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On the basis of this conception, Denis distinguishes the representations proper, vehicles of satisfaction, from ‘imagos’ and traumatic images which give rise to excitation that does not link up with the paths taken by the drives. This model makes it possible to reconcile ‘object- seeking’ and ‘search for pleasure’, and to understand object-relations in the context of infantile sexuality. Destructiveness is considered in terms of ‘mastery madness’ and not in terms of the Freudian hypothesis of the death drive. Denis states that adequate pleasure and satisfaction can only be fully obtained by an action exerted on the object. This is the role assigned to appropriative conducts, and to efforts to hold on to the object. He notes that Freud gives the drive to hold on to the sexual object the task of conquering it, of subduing it, of physically possessing it so that the sexual act is accomplished. Freud does not dissociate the search for satisfaction from the exercise of the will - of the hold - but on the contrary, he links them. The drive movement begins with a rise in libidinal excitement, which is first invested in the exercise of a hold on the object in order to bring it into contact with the erogenous zone, to exert on it an action that will lead to an experience of satisfaction, to a discharge. Considering the example of the infant, the rise of a libidinal excitation leads him to give voice to a motor agitation that has the effect of bringing a breast on which he will exercise a vigorous hold: the motor efforts of the suckling stimulate the oral erogenous zone and produce in an experience of satisfaction, not only a “discharge” but an achievement. Denis notes that at the beginning of the organization of the psyche, the drives are said to be “partial drives” insofar as they are initially focused for the child on a part of himself and are only interested in objects that are only fragments of the world. Correspondingly, one may speak at this stage of “partial objects”. Things become more complex when the child’s caretaker is invested as a whole; the drives are assembled in bundles in relation to her/him, who then constitutes a ‘total object’. Addressing the issue of aggression, Denis states that if satisfaction does not occur, the efforts to hold on to the object may be accentuated to the point of violence towards this object which refuses to be used (or towards which the subject does not manage to experience satisfaction). At the maximum, ‘a madness of hold’ (an early version/manifestation of the ‘mastery madness’) can appear that nothing can stop. This is what Freud indicates when he rejects a “special instinct of aggression” proposed by Adler: “ I cannot bring myself to assume the existence of a special aggressive instinct alongside of the familiar instincts of self- preservation and of sex, and on an equal footing with them. It appears to me that Adler has mistakenly promoted into a special and self-subsisting instinct what is in reality a universal and indispensable attribute of all instincts—their instinctual [ triebhqft ] and ‘pressing’ character, what might be described as their capacity for initiating movement. Nothing would then remain of the other instincts but their relation to an aim, for their relation to the means of reaching that aim would have been taken over from them by the ‘aggressive instinct’. In spite of all the uncertainty and obscurity of our theory of instincts I should prefer for the present to adhere to the usual view, which leaves each instinct its own power of becoming aggressive; […] and I
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