ABSTRACT
The author proposes the following statement: the paraphrenic twin is not a transitional object; it is a transitional subject. Inherent to the nature of the paraphrenic language to come, the idiom of identity inevitably clashes with the relational language of survival which is mendacious and, what is more, is often, if not always, marked by the stamp of the part-object. The subject's status of identity is infinitely more complex and uncertain than its most accessible definition, locating it as closely as possible to consciousness, would suggest. D. W. Winnicott makes use of the notion of an intermediate space in which the ambiguities of human problems of identity are played out. Concerning the emergence of language, he shows that the child begins by using original and organised sounds to designate the transitional object. And the theme of identity supplies arguments that are capable of underpinning the value of the first theory of the drives.
