On the Dialectical Structure of Experience—Some Clinical and Theoretical Implications

The other one, the one called Borges, is the one things happen to … I know of Borges from the mail … It would be an exaggeration to say that ours is a hostile relationship; I live it, let myself go on living, so that Borges may contrive his literature, and this literature justifies me. J. L. Borges, "Borges and I"

BORGES' PROSE POEM "BORGES AND I" (1960) delicately teases apart what ordinarily comprises the illusion of unity of experience. In an infinitely more clumsy way I would like to propose a psychoanalytic framework with which to think about the components of the dialectical process generating human experience. I will explore the idea that human experience is constituted by the dialectical interplay of three different modes of generating experience: the depressive mode, the paranoid-schizoid mode and the autistic-contiguous mode. The concept of the first two of these modes was introduced by Melanie Klein1 while the third represents my own synthesis, clarification and extension of ideas introduced primarily by Frances Tustin, Esther Bick and Donald Meltzer. Each of these modes of generating experience is characterized by its own form