By means of a case study, the authors demonstrate the importance of a psycho-phenomenological therapeutic setting, which brings together a phenomenological component, where work that enacts primal processes in and through movement, and a psychoanalytical component where primary and secondary processes can be endowed with representation. The proposed psychotherapy enables the adolescent, who is locked into passages to the act, to metabolize his aggressiveness in a new way.
In the first part of his paper, which is a historico-critical one, the author shows the function of the invention of a death drive in the course of the evolution of the Freudian thought. The death drive corresponds to finding to a new balance within the heart of the sexual theory, whereas it is wrongly considerd as being an external addition to the latter.In the second part of the paper , which is a metapsychological one, the author locates the daeth drive within the genesis of the psychical apparatus as being one of the consequences of primary repressin as id componnt. The opposition between life sexual drives and death sexual drives corresponds to the fundamental polarity between binding and unbinding. In the third part, the author attemps to delineate a general psychological theory of hate starting from three factors : self-preservative aggressiveness or fighting spirit, sadistic violence of the death sexual drive, and the narcissistic specular enjoyment.
Having studied the case of “ Felix ” and the Kleinian concepts of internal objects and of unconscious fantasy illustrated by the case of this adolescent boy, the author uses the case of “ Ilse ” to explore Kleinian conceptions of female sexual identity.
Klein centered her analysis of Ilse on this adolescent girl’s envious sadism towards an internal mother who was, in fantasy, the owner of the father, and on the omnipotent guilt which mirrored these fantasies. This guilt robbed Ilse of her passage through “ psychical puberty ” and, consequently, of all the rest of her development. While the first part of the analysis sets Ilse in the latency phase, the attenuation of her guilt in analysis will improve her feeling of identity, of personal responsibility : Ilse becomes more genuine, more free.
Through Klein and Winnicott’s studies of solitude, the author explores their divergences, especially concerning the role of the external object and the death drive. He highlights the extent to which these studies differ in tone. Winnicott conceives of the capacity to be alone as belonging to ecstasy. His rather optimistic conception reflects the joys of shared solitude. Klein, on the other hand, never swerves from a tone of desolation and nostalgia at the very heart of non-resignation and deep authenticity.
Revue semestrielle de psychanalyse, psychopathologie et sciences humaines, indexée AERES au listing PsycINFO publiée avec le concours du Centre National du Livre et de l’Université de Paris Diderot Paris 7