ABSTRACT
No one can roll back the additions and modifications of lifespan development in a full-fledged return to the motives and conflicts of his childhood. By regression, however, some analysts mean not a full-fledged return to an earlier developmental phase, but a non-phase-specific slip into primitive phantasies and defenses. The operational term, in this particular variation, is not regression, but primitive, which originated in Freud’s interest in anthropology. Freud and his followers, including Klein, believed in a world where ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. Here the regressed analysand = normative child = third world subject = primitive subject. The sixth chapter queries the basic assumption that primitive psychology is, in fact, primitive. 1 I argue, in the negative, that many so-called primitive processes—for example, hallucinatory gratification, condensation, splitting and projective identification—are not intrinsically primary in evolution or development. They develop from infantile to adult modes of operation. To engage in them is not to regress, but to make use of increasingly sophisticated operations and maneuvers.
