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This study of symbiosis and ambiguity, the original Spanish version of which was first published in Argentina in 1967, is now available in its entirety in Italian, thanks to the Libreria Editrice Lauretana.
José Bleger belonged to the second generation of Argentinean psychoanalysts, the immediate heirs of the small group of founding fathers. One of Bleger's contemporaries, H. Racker, has been well known in Italy for some time.
The first publication of this prolific, original writer, who died prematurely at the age of fifty, dates back to 1949. The central hypothesis of Simbiosis y Ambigüedad posits, on the basis of fascinating clinical descriptions of psychotic transference, the existence of a very early position, preceding Klein's paranoid-schizoid position, for which the author uses a term deriving from the Greek words meaning ‘sticky’ or ‘agglutinated’ (glischros) and ‘core’ (karion).
Bleger believed that human beings begin to differentiate themselves after a primitive stage of non-differentiation. Within the context of this initial non-differentiation, also called “objeto aglutinado” (agglutinated core), destined to last for the entire life span as a psychotic part of the personality, objects are distinguished neither from one another nor in relation to the Ego. The typical form of anxiety in the “sticky core” position is confusional anxiety, which is catastrophic owing to to its intensity and magnitude. Typical defence mechanisms are cleavage, fragmentation and immobilization.
Bleger unfolds the vicissitudes and destiny of the “agglutinated core” on the basis of Pichon Rivière's concept of a single illness: schizophrenic psychotic disgregation, hypochondria,