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This is perhaps the most important and most tightly argued article in the volume. The author discusses the role of primary objects in the development
of the sense of self and other, as well as in the capacity for symbolization and representative thought. He points out how much more is required in our contemporary concept of object than was involved in Freud's simplistic 1905 notion of anaclisis (Anlehnung), which required of the object only what was necessary for self-preservation. He suggests that perhaps we should even dispense with the concept of anaclisis as just too marked by its origins; furthermore, with its emphasis on support and purely physical needs, anaclisis neglects both the needs of the ego and the possibilities of symbolization and of subjectivity.
A psychoanalytic theory of the subject must function simultaneously as a theory of the object, as well as a theory concerning the manner in which the object “subjectifies” the subject—that is, permits the subject to experience itself as a subject. This is the all-important symbolizing function of the object. Roussillon attempts to describe in detail what he prefers to term the rapport (rather than the relationship) with the primary object, as well as the relationship—or rather, rapport—that develops with symbolization itself and with the process of symbolization. His first proposal is that the characteristics of the rapport with the primary object and with symbolization are reciprocal, and that the former type of rapport tends to be transferred to the rapport of the subject with the activity of symbolization and the symbolizing apparatus. The symbolizing function of oedipal objects is especially focused on the function of these objects in providing a stimulus barrier. To symbolize, or to develop a capacity for representation, it is necessary that the quantity of excitation to be bound by symbolization be relatively moderate, not exceeding the infant's capacity. Put another way, the absence of separation f