The combined part-object: from "the woman with a penis" to "the breast-and-nipple"

The brief history of the psychoanalytic concept of the combined object–and the combined part-object–begins with a line from a letter S. Freud wrote in 1897 to his friend Fliess about his hope of discovering in witches a link with hysteria. The persecutory object–"the woman with a penis"–was taken up later by M. Klein but disappeared from Freud's theoretical concepts: "the object" was seen as mindless, as, indeed, were the instincts. The nipple as part-object has a precedent in Freud, who had frequent opportunities for infant observation: at the age of 10 he had six younger brothers and sisters, and by the age of 40 he was himself the father of six children. Suppose, for instance, that the mnemic image wished for by a child is the image of the mother's breast and a front view of its nipple, and that the first perception is a side view of the same object without the nipple.