The Breast as Part of the Whole: Theoretical considerations concerning whole and part objects

In discussing the breast as part of the whole I propose not just to consider the breast as the infant's experience of part of the mother and her maternal care but also to refer this to our experience as analysts, where the mind of the analyst is in effect the breast, providing the food for thought that is part of the experience of the analytic upbringing of our patients. I am also assuming, in the descriptions that follow, that the achievement of the breast as a combined object has not yet been reached; that our hypothetical infant has not yet joined his parents together in a satisfactory intercourse in his mind. In other words, the nipple is lodged in the breast as a necessary intermediary between the milk inside and the open mouth waiting to receive it. This does not, however, preclude the possibility of a whole object relationship to the breast. In considering the mind of the analyst as being the analytic breast I am considering the mind as a whole object, something which is often not initially bearable to patients and which may not begin to be felt to exist in this way until the weaning towards the end of an analysis. I will qualify that remark by saying that patients often get a glimpse of the mind of the analyst as a desirable thinking object as they reach into the depressive position, but while experiencing sadness frequently retreat from the full-blown impact of it at that point. For with it they see the writing on the wall and scent the first whiff of weaning with the arrival of the next patient, the one they fear will replace them in the analyst's affection; to the child in them it is like their mother having another baby.

If the breast as whole object is the analytic equivalent of the mind of the analyst, then the part object breast is the non-thinking breast, expressed in the infantile behaviour of our patients who can treat parts of bodies as if these parts were the whole person. This is exemplified in society by the tabloid newspapers’ treatment of wome