You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
In the first three chapters I have described my tentative reconstruction of the natural history of the analytic process, a sequence dictated by the economics of psychic life, as it unfolds in analysis when adequately presided over and adequately supported by environmental factors outside the analysis proper. It is important to bear in mind that this whole concept of the natural history of the analytic process cannot be used in the moment-to-moment work of the consulting room. It is not a tactical conception but a strategic one, which, like W. R. Bion's grid,* is for use in mobilising and preserving the therapeutic vitality of the analyst. Perhaps it is also of use in the retrospection which is required for the making of scientific communications.
It has been described how the gathering together of infantile transference tendencies makes possible a systematic clarification of confusional states, in the course of which there takes place a relinquishment of narcissism (as a principle of organisation) in favour of dependence on internal primal good objects (and externally the analyst and analytic setting and process). I have emphasised that the growth of actual dependence, and the growth of its acknowledgement, proceed independently, the projective relation to the mother (toilet breast) being more easily established than the introjective (feeding breast) which we are about to study. This in turn is more easily accepted than the necessary role of the paternal penis. This conflict, the oedipus complex, at genital and pregenital levels, forms the core of that striving for integration and independence, which we will study in the next chapter.