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process. At the same time, one needs a kind of ‘guardian angel’, which Chuster named ‘ ethical- aesthetical principles of observation ’ (Chuster, 2002, 2003, 2014, 2018).
III. Ab. Celia Fix Korbivcher’s Autistic Transformations and Unintegrated Transformations Celia Fix Korbivcher (2005, 2010, 2013b, 2017) further develops Bion’s approach in proposing two new groups of transformations: the autistic transformations and unintegrated transformations. These concepts represent an effort to facilitate the understanding of autistic and unintegrated cores in neurotic patients, expanding the understanding of clinical situations when the atmosphere of analysis looks like an “absence of affective life” or when states of threat of the loss of existence itself prevail expressed by intense corporeal manifestations without representation in mind. Both causes in the mind of the analyst a high level of distress. In autistic states the patient holds in his/her mind the analyst as someone deprived of existence. This has an impact of generating unintegrated states in the analyst’s mind, which often disrupts his capacity to identify the quality of the patient communication. Korbivcher (2005, 2010, 2013a,b, 2017) gradually formulated a synthesis of Bion’s work, mainly his ideas of psychotic and non-psychotic parts of personality (1957) and his Theory of Transformation (1965), together with Tustin’s work on Autistic and Unintegrated States (1986, 1990). The evolution of Korbivcher’s synthetic contribution can be traced to specific elements of Tustin’s and Bion’s conceptualizations. According to Frances Tustin (1986, 1990), autistic phenomena appear mainly in individuals with exacerbated sensitivity and extreme auto-sensuality. For these individuals, awareness of bodily separation from their primary object occurred abruptly in infancy or early childhood and before they have acquired the capacity to bear it. They experienced separation as if parts of their own body or of their self was torn away from them, with a consequent deep threat of imminent annihilation, with resultant internal holes, an analogy to “black holes”. Such experiences lead the individual to develop autistic maneuvers, in which he withdraws himself into a “protective shell” and remains absorbed with auto-sensual activities. The relationship established with the object in the autistic realm occurs through autistic objects and autistic shapes . The individual, in this way, obtains a state of continuity with the object protecting him from unbearable experiences of vulnerability when facing the awareness of separation from the object. Autistic objects are experiences with hard objects and by the contact with borders. The autistic object covers the awareness of the absence of the object, so there is a suppression of the feelings of terror coming from the object’s absence. Autistic shapes consist of sensorial experiences that acquire forms that are entirely particular to that individual, not shared with others. These are experiences with soft objects as well as with bodily substances felt as comforting and calming. Their physical action promotes the rudiments of the notion of limits that contain a space in their interior (Tustin, 1986, 1990).
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