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Bion, W.R. (1959). Attacks on Linking. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 40:308-315.

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(1959). International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 40:308-315

Attacks on Linking

W. R. Bion Author Information

In previous papers (3) I have had occasion, in talking of the psychotic part of the personality, to speak of the destructive attacks which the patient makes on anything which is felt to have the function of linking one object with another. It is my intention in this paper to show the significance of this form of destructive attack in the production of some symptoms met with in borderline psychosis.

The prototype for all the links of which I wish to speak is the primitive breast or penis. The paper presupposes familiarity with Melanie Klein's descriptions of the infant's fantasies of sadistic attacks upon the breast (6), of the infant's splitting of its objects, of projective identification, which is the name she gives to the mechanism by which parts of the personality are split off and projected into external objects, and finally her views on early stages of Oedipus complex (5). I shall discuss phantasied attacks on the breast as the prototype of all attacks on objects that serve

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