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occur in a favorable manner, the infant may experience states of extreme vulnerability. Therefore, a chaotic state caused by the terror of losing the limits of one’s own body emerges. Ultimately, what prevails is the threat of losing the notion of existence itself. Threats of falling into a “black hole”, dissolving, and spilling are expressions of these states. Tustin (1986), referring to non-integration, writes: “In psychotherapy, as patients emerge from autism, they show very clearly that they are on the brink of ‘falling’ or being ‘dropped’. Breaks of continuity of the physical presence of the analyst, such as weekends and vacations are not experienced by such patients as rejection, as they would be in patients in a neurotic state of response, but as actual physical breaks … Quite literally and physically, they feel they are ‘let down.’ The ground seems to have opened beneath their feet, and they feel on the edge of a chasm which opens before them …In their elemental state of psychic development they had felt that they were falling into a void with nothing to catch them or to break a fall” (p. 193f.). This primary wound of the physical separation from the mother can then reappear in the other situations of separation. In Tustin’s (1990) view, the loss of the notion of existence is likely the greatest threat that a human being can experience. She stated that this threat is worse than death itself. When facing death, a human being leaves the body behind, whereas when the threat is the loss of the notion of existence itself, nothing remains. In his late works, Bion (1977*, 1979b, 1980, 1991/1992, 1997) demonstrated a strong interest in the functioning of the embryonic mental states and in the manifestations of primordial phenomena. In 1975 he posed the following questions in a meeting of the Los Angeles Psycho- Analytic Society: “Is it possible for us, as psychoanalysts, to think that there may still be vestiges in the human being that would suggest a survival in the human mind, analogous to that in the human body, of evidence in the field of optics that once there were optic pits, or in the field of hearing that once there were auditory pits? Is there any part of the human mind, which still betrays signs of an ‘embryological’ intuition, either visual or auditory?” (Bion 1989 [1977], p. 42). According to Bion (1991/1992), the mental equivalents of embryonic remnants are visible even when the individual exercises the developed function of speech. One of the fundamental discoveries of psychoanalysis is contact with these archaic mental states, primitive patterns of behavior, and manifestations that can be detected even in the most civilized and cultured individuals. Subsequently, Bion also referred to a state of mind in which ideas or thoughts had never been conscious and/or unconscious and whose origin is out of reach: “... the nearest I can get to giving it a provisional title, is the inaccessible state of mind. ...” (Bion 1997, p. 50). In reference to proto-emotions , Bion (1974, 1975) proposed the term ‘sub-thalamic fear’. He defined it as a type of fear that is not controlled by the mind and, therefore, does not acquire meaning. Sub-thalamic fear refers to bodily manifestations of remnants of prenatal parts
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