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The concept of “internal objects” is understood in the context of the whole of the Kleinian metapsychology, in interaction with other main hypothesis such as: the existence of life and death drives, a theory of early mental functioning which formulates the existence of an ego capable of perceiving anxiety, the development of the ego of primitive defence mechanisms, the hypothesis of unconscious fantasies and the theory of paranoid-schizoid and depressive position. (Bianchedi,1984). The work of mourning leads directly to that of the construction of an inner world in and through the depressive position. The state of external relations is governed by that of internal relations. Klein stresses the concrete and even physical character of the experiences relating to this inner world. The theory of the inner world organizes relations between objects in that world. The substance of this world consists of unconscious fantasies, deep and early, which surface into consciousness through memories in feelings or memories in sensations, often hypochondriacal in character.
VI. A. Original Conceptualizations From Latin America
VI. Aa. Horacio Etchegoyen: Early Transference Etchegoyen (1982) considers that one of two differentiated explanatory principles lies at the basis of all conceptual frames: primary narcissism and primary object relations. These two principles call for a decision between one and the other This differentiation is questioned by Diana Rabinovich (1990). The theory of Symbiosis described by Bleger (1967) as the glischrocaric stage could be considered as an intermediate alternative between narcissism and object relations. Bleger’s description starts from a primary narcissistic stage in which the subject believes that the object is part of himself and it is only through repetitive experiences of frustration that he recognizes that something different from him exists and that it does not belong to him. For Etchegoyen, though, Freud’s whole work is based on the concept of primary narcissism. The object to which Freud refers to in “Three Essays on a Sexual Theory” (1905) is the object of the drive, only contingent and without entity to the point that a stable relationship with the object is considered pathological and defined as a point of fixation. Object relations are conceivable to Freud only after the new psychic act inaugurates the constitution of the Ego (Freud, 1914). Etchegoyen considers the theory of object relations as patrimony of the British School: Jones, Klein, Fairbairn, Winnicott, Balint, Paula Heimann among others. The common feature in these authors is the recognition of the importance of object relations and of an internal world which results from processes of introjection and projections. According to Etchegoyen, Jones paper “Hate and anal erotism in the obsessional neurosis” (1913) marks a turning point in the history of psychoanalytic theory. It is in this paper that for
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