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disobjectalising function. Green proposed to replace the classic drive/defense opposition by the drive/object pair. This opens the question of the importance of the object´s responses to the subject’s drive movements, contributing to the latter´s psychic organization. The object is not only external; it is also an object within the subject, stemming from the historical responses of the important objects of its history. V. Ad. René Roussillon The responses from the object are also at the center of René Roussillon’s (2011, 2013) thinking. His point of departure, however, differs from that of the previous authors. Echoing Freud’s final texts, Roussillon emphasizes the relation between repetition compulsion, drive linking and integration. The human subject is doomed to integrate his subjective experience; the experience with which his history has confronted him. The earliest experiences, however, escape this integrating process if the primary environment has been defective regarding symbolizing functions. This has been conceived by Roussillon within a model similar to that of Winnicott (mirror function) and Bion (alpha function). The psychic representations of the drive, described by Freud, may be seen as a different “language” of the subject in his effort to share his experiences (with his objects), and through that, appropriating them. The primitive communication between child and environment thus has a fundamental place; drive is first the “messenger” force of this primitive communication, then of any communication. Unintegrated experiences threaten the subject with disorganization and tend to have a splitting effect on subjectivity and the self. As long as they are not integrated, they tend, however, to be reactivated. This is due to the repetition compulsion, a constraint to integration. The unintegrated experiences attack the psychic organization which excludes them (and keeps them split apart). The attacks show in the clinical forms of destructiveness. This situation represents the necessity of integration; on the one hand, it is necessary to destroy the psychic organization which prevents integration, on the other hand there is here an initial threat of traumatic disintegration. If the attack, or the threat of destruction, is too absolute, if it is experienced according to the principle of “all or nothing”, it causes a feeling of disintegration. If, on the other hand, the attack is carried out “piece by piece,” it may be put at the service of subjective integration. Roussillon believes that Freud was much more sensitive from 1915 onwards to the place and function of the external object in psychic construction than is often recognized and that, from this point of view, D.W. Winnicott and W. R. Bion in this respect followed him. V. B. FRENCH TRADITION IN CANADA AND THE US North American French speaking analysts uphold the intimate bond postulated between the unconscious and drive. An important theme is the close examination of the “construction” of drive from basic physiological reflexes. Drive is regarded as mutable, perpetually in transition,
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