ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the understanding of psychopathological states tell us about the development of psychic life and, conversely, how the understanding and representation of the first forms of psychic life equally tell us something about psychopathology. The theoretical support of certain authors will help us in this work of linking. In this connection we will propose the notion of melancholic position which, alongside the auto-sensual, symbiotic and manic positions, offers the psyche a possibility of defensive withdrawal when faced with depressive pain. In Une peau pour les pensées, Didier Anzieu states thatPsychoanalysis has shown a great deal of interest in the investigation of psychic contents – fantasies, anxieties, screen memories, etc. – as the means and conditions of access to the psychic conflicts and neurotic symptoms. The aim of this work is to attempt a reconstruction of the genesis and early alterations of the psyche in order to account for the conditions of birth to psychic life.
