Symbiosis and ambiguity : a psychoanalytic study
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Symbiosis and ambiguity : a psychoanalytic study
（New library of psychoanalysis）
Routledge, 2013
- : pbk
- Other Title
-
Simbiosis y ambigüedad
Symbiosis and ambiguity
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Note
Includes bibliographical references and index
"Published in association with the Institute of Psychoanalysis, London"--on cover
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Symbiosis and Ambiguity is the first English edition of the classic study of early object relations by influential Argentinian psychoanalyst Jose Bleger (1922-1972). It is rooted in Kleinian thinking and rich in clinical material.
Bleger's thesis is that starting from primitive undifferentiation, prior to the paranoid-schizoid position described by Klein, autism and symbiosis co-exist as narcissistic relations in a syncretic 'agglutinated' nucleus. In symbiosis part of the mind is deposited in an external person or situation; in autism it is deposited in the patient's own mind or body. The nucleus is ambiguous and persists in adults as the psychotic part of the personality.
Symbiosis tends to immobilise the analytic process, so the analyst must mobilise, fragment and discriminate the agglutinated nucleus, whose ambiguity tends to 'blunt' persecutory situations. The psychoanalytic setting functions as a silent refuge for the psychotic part of the personality, where it creates a 'phantom world'. At some point, therefore, the setting itself has to be analysed and the analytic relationship de-symbiotised, as Bleger observes in a celebrated chapter on the setting.
Jose Bleger's work demonstrates the need to analyse early narcissistic object relations as they arise clinically, especially in the setting. More widely, he regards undifferentiation and participation as operating throughout life: in groups, institutions, and society as a whole.
Table of Contents
Etchegoyen , Preface. Bleger, Churcher, Editorial Introduction. Prologue. Part I: On Symbiosis . Study of Dependence-Independence in Relation to the Process of Projection-Introjection. Symbiosis in Warrior's Rest. Modalities of Object Relations. Study of the Psychotic Part of the Personality. Part II: On Ambiguity . Ambiguity in Psychoanalytic Clinical Work. Psychoanalysis of The Psychoanalytic Setting. Part III: Appendix . Ambivalence and Ambiguity: The Background Literature. Commentary on 'The Antithetical Meaning of Primal Words'. Ambiguity and Syncretism in Freud's 'The Uncanny'.
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