ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the idea of the survival of the object is a crucial one if we are to preserve, when the floodgates of its manifestations are open, a truly psychoanalytic stance as regards destructiveness. D. W. Winnicott writes of the survival of the object in early childhood and with respect to the construction of the concept of external reality and the differentiation ego/object. In a series of articles on the use of the object, brought together under the heading Psychoanalytic Explorations, Winnicott discusses the survival of the object mainly in connection with destructiveness, focusing particularly on the survival of the primary object. The object of the drive alternates between a definition given by the internal representation of the object and one that depends also, given that the representation is transferred on to the object/other-subject, on the response of that object/other-subject.
