IPA Inter-Regional Encyclopedic Dictionary of Psychoanalysis

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the aggressive drive is constitutionally determined; then the primitive cruel Superego would be the retaliation from the internalized parental object to the aggression coming from the baby. The Ego depends on environmental factors, especially the attitude of the mother towards the baby. The relation with the good object is at the core of the Ego, from which it expands and develops. If this Ego construction is achieved, it is more likely to be able to contain anxiety and preserve life, by binding little portions of the destructive object relations with the libidinal bonds. Fuentes theorizes from extended Kleinian perspective , that feeling love and hate towards the object or towards oneself, derived from life and death drives, would have previously suffered a transformation because they would be under the control of the Ego. In this extended context, Klein’s theory is presented as bimodal, a simultaneously drive and object relations theory. Anxiety, caused by the struggle between both drives, would take form of the battle over the annihilation of life – a problem for the Ego to deal with. Fuentes postulates that if a death drive exists, we can also assume that in the deeper layers of the mind, there is a response to that drive. Therefore, the baby is born with a fear of annihilation that emerges from the threat of the Death Drive. The Ego would start its activity immediately after birth, with the aim of countering this danger, resorting to the Life Drives. As this instinctive struggle persists throughout life, the source of anxiety is never eliminated and constantly participates in all further situations of anxiety (Klein 1948). The anxiety of being destroyed by her own destructive impulses, bound to primary envy, an expression of the death drive, makes the baby resort to the mechanisms of splitting and projective identification of such destructive feelings as well as the love towards the object, thus generating a state of confusion. If the feeling of love (manifestation of the life drive) can be increased, the destructive feeling (manifestation of the death drive) can be countered, to which the interaction with the good object would contribute and this would lead to reparatory feelings together with the guilt and the pain for having damaged the good and caring object. Fuentes interprets that for Klein, the feeling that we call love becomes deeper by the awareness of the pain, guilt and anxiety that the individual feels when she hurts or harms her good objects. Fuentes’ contribution could be viewed as bringing together Klein’s and Freud’s drive-based perspectives, specifically focusing on the fate of Life and Death drives (Freud 1920) in the transition from Klein’s schizoid-paranoid position towards depressive position.

VI. H. BRAZILIAN CONTRIBUTION

VI. Ha. Ignácio Alves Paim Filho Ignácio Alves Paim Filho discusses the subject in “Freud reinventing Freud: returning to the origin. (For a psychology of the death drive)” [“Freud reinventando Freud: um retorno às origen (Por uma metapsicologia da pulsão de morte)”)], “Silence: a metapsychological listening” [“Silêncio: uma escuta metapsicológica”]; “Death drive: the amazingly beautiful”[ Pulsão de Morte: o Assombrosamente belo”], and “Masochism: vicissitude of the drives –

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