguet-Smirgel, Janine
xxiv–xxv
Chavez, Hugo 270
Che Guevara 273–275, 301
child heroes 122, 232
China 272, 276, 296
Chosui Shiye 180
Churchill, Winston 269
(Sigmund Freud) 6
claustrum xxxi, 139, 233–234, 245,
295, 299
Cogitations (Wilfred Bion) 31, 175, 189
Communion (Holy) 264
Communist Manifesto, The (Karl
Marx) 273
conceptual traumas xvi see also pre-
conceptual traumas
conscious awareness 13
consciousness 9, 29, 56, 76, 99, 290
constant conjunction 74, 98,
288–289, 292
contact barrier xxix, 29, 51–53, 57, 289
container–contained model
Bion’s model 138–139
coinciding 173
constant contained, variable
container 57
homeomorphic transformation
and 79–80
symbols and 71–73, 172, 290
unconscious, consciousness
and 29
Copernicus, Nicolaus 295
Cuba 270, 274, 276, 283, 301
Darwin, Charles 28, 38, 288
Dasein 296
day residue xxix, 191
death instinct 4–8, 37
deferred action xxxvi, 3, 66, 88–90
deferred emotions 3
depressive position 43–44, 110, 157,
215, 298
depressive reparation 136
Descartes, René
analytic geometry 183
beeswax experiment 77, 186,
291, 298
intuition, nature of 186

Devil, the 214, 300
“Differentiation of the psychotic
from the non-psychotic
personalities” (Wilfred
Bion) xviii
Dionysus 122
“dismantling” 249
Don Juan 128, 206
Don Juan Tenorio (José Zorrilla) 292
Donne, John 247
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor 269–270
Dr Faustus 141, 248, 267, 300
dreams 189–193
alpha function and xxviii–xxix,
29, 161
Bion on the purposes of 66
guardians of sleep xxix
Hitler in 129, 257
importance of interpretation 55, 66
programmed dreams 60–61
unconscious and 58
wish satisfaction, as 29
“Dreams and occultism” (Sigmund
Freud) 181
Druids 232
Dupin, C. Auguste 198, 294
Dupont, Judith 39
Eaton, Jeffrey L. 177
Eckstein, Emma 39
Eekhoff, Dr Judy 293
ego 131–140
ego ideal or superego 201
forms of defence 211
frustration intolerance in 30, 190
protective shield xxvii
submission to superego 132–133,
140, 144
symbols and 78
“ego and the id, The” (Sigmund
Freud) 137
Egypt 73
INDEX 315
Einstein, Albert
E = mc2 71
father as scientist 278
quantum physics and 176, 290
velocity, time and space 183
El Burlador de Sevilla (Tirso de
Molina) 101, 292
El Nuevo Herald 301
Elements of Psychoanalysis (Wilfred
Bion) 183
Empedocles 213
enforced splitting see splitting
Faimberg, Haydée xxxvii, 89–90
Fairbairn, Ronald xxiii, 28, 182
faith 180–181
Falstaff 99
Faustian pact see Dr Faustus
Ferenczi, Sándor xx, xxiv–xv,
38–39, 122
Ferro, Antonino xxviii, 36, 82, 193
Fliess, Wilhelm 30, 39
Foulquié, P. 185
Franco, Francisco 270
Fraunhofer lines 177, 296
freedom drive 230
Freud, Sigmund
anxiety and trauma 38
“choices” of neurosis 30
conceptual and pre-conceptual
trauma 2
consciousness 99
Darwin and 28, 38, 288
day residue xxix, 191
death instinct 4–5
deferred action xxxvi, 66, 89–90
disagreements with Adler 5–6
dreams xxix, 60
earlier trauma memories xxix
ego and superego 136, 138, 201
emphasis on Oedipus complex
39–40, 42, 44, 198
316 INDEX
falls out with Ferenczi 39
helplessness in trauma 37
id 27–28
id and ego 137
language and freedom 76
libido adhesiveness 26
Nachträglichkeit xxxvi, 66, 89–90
“normal” and “neurotic”
people xviii
painting and sculpture xxx
penis = child = faeces 230, 235,
244, 278
polymorphous perverse 198
primary narcissism 88, 291
programmed dreams 60
protective shield xx, xxvii, 45
psychoanalysis and archaeology
35, 289
psychology of impulse xxiii, 182
psychotherapy and
psychoanalysis xxx
quoted 131
reality and pleasure principles
28–29
repetition compulsion 44,
158, 161
signal theory xxxvii, 90
sublimation 136
thought-transference 181–182
unconscious, the 55, 58, 70,
76, 192
when experiences become
traumatic xxvii
frustration intolerance
alpha function falls short
through 2
an ego dominated by 190
avoidance through dreams
66, 189
creation of trauma through xxvii
cumulative trauma 36
lies of consciousness and 56
reality opposed by 3, 30
transient absence to permanent
presence through 158
fullness 187
Galileo Galilei 14
Gandhi, Mahatma 277–278
Gauss, Friedrich 176
Gay, Peter 4–5
Generation of Animals (Aristotle) 213
Geulincx, Arnold 229
Gilgamesh 122
Gjermes, Marylou 285
God 24, 178, 264
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von
69, 267, 300
good breast see breasts
good enough mothers 36
Greeks (classical) 45, 47, 222, 292
Grid, the xxiii, 182–184
Groddeck, Georg 23, 27–28
Grosskurth, Phyllis xviii
Grotstein, James
alpha function xxviii, 190
Bion and xxv, 36, 189, 297–298
dream ensemble xxiii
Faustian pacts 141
impulse towards freedom xxxi
obscurity of trauma concept 53
group dynamics xvi
Guevara, Ernesto “Che” 273–275, 301
Gulliver’s Travels (Jonathan Swift) 70
hallucinations 66–67, 180, 247
Hamlet (William Shakespeare) xxi
Hammer of Witches, The 299
Hardin, H. T. 288
Harz Mountains 181
Hegel, George Wilhelm Friedrich 272
Heidegger, Martin 179, 185, 296
Heisenberg, Werner 176
Heracles 122

Herodotus 132–133, 300
Hexenhammer 299
Hinduism 292
Hisda, Raby 55, 66
Histories (Herodotus) 300
Hitchcock, Alfred 93, 292
Hitler, Adolf 280–282
and others 270, 275, 277
paintings 285
patients’ dreams 129, 257
Holocaust 285
homeomorphic transformation
77–80, 167, 172, 295
Homer 157, 289
homosexuality 299–300
Horney, Karen 244
House of the Dead, The (Fyodor
Dostoevsky) 269
Houston, Whitney 114
Huet, M. H. 213
Hume, David
constant conjunction 74, 98,
288–289, 292
serene death of 7–8
Humphreys, Christmas 186
Hussein, Saddam 270, 277, 280, 282
Husserl, Edmund 185–189
Hyoryo, Roya 180
hysteria xxx, 2
id 26–28, 38, 137
Ignatieff, Michael 7
Imamichi, Tomonobu 296
individuals 298
infertility 214
“Inhibitions, symptoms and anxiety”
(Sigmund Freud) 37, 136
Inquisition, the 292, 299
instincts 28
integration xxxv, 43, 110, 117,
145, 176
intentionality 187–188
INDEX 317
intuition 182–187
Bion’s sigma and 109
definitions 189
first exercise of, in Classical
Greece 47
Kant quote 175
mysticism and xxxiii
phenomenology and 185–186
unconscious and 57, 177
Jackson, Michael 114
Jesus Christ 122, 232, 264, 298
jouissance 211, 299
Julius II, Pope xxx
Jung, Carl 5, 76, 233
Kakuzo, Okakura 296
Kaltenmark, Max 288
Kanner, Leo 122, 231
Kant, Immanuel 42, 175
Kekule, Friedrich August von 58
Ketskhoveli, Vano 279
Khan, Masud 36
Kitsch 229
Klein, Melanie
affects and positions 157–158
Bion after her death xvii–xviii
D. H. Lawrence and 208
depressive reparation 136
good and bad objects 110
good breast and bad breast, the
9, 43–44, 96–97, 103
influential ideas of xxiii
interaction between inner and
outer worlds 126
mass and energy 70
mentioned 40, 264
paranoid-schizoid and depressive
positions xviii, 9, 157, 160,
215, 298
penis envy 244
position on instincts 28
318 INDEX
projective identification
88, 182, 292
psychology of emotion 182
relevance of death instinct to 6
sadistic attacks against
parents 198
self and the breast 163
splitting off 105, 160
symbolisation as protection 74
Krishnamurti, Jiddu 10
Lacan, Jacques
après coup xxxvi, 89–90
jouissance 299
patient and therapist xix
place of supposed
knowledge 49
wrapped in our mother’s desire
155, 232
Lago, Armando 301
Laios, King 299
Langer, Marie 214
Langer, Susanne 69
language 70, 76
Lao Tzu 287–288
Lao Tzu and Taoism (Max Kaltenmark)
288
Laplanche, Jean 1, 5, 29–30, 89
Laputa 70
Latin 290
Lawrence, D. H. 207–210
Learning from Experience (Wilfred
Bion) 183
Lefebvre, P. 141, 248
Leibniz, Gottfried 230
Leonardo da Vinci xxx
Levinas, Emmanuel 185–187, 189
Levi-Strauss, Claude 290–291
libido adhesiveness 26
“links” 72, 110, 125
London 178
Lynch, Ernesto Guevara 274
Mad Hatter’s Tea Party xx
Madagascar 294
madness 159
Maharaj, Nisargadatta xxxii
Malleus Maleficarum (Heinrich
Kramer and James
Sprenger) 214
Manichaeism 137, 272
Mao: The Unknown Story (Jung Chang
and Jon Halliday) 276
Mao Tse Tung 270, 272, 275–277, 280
Maradona, Diego 114
Mardi Gras 234
marijuana 235
Marx, Karl 272–273
masculine and feminine 128–129
Masson, Jeffrey 39–40, 288
maternal reverie xx, 8–10, 36, 45, 76,
132
Maudsley, Henry 113, 247, 252
Mayans 292
McDougall, Joyce 248–249, 252
Medes 132
meditation 179–180, 192
Meditation II (René Descartes) 186
Meltzer, Donald
Bion and Melanie Klein xvii–xviii
Bion’s note to 290
Bion’s primitive space 251
claustrum xxxi, 139, 233–234, 245,
295, 299
D. H. Lawrence and his mother
208
destructive part of the self 118
“dismantling” 249
Freud and dreams 58
meaning of trauma and 53
mentioned 40
Memoir of the Future, A (Wilfred Bion)
35, 95, 298
Menelaus 289
mental spaces 109

Mephistopheles 248, 300
Merchant of Venice, The (William
Shakespeare) 300
Michelangelo xxx–xxxi
Mill, John Stuart 301
Miller, Alice 39–40
mind
dual conception of 157
integration through mental
growth xxxv
mind and body quotes 23
of children 117
pre-conceptual trauma and 12
splitting and xix, 48–49
money 70, 73–74
Monod, Jacques 42, 158
Morris, W. B. xxiv
Moses 122
Mother Theresa 14, 225
Murphy (Samuel Beckett) 229,
233–234
Mussolini, Benito 270
Myerson, Daniel 282
myth 24, 76
Nachträglichkeit xxxvi, 66, 89–90
narcissism 76–77, 201, 209, 278–279,
291, 295
negative links 110, 112–121
“New introductory lectures”
(Sigmund Freud) 181
Newton, Isaac 175–177
Nietzsche, Friedrich 27
Nile, River 291
Nobel Prizes 295
non-psychotic personalities
xviii–xix, xxiv–xxv
Norman Bates 93, 292
no-thing 98–99
noumenon 42–43, 71, 78, 158,
289, 297
Nuevo Herald, El 301
INDEX 319
O
as beta element xxvii, 297
conception of xxvii
elusive nature of 291
intuition and 57, 183–184
psychoanalyst unable to know
patient’s 188
transformations in 43, 111, 187
Odyssey (Homer) 289
Oedipus complex 197–203
Cain’s mark and 24, 28, 136
discontinuous symbolisation 85
Freud and 37–40, 42, 44
Kleins’ pre-genital Oedipus xviii
myth of 76, 292, 299
part objects of 114
resolution 71
self-envy and 284
splitting and 154
superego and xxxvii, 135–138
tragic core 271
Oracle 299
Osho xxxiii, 1, 8
paedophilia 299–300
panic attacks 48, 104
paranoid-schizoid position xviii
beta space and 110
Bion extends from Klein on 157
configuration of part objects 117
envy obstructing the good
breast 9
false selves and 102
imaginary babies 215
Oedipus and 199
panic attacks and 48
pre-conceptual trauma and xxxv
splitting within 160
parental pleasure 202–203
Paris (of Troy) 299
Patricide, The (Alexander
Qazbegi) 282
320 INDEX

penis envy 106, 244, 270 speed and size as variables 158
Péron, Juan 270 summarised xxxv, 46
Perseus 122 superego and xxxvii, 3
Phaedo (Plato) 7 telescoping of generations 90
Pharos 289 time entrapment 121
phenomenology 185–186 transient and permanent xxviii
Piaget, Jean 75, 292 Priam 299
Picasso, Maria 278 Priapus 299
Picasso, Pablo 277–278 primary narcissism 88, 291 see also
Pindar xv narcissism
Pines, D. 214 Procrustes’ bed 140–141, 294
Pinochet, Augusto 270 projective identification
plague 178, 296 alexithymia and 249
Planck, Max 176 beta elements and xxvi, 11, 98,
Plato 215, 251
Bion and 298 Bion’s real aspects of 272
Cave xxx, xxxvii, 3, 11, 30, 47–48, bivalent part objects and 166
79, 190 ego’s frustration intolerance
execution of Socrates 7 and 190
Forms 28, 42–44, 47, 78, 100, 287 forgetting and 29
Hegel and 272 in reverse 48
pleasure principle 28–30 mother’s alpha function and 36
Poe, Edgar Allan 198, 294 social interaction involving 202
Poincaré, Henri 288 tropisms and 33
polarisation 102–104, 168–169, 171 Protagoras 40, 42, 275
Pontalis, Jean-Bertrand 1, 5, 29–30, 89 protective shields xx, xxvii, 37, 45
Popper, Karl 272, 301 Protestants 79
Portugal 294 Proteus xx, 45, 77, 289, 291
positive links 110 proto-mental systems xvii, 250–252
post traumatic stress disorders 2, 36 Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock) 93, 292
pre-conceptions 28, 42–44 Psychoanalytic Institute xviii
pre-conceptual traumas psychotic personalities xviii–xix,
beta elements and 30 xxiv–xxv
eternal “now” of xx Purloined Letter, The (Edgar Allan
helplessness and hopelessness Poe) 198, 294
118
mind and 12 Qazbegi, Alexander 282
nature of xv–xvi quantum physics 176, 290
parasites, as xxi
Plato’s forms and 100, 287 reality 40–41
self and breast dynamic 163 reality testing 161
selfness, death and 11 relativity 183, 297

Renaissance 214, 292
repetition compulsion
cause of 155, 161
chance trauma xxxvii
childhood trauma 145
continuous replication of
trauma 84
core of xxxiv
forms of as traps 136
nature of 44
process of xxx
time distortion as 158
Republic, The (Plato) 47–48
reversible perspectives
104, 110, 293
Richardson, John 278
“Ring a-ring of roses” 178
Roman Catholics 79, 232
Romans 291–292
Rosen, John xxiv
Rosenfeld, Herbert xxiv, xxxvii,
117, 288
Rotman, Brian 292
Russell, Bertrand 28, 43
Saddam Hussein 270, 277, 280, 282
Samson 93
Sanskrit 185
Sartre, Jean-Paul 185–186
Satan 141 see also Devil, the
satori 179
schizophrenia xviii–xix, xxv, 78, 135
Schwarzenegger, Arnold 114
Scott, W. C. M. 301
Scythians 132, 144, 294
Second Thoughts (Wilfred Bion) xxiv
seduction theory 37, 39–40
Segal, Hanna 77–78, 165
self-envy 114, 284–285, 293, 301
Service, Robert 279
sexuality 37–38, 197–198
sexually abused children 151
INDEX 321
Shakespeare, William xxxv, 99, 141,
300
Shylock 141, 300
signal theory xxxvii, 90
signs 71
Sisyphus 144, 157, 293, 300
“Slaves, The” (Michelangelo) xxx
Socrates 7–8, 47, 298
Sohn, L. 117
somatic disorders 248, 252–254
Sons and Lovers (D. H. Lawrence) 208
Soviet Union 229, 270
Spiderman 128
Spielrein, Sabina 5–6
Spinoza, Baruch 230
splitting
attacks of 49
concept of xxiv
dealing with painful facts 84
ego splitting trauma 46
enforced 9
Ferenczi’s concept 38
form of defence, as 252
good and bad breast 97, 103
iatrogenic splitting 151
integration and xxxv
Oedipus structure and 114
of mind xix
permanency and 163
polarisation and 102
reversible perspective and 293
severe form of 125
Stalin, Joseph 270, 275, 277, 279,
282–283
Steiner, J. 118
Stevens, Victoria 233
Stillorgan 233
“stone guests” 101
Strachey, James 132, 181
Strauss-Kahn, Dominique 114
sublimation 136
Suetonius 293
322 INDEX
Sun Dynasty 180
superego 131–140
cruelty of 131–133, 140, 144
formation of 201
identifications as pre-conceptual
trauma xxxvii, 3
Oedipus complex and 135–138
self-flagellation and 143
tyrannical presences of
absences 98
Superman 128
Suzuki, Daisetsu 179–180, 186, 296
Swift, Jonathan 70
symbolisation 70–80
beginning of process 202
bivalent part objects and 165
ego and 78
failure in process of 153
finding the true self through 156
Klein’s view of 74
myth and 76
parental links and 84–86
symbol and sign 71
two main aspects 71–72
types of xxxiv
unconscious and 70, 291
System of Logic, A (John Stuart
Mill) 301
Taoism 1, 27, 287–288, 296
Tavistock Clinic 233
Thanatos 157
Theseus 294
Thom, René 26, 145, 148, 294, 298
thought-transference 181–182
Thus Spoke Zarathrustra (Friedrich
Nietzsche) 27
Tiberius, Emperor 293
time xxxvi, 50
Tirso de Molina 292
totalitarian regimes 270–272,
275, 277
Transformations (Wilfred Bion)
135, 183–184
transitional space 79, 202, 295
traumas see pre-conceptual traumas
Trojan War 289
tropisms 31–33, 99, 203
Troy 299
true self 102–104, 156
turbulence 146, 177, 184, 289, 297–298
Twelve Caesars, The (Suetonius) 293
tyranny 269–270
unconscious, the 55–58
Bion on perception of xxxii
Bion’s alpha function and 192
container–contained models
and 29
intuition and 177
main function of 56
nature of 172
reaching consciousness 76
symbolism and 70, 291
Zen and 179–180
univalent whole objects 165–166
Upanishads xxxii
Vallegrande, Bolivia 275
Venezuela 235, 249, 270
Vesta 299
Vestals 232
Victor, George 281
Victorians 6, 37–38
Vienna 6, 181, 285
Watts, Alan 179, 288, 296
Way of Zen, The (Alan Watts) 296
Webster New Collegiate
Dictionary 185
Whitman, Walt xxi
Winnicott, Donald
fear of breakdown 89
good enough mothers 36
 INDEX 323

no such thing as a baby alone Bion and xxxiii, 184–185

xxvii, 36 introduction to Suzuki’s book 296
transitional space 79, 202, 295 knowing and not knowing 182
true self 102, 104, 156 pouring liquid into empty
witch hunts 299 containers 82
Wolf Man 89 psychoanalysis and xxxii
World War I xvi, 6, 37 zero 292
World War II 285 Zeus 157, 293
Zorrilla, José 292
Yama, King 7
Young, Enid 177

Zen Buddhism 179–180

alpha function and meditation
192