ABSTRACT
The defence leading to superficial adaptability to present circumstances, which enables survival in that it admits a post-trauma adaptation, orientated to a new reality, nevertheless gratifies irrational unconscious fantasies of omnipotence. However, neurobiological research bears out some of the data of psychoanalysis, confirming as it does that the emotions have an unconscious life, separate from the higher processing systems. In health, the illusion establishes the connection between the inner and outer reality while maintaining a sense of the difference between them, whereas in pathology, one or the other dominates the scene, resulting in the suppression of one of them. Thus, the integration between inside and outside ideally maintains the quality of each. Attributing the experience of satisfaction to an object in the external world is a developmental step that follows primary narcissism. A brief summary of the mode of representation Piera Aulagnier describes makes clear that it underlies mental functioning, but begins before the awareness of an external world.
