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With every window that opens, I feel I am being attacked.
In this paper I shall deal with the analysis (four sessions a week) of two women (A and B) who displayed a lack of psychic integration of the genital erotic body and a defect in their access (not only in reality but also in the internal world) to the erotic-genital couple relationship. These women were professionally successful and showed high intelligence. Patient B had never been in a relationship. Patient A had had a few but they had been short-lived and unsuccessful, in particular since they had been the result of a voluntaristic decision (without genital drive support), a wish to experiment, a sense of not wanting to be different from the others.
At the beginning and for a considerable part of the analysis, the sexual subject seemed to be something abstract and inconceivable to these patients. They had successfully managed not wanting to have anything to do ≪with that≫, with this thing that was not even named. During analysis, the hypothesis of secret masturbation proved totally unfounded.
The symptoms that had led A and B to seek analysis were depression, a sense of solitude and emptiness, states of chronic anxiety, and panic attacks.
As far as past depression was concerned, it seemed to be linked — amongst other things — to the psychic devitalization that originates from the lack of psychic integration of the erotic body. ≪Everything that provokes anaesthesia encourages the generation of melancholia≫, Freud observed and then added: ≪Melancholia consists in mourning over loss of libido≫ (1895, 199-200). However, the missing integration of the erotic body aside, the lack of meaning and vitality (vital depression) appeared to be linked to the missing introjection of the ≪elementary forms of contact and resonance≫ in the primary relationship (Fédida, 2001, 212).
During analysis it was observed that these patients had implemented a precocious disavowal both as regards their own genital feelings and th