IPA Inter-Regional Encyclopedic Dictionary of Psychoanalysis

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in source (bodily zones), aim and object. Thus, the countless permutations and later outcomes in infantile sexuality can be accounted for, including the complexity of the sexual object with its interchangeability or its fixity. Ingeniously Freud suggested that sexual, libidinal energy ‘leaned‘ at first on the inborn life- preservative drives that orientated the infant to the mother - - sucking on the breast then became a source of libidinal pleasure, imbuing the mouth as an erogenous zone” (p. 1219) Noting the idea of “leaning on” as a metaphor, she references Mark Solms’s (2012) designation of the erogenous zones as objects not sources. While drive and internal object are separated for sake of classification and exposition, they are intertwined. “After 1915 Freud occupied himself increasingly with the importance of the objects of the sexual drive and related fantasies. The prototype of sexual fantasy for Freud was the infant’s soothing itself by hallucinating the need-satisfying lost object. The object or its loss was part of the formation of sexual fantasy” (ibid., p. 1220). For Kulish, this intertwining of object and drive is the ‘sine qua non’ of the development of infantile sexuality (Kulish 2019). In this regard, Kulish also credits input of Kleinian thinking in which “unconscious aggressive and sexual phantasies are mental representations of the instincts and are inherently relational” (ibid., p. 1220). Along with many North American and international authors (Dunn 1993, Hadley 1992, Schwartz 1987, Solms, 2012), she gives the inner world of objects and the external interpersonal environment increasingly more importance in the shaping of drives, as she arrives at a view that drive and object, drive and environment cannot be separated. Drawing on Loewald (1971a, b; 1985), she, too, sees drives are essentially communicative, as the individual thrusts meaning onto significant others in the very act of libidinally engaging with them. The analytic situation can become an erotic field (in a wide sense) and the transference can become the patient’s (old and new) love life, where the love objects are invested with meaning . In a more complicated way, Kulish’s thinking on the intrinsic link of sexuality with object is influenced by the work of Jean Laplanche (1997, 2004, 2007) and his theory of a primal seduction. Specifically, Kulish works with Laplanche’s extension of Freud’s ‘leaning on’ in which the sexual drives ‘lean on’ the original self- preservative instincts satisfied during caretaking: the child encounters confusing, mysterious sensations, that it cannot understand nor integrate but which nonetheless awaken and begin to shape its own sexual feelings and desires, stimulating a sensual/ sexual set of inborn responsiveness, in addition to the bodily zones postulated by Freud. What is first taken in as sexuality by the human infant, therefore, is something mysterious, overwhelming and unspoken. However, while for Laplanche, this infantile sexuality, (sexuality mediated by fantasy) enigmatic in nature, is not innate but an implantation from the other, and thus constructed sexual drive springs up only at puberty, Kulish maintains that there are inborn, endogenous and continuous sexual sources in infancy and early childhood. This is in line with recent findings about hormonal levels which may play a role in childhood sexuality. The hormonal levels are high in the first months, then decrease. Kulish theorizes that a general excitability exists from infancy, but something else is needed to make it more of a determining factor in development (Kestenberg 1976, Hadley,1992).

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