[Undated]

Splitting of the breast enables the infant to take the milk without understanding its dependence on the breast and the indulgence it extends to him. Such understanding involves hate and envy, and these impel attacks on the apparatus of understanding to prevent the stimulation of envy—envy thus destroying envy. The attacks mean that in effect the breast as a source of understanding, the ‘mental’ breast, is felt to be destroyed since no apparatus to understand it means no understanding of it, and so no ‘it’ to understand. That leaves the sucking breast only as a ‘thing’ incapable of loving and understanding, and incapable therefore of endowing something else with understanding.