ABSTRACT
Primary traumatic states thus come up against a subjective impasse; they give rise to a state of existential despair and shame at the very idea of being alive, hence threatening the very existence of subjectivity and of the mental apparatus. Repression may conceal splitting; the opposite may well also be true, and some previous splitting may contribute to repression. Non-symbolic primary binding is a specific feature of the clinical picture of pathological states involving narcissistic self-identity; their various modalities will help us to describe what happens whenever there is a return of split-off aspects. The usual form that the kind of non-symbolic binding adopts was mentioned by Sigmund Freud in his discussion of libidinal co-excitation. A closer reading of Freud's writings, however, shows that the fetish is, in fact, a form of suturing, that is, a kind of secondary re-binding of what has been split off. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
