Concept
Attacks on linking
Destructive attacks, in phantasy, by the psychotic part of the personality on whatever is felt to link two objects: the breast and the infant, the patient and the analyst, and in the end one thought and another. Driven by hatred and envy and carried out through projective identification, they leave the mind unable to make connections and so unable to think.
- Introduced by
- Wilfred Bion
- Key works
- 2
introduced by
- Wilfred Bion 1959
gave rise to
- Ego-destructive superego 1959 The ego-destructive superego is the internal precipitate of the failed link between infant and mother. It forms where the normal communication by projective identification is missing, and from inside it goes on attacking links of emotion and reason.
derives from
- Splitting 1959 Bion works within Klein's account of the paranoid-schizoid position. The attack on links carries her splitting further: what is split, emptied and destroyed is not only the object but the connection between two objects, and in the end between one thought and another.
- Envy 1959 Writing two years after Klein's Envy and Gratitude, Bion traces attacks on linking in part to an inborn excess of hate and envy. It is envy of the understanding breast, and of any creative coupling such as the parents' intercourse or the analytic pair at work, that drives the patient to spoil the link.
- Projective identification