INTRODUCTION
Psychoanalysis is the science of the mind and like all the
other sciences was discovered in the 3rd century before
Christ, during the Hellenistic period.
Freud in the Interpretation of Dreams (1905) in the
second chapter, in a foot note mentioned the Doctor
Europhile from that era.
For more information I suggest the book The Forgot
Revolution (L. Russo 2004).
Like all the other sciences, the psychoanalysis disappears
with the conqueror of Great Greece from the Roman.
The mind is an emerging function of the body, then we
are still in the realm of biology, but in order to investigate
the mind we need a different type of science, the queen of
science as Abraham and Torok (1994) in the book The shell
and the kernel.
From a development point of view the mind starts to
emerge from the body around the second month of life
and it will take 3–4 years to master it.
12 Introduction
Then as Freud said we have a body–mind continuity
and just two ways of intervention, we can stay on one side
of the river or on the other.
With the mind we modify the body, and with the body
we modify the mind. Just to be clearer, if a patient takes some
medications (substance) the psychiatrist tries to modify his
mind. If we use the words, as in analysis we modify the body,
the neural connections inside, not just the brain, because the
mind is not in the brain but disperses around all the body.
Historically psychoanalysis proceeds in the opposite di-
rection to understand how the mind develops from the
body.
In the last one hundred years, since psychoanalysis
was rediscovered, Freud started from the Oedipus com-
plex around 3–4 years of age, and Klein went back to six
months of age.
What I will do is to start from the beginning, at birth
and I will present to you a new metapsychology theory
based on some ideas that I will explain to you.
Four stages of development
In order to simplify my description, I will present four
stages of development from birth to the dissolution of the
Oedipus complex.
At birth the baby has no mind at all, the body is preor-
dained to work and the only preconfigured action is suck-
ing. This is very important because the baby needs to sur-
vive and in order to do that, he needs to nourish himself.
The development of the oro–gastric trait is intertwined
with the four developmental stages described below.
Introduction 13
I will use some pictorial images, the first one is the cir-
cle O, that represents the self.
The second picture is the self O with an object inside I.
The third picture is the self O with two objects inside
it II.
The fourth one is the self O with the two objects cross X
Don’t worry I will explain to you the meaning of that,
it is simple.
The first acquisition of the baby is the sense of self and
this is achieved between 2 and 6 months of age, with the
acquisition of the skin as a border between the internal and
the external, I want you to understand that the skin is not
just the external one but also the internal. The oro–gastric
trait for example.
At the beginning there is a mouth that is just sucking
the milk, the mouth does not have teeth, and as Freud
pointed out in a letter to Marie Bonaparte in Jones (1951)
vol 2, all the aggression is outside and all the libido inside,
in Winnicott terms we are talking about the environmen-
tal mother.
It is not just important the intake here from the mouth,
the milk, but also the disposal.
It is very common in babies that when they are eating,
they defecate at the same time.
I called this period a liquid mind because there is just
intake of liquids and there is no difference in the disposal
of urine and faeces.
At six month the baby, that used his mouth to intake
milk in order to grow, starts to recognize the mother at the
beginning as extraneous and after external, and in order to
do that he needs to introject the failure of the mother in-
side himself to manage the continuity of his life. At the
14 Introduction
same time, he started to project some libido to this object,
but as a consequence of his de–cathexis of the aggression
of the beginning.
I represent in a graph the vicissitude of aggression and
libido. The aggression is high at the beginning, let say 1 and
the libido is low to 0. With the time passing the aggression
will go down and the libido will go up, till the point the
two curves cross around the age of the acquisition of the
self. Only from there we can talk about projections and in-
trojections and not before. See Appendix Figure 1.
Between six and one year of age the toddler will be able
to manage the presence of the mother outside himself, and
be able to develop the language and the walking at the be-
ginning of his first year of life.
Now there is a distinction of the liquid and the solid
state of mind in the intake and disposal process.
The mouth that was at the beginning just sucking has
another function now that is biting the food.
This does not mean that there is a transformation of the
mouth, the two mouths will continue to coexist togeth-
er for the rest of our life, and also the two functions of the
mind as pointed out by Gaddini (1992). At the beginning
there is an imitation procession and, on this layer, unfold
another one, the psycho–oral one, like the mouths.
Between one and two year there is the acquisition of
the second object, the father. This is the first object com-
ing from outside, and he is generated as a meiotic process
from the mother.
We are here in the realm of the primal scene and the
resolution of it will bring us to the last developmental stage
that is the acquisition of an internal couple inside the child
around the age of three years and more.
Introduction 15
The dissolution of the Oedipus complex is the solution
to the representation of the couple that is generative and
makes the child and the recognition of that and the exclu-
sion of the child from it.
The latency period will put everything on hold till ado-
lescence, from where we start to where we stop. If we fol-
low the figure 1 in appendix, we can imagine that the two
curves start to rotate, like a DNA elic and this process will
create the space where the thinking and emotions can be
contained, an air tube.
17
chapter i
INTERVENTIONS
In classical psychoanalysis the paramount intervention is
the interpretation of transference Josph (1985) and I think
that it is correct if we are working with a person at the stage
O–X, but most of the time this is not possible.
I think the better intervention should be adequate to
the level at which we are working and as therapists we need
to downgrade most of the time to work at the same level of
the patient. In a way we are talking of regression of the pa-
tients and of the therapist in order to occur.
19
chapter ii
A NEW METAPSYCHOLOGY
Psychoanalysis is the science of development of human be-
ings from an individual point of view and from a society
point of view (phylogenesis and ontogenesis).
For this purpose, the discovery of it proceeds in the op-
posite way of the development of individuals and society.
Freud discovered the Oedipus complex that appears at
the age of 5 years old (the dissolution) and coincides with
the loss of the tooth’s milk.
Klein (1928) went even further at the primal scene, but
her mistake was to adopt the same idea of Freud and to ret-
ro dated the Oedipus complex.
It is only with Winnicott and Gaddini that we have a
rich understanding of the beginning of life and they did
not make the mistake of Ms Klein.
If we follow Fairbairn (1952) in the division of the
mouth with and without teeth, we can understand the big
difference in the way the mind works at these two differ-
ent stages.
20 The liquid and the solid mind
At the beginning of life there is no libido as Freud stat-
ed in the letter to Marie Bonaparte in the introduction to
Civilization and its discontent (1929) or in Analysis termi-
nable and interminable (1955), reported also in Jones vol-
ume two (1951).
The aggression is the main actor on the scene at the be-
ginning of life and if there is someone that is out there
looking after the baby, this aggression from outside goes
inside and the libido can be cathected outside to the object,
as Ferenczi (1929) stated in his article.
Then what I propose is a metapsychology based on ag-
gression and not on the libido. I know it will sound blas-
phemous for analysts, but this is an important change
that we need now, especially to face the change and the
complexity of the current pathologies that we see in our
practice.
In this sense we don’t need to interpret, and I consid-
er most Kleinian interpretations as an acting out or enact-
ment to the aggression of the patients.
Of course, I will give a pictorial representation in a
graph of the vicissitude of the libido and aggression and
show the differences between Winnicott’s and Gaddini’s
models.
The mental based organization of Gaddini is based on
the distinction between psycho–sensorial and psycho–oral
way of function and the interaction between them.
Winnicott made a difference between the pure ele-
ment’s male and female.
Difference between imitation, introjection/projection
and identification.
From sensorial to perceptions to thoughts and emo-
tions. (Renata De Benedetti Gaddini)