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VI. Bf. Gustavo M. Jarast In 2006, G. Jarast received the Premio FEPAL for his article “En contra de la pulsión de muerte” [Against the death drive]. There he theorizes that, as per Freud (1895), drives are born in the bond of a relation with an ‘other’. When Eros falters, the death drive gradually takes over the psyche, which can lead to death. In the face of pain, the energy in reserve is drained and the principle of inertia prevails over the principle of constancy. The self-preservative drive tends to return to its previous inanimate state, but the sexual drives boost life and this is achieved by the parental presence that satisfies the love needs. Jarast’s ideas find theoretical support Winnicott’s and Bion’s thought. Maternal reverie leads to primary identifications, the first affective bond with another person. The protective barrier, regulator of stimuli, develops. If this is not achieved, there is no subject who can experience pain or wonder about his anxiety and the crystallization of character disorders, addictions, or psychosomatic disturbances are produced, exposed to a silent death drive, and sexuality is at the service of Thanatos. The affective bond can be recovered through the transference bond that will actualize the loving investment of the child for the development of the Ego and the subjectivity. The maternal binding capacity, when available, will make it possible to neutralize the death drive and to make use of it in the construction of psychic apparatus. Severe failures will maintain the logic of the principle of inertia, activated in neurosis. Only the mother, first, and then the analyst, both sensitive enough, can place themselves in the shoes of the child or the child in the patient and understand her needs. Only then, the child/patient can start to exist, and to have an experience, just as Winnicott (1967 a, b) had theorized. Jarast also references E. Bick, F. Tustin, and D. Meltzer, all of whom have considered these conditions. The notion of psychic skin and its role of joining together the parts of the nascent self was formulated by Bick. The concept of autism as a defensive form of sensation to avoid the repetition of uncontainable feelings of non-mentalizable experiences was theorized by Tustin. Jarast’s multi-theoretical approach further includes Meltzer’s finding that there are patients who seem to have only ‘two surfaces’, two dimensions, and the lack of an internal object that can contain them. Jarast further includes M. Klein’s concept of introjection of a “good object” to tolerate anxiety. Jarast further theorizes that the analyst has the task of allowing the traumatic situation, silent until then, develop, to make it comprehensible and historicizable. In this way, the analysis will be a process that runs contrary to the death drive, as noted by Baranger and Mom (1987). For this purpose, the approach will be different from the “traditional one”. Overall, Jarast views the analytic process – at the service of Eros – promoting the vital potentials of the individual to warn him against the paths that the death drive can seduce him into following. VI. Bg. Samuel Arbiser In “Psicoanálisis y guerra” [Psychoanalysis and war], Samuel Arbiser (2013) agrees with Freud that all human behaviors contain Eros and Thanatos, and that these vital engines mutually need each other. It is naïve, as Freud warns, to promote Eros at the expense of
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