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Material is presented from the analysis of three patients at the point where early mother-child relationship was uppermost. In all cases sibling and oedipal rivalry was manifest in a strongly oral fashion and libidinal and aggressive longings gave rise to the wish to devour. Additionally, there was a partial ego regression to a point where the distinction between self and object was lost. The wish to sleep in one patient and to obtain oblivion through drink and drugs in another occurred in such a manner as to confirm Lewin's thesis (1950) that suicidal fantasies and sleep are closely linked to early infantile fantasies of falling asleep at the breast. In a third patient the violence of her anger made it immaterial whether she killed herself or the analyst. In this patient profuse daydreaming in childhood manifested an identification with her withdrawn mother and could be understood as a partial regression to the earliest phase of mother-child relationship.
The author refers to Freud's theories of suicide as set out in Mourning and Melancholia, and suggests her material may indicate that the presence of suicidal wishes is more closely allied to primary narcissistic states regressively reanimated than to secondary narcissism and guilt. The material also casts light on fugue states in which the patient loses his sense of space, time, and personal identity. The fugue may be a partial suicide, a compromise between living and dying. In one patient, periods of non-attentiveness alternating with rages in which she had suicidal fantasies suggest that she was considering the alternatives of the fugue state or suicide.