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26th June 1961.
Dear Masud,
INTEGRATION.
Thank you for the copy of what you sent to Dr. Frankl.
At the bottom of page I there is something that I first felt to be misleading, but I see that you are really quoting from me. It has to do with the word dissociation which I thought should read disintegration.
I think that the word integration describes the developmental tendency and the achievement in the healthy individual in which he or she becomes an integer. Thus integration acquires a time-dimension. (Depressive Position, Chapter XXI.) The state prior to integration I call unintegration. In psycho-pathology there is disintegration, which is a defence, a fragmentation of the personality produced and maintained in avoidance of the destructiveness which is inherent in object-relationship after fusion (of erotic and destructive elements).
Then also there is dissociation, which is a rather sophisticated kind of splitting in which the total personality does not split. This is not so much “the pathological counterpart of unintegration” as a sophisticated form of disintegration. Unintegration seems to me to describe a primitive state, or else a state that is associated clinically with regression to dependence. Dissociation (like disintegration and splitting) seems to be a defence organization.
You could put: “In this paper you will find a discussion of integration and of unintegration which precedes integration, and also of disintegration which indicates a breakdown of integration. On page 151 there is a development of the theme in terms of dissociation, which is assumed to be a defence organization.”
Yours,
D. W. Winnicott.