ABSTRACT
The failure of the representation of a primary object is not something most analysts think about directly. To be sure, we think about closely related subjects—from an ego psychological perspective, the process of separation–individuation. From a Kleinian perspective, we might consider the achievement of the depressive position and/or the danger posed to this achievement by murderous aggression that destroys all internal objects. As Winnicott’s observation about decathexis implies, the gradual building up of self- and object representations requires a relative consistency of the object’s need-satisfying behaviour. Both objectalization and disobjectalization are in play, for Green, each time that internal tension forces the individual to face the unpleasant external reality of a lack of satisfaction. Green refers to these defensive patterns of object relations as the choice of delusion over death, since the result of a pure culture of disobjectalization is Spitz’s foundlings succumbing to death from hospitalism.
