ABSTRACT
The immature and dependent baby is overcome by impulsive excitement which can be felt as annihilation. At that moment, the environment must play the role of a guard against excitement and give meaning to a menacing experience. In various different texts, Winnicott calls it “instinctive aggressiveness”, “theoretical greed”, “primary appetite-love”, “mouth love”. In one of his last texts, he writes that he could have called it “love-strife drive”. The use of everyday terms, like “aggression”, “destruction” or “survival”, and the particular sense that he gives them has led once again to a misunderstanding. From the child’s point of view, the survival of the object means that the object remains the same, to be related to and used. The destruction of an object that survives, which has neither reacted nor disappeared, allows it to be used. Melanie Klein believes that the death instinct is part of the biological equipment of the little human being.
