ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to further develop the concept of an intrapsychic surviving object that had originated in Chapter 1. To that end the chapter begins with a selection of Winnicott’s key theories and how they evolved up until 1968 when he presented ‘The use of an object’ to the New York Psychoanalytical Society.
The clinical picture traces work over several years with a female patient whose childhood history illustrates psychic non survival-of-the-object. Throughout the course of the treatment the author highlights the way in which the patient’s screen memories depicted an oscillation between psychic survival and non survival in the transference. The clinical material aims at showing how these themes operate in an analytic treatment. In the Discussion, Abram refers to André Green’s concept of the ‘dead mother complex’ and projective actualization which she links with non survival-of-the-object.
