Chapter 18. Elements of Psycho-Analysis

The vertical axis (A–H), related to a genetic rather than a systematic exposition, involves a premise of growth dependent on (a) psychomechanics, (b) an alternation of particularization and generalization (concretization and abstraction), (c) successive saturations, and (d) emotional drives.

(a) The relationship between the mechanisms of projective identification and the alternation of paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions in K presents difficulties that seem due to an incompatibility. A solution may be approached through investigation clinically of the destructive splitting attacks that transform ♂ into fragments which nevertheless retain in their fragmented form an association with each other sufficient to permit penetration of a problem. Similar fragmentation of ♀ leaves an association of fragments that still perform the function of ingesting or introjecting. The objection to attributing priority to splitting lies in the fact that it does not allow primary quality to the alternation between paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions: yet both projective identification (♀♂) and paranoid-schizoid ⇌ depressive positions must be regarded as potentially primary.

(b) The ‘alternation between particularization and abstraction’ as a method of describing a theory is open to the objection that ‘abstraction’ is a term that implies removal of a quality from something. The theory is more likely to match realizations if the formulation of an abstraction or generalization is seen to be the significant feature of the transaction and not extraction of qualities from a known representation or its corresponding realization. Generalization (or abstraction) must be recognized as a process by which the saturation of an unsaturated element is bound in order to consolidate the gain. The abstraction, or formulation, of a generalization consists in

the naming1 of a new entity. What has been regarded as a dynamic state in which elements of a realization are abstracted selectively to f