The Autistic-Contiguous Position

Dear Sir,

I read with great interest the article by Dr T. H. Ogden: 'On the concept of an autisticcontiguous position' (Int. J. Psychoanal., 70: 127–140). His observations, which are of great clinical and theoretical value, hold no surprises for psychoanalysts whose language and culture are Spanish.

As long ago as 1962 in his article 'Modalities of the object relation [Modalidades de la relación objetal]' (Revista de Psicoanálisis, XIX: 1–2), and later in his book Symbiosis and Ambiguity [ Symbiosis y Ambigüedad ] (Buenos Aires: Paidós, 1967), Dr José Bleger of Buenos Aires proposed the concept of a 'glischro-caric1 position' (sic) as a psychological 'position' prior to the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions described by M. Klein. The glischro-caric position, in which the characteristic type of anxiety would be confusional, would take as its object what Bleger called an 'ambiguous' or 'agglutinated nucleus' characterized by a lack of independence of the object, and its specific defences would be splitting, immobilization and fragmentation; and all this at a moment in development which is dominated by the most primitive feelings, particularly kinaesthetic sensations. These concepts of José Bleger's are grounded in numerous extended clinical examples.

Nearly 30 years later Dr T. H. Ogden describes, sometimes in very similar terms, concepts which are practically identical. It seems to me right that someone should reassert publicly in the Int. J. Psychoanal. the priority of the creative work of Dr Bleger, whose magnificent, rich and suggestive writings have not become as widely known as they deserve to be, perhaps because they have been written in Spanish.

Also, it seems right to recall, along with Dr Bleger, the productivity and orginality of the Argentinian school of psychoanalysis, which unfortunately is not very well known in European and North American circles, as I have had many occasions to point out.

This failure of communication gives rise to a dupl