ABSTRACT
The sequence of events doubtless is: love—hate—anxiety. The change back from anxiety to hate can be fairly easily achieved with our psycho-analytic technique, whereas the next step, the change from hate to love, appears much more difficult. One way would be to assume that the primary, archaic, object-relation is so primitive that it cannot be called either love, hate or narcissism, or anything; all these are contained in it in rudimentary form as yet indiscriminable from one another, and they appear and become discernible only during later development. This is certainly an attractive idea; to say the least, it would enable us to continue our endless discussions about the true nature of the infantile mind. To sum up: assuming a primary state which, though object-related, cannot be described either as love, or hatred, or narcissism, is profitable only in so far as it permits us not to commit ourselves in any way.
