Chapter
Linking, Attacks on
What it shows
- 1959
Wilfred Bion introduced Ego-destructive superego
In 'Attacks on Linking' (1959), Bion describes an understanding breast that envy and hate have turned into a destroyer of the infant's projective identifications. Once internalised, it acts as a severe and ego-destructive superego.
- 1959
Ego-destructive superego derives from Attacks on linking
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.
- 1959
Attacks on linking derives from Splitting
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.
- 1959
Attacks on linking derives from Envy
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.