ABSTRACT
Success in the work of melancholia seems to rely on the transformation of sadism to a masochistic capability that associates destructiveness with libidinal investments.
Blank depression in the mother and her psychic absence cause an absence of representation: A void that doesn’t allow for libidinal cathexis of a present object.
In early trauma, violent affects will be discharged and destabilize the psyche and its ability for representation and symbolization. The case of a five-month-old baby with his borderline mother is presented, showing the move in therapy from primary depression and lack of liveliness, detachment and avoidance, to a capability to represent in play the experience of body rejection and negativity.
Failures in early encounters with the maternal object are followed by an affect of “primary narcissistic disappointment” and mobilize a procession of primitive defense mechanisms in which, at one end we see the early forms of retreat in an autistic line and at the other, attempts at healing by an intensified masochism.
