169
xiv
It must be thought that fetishism presents an exceptional case as regards a splitting of the ego; it is merely a
particularly favorable subject for studying the question. Let us return to our thesis that the childish ego, under the
domination of the real world, gets rid of undesirable instinctual demands by what are called repressions. We will
supplement this by further asserting that, during the same period of life, the ego often enough finds itself in the
position of fending off some demand from the external world which it feels distressing and that this is effected
by means of a disavowal of the perceptions which bring to knowledge this demand from reality. Disavowals of
this kind occur very often and not only with fetishists; and whenever we are in a position to study them they turn
out to be half-measures, incomplete attempts at detachment from reality. The disavowal is always supplemented
by an acknowledgment; two contrary and independent attitudes always arise and result in the situation of there
being a splitting of the ego. Once more the issue depends on which of the two can seize hold of the greater
intensity. (FREUD, 1940a, p. 203-204).
xv
[…] the ego breaks off its relation to reality; it withdraws the cathexis from the system of perceptions, Cs […].
[…] a breach between the ego and one of its organs […] (FREUD, 1917, p. 233).
xvi
[…] the deployment of projective identification would be particularly severe against the thought, of
whatsoever kind, that turned to the relations between object-impressions, for if this link could be severed, or
better still never forged, than at least consciousness of reality would be destroyed even though reality itself could
not be. (BION, 1957a/1993, p. 50).
xvii
I have a problem I am trying to work out. As a Child I never had phantasies. I knew they weren’t facts so I
stopped them. I don’t dream nowadays. (BION, 1954/1993, p. 25).
xviii
[...]Without phantasies and without dreams you have not the means with which to think out you problem.
(BION, 1954/1993, p.25).
xix
As a result of these modifications we reach the conclusion that patients ill enough, say, to be certified as
psychotic, contain in their psyche a non-psychotic part of the personality, a prey to the various neurotic
mechanisms with which psycho-analysis has made us familiar, and a psychotic part of the personality which is
so far dominant that the non-psychotic part of the personality, with which it exists in negative juxtaposition, is
obscured. (BION, 1957, p. 267-268).
xx
Where the non-psychotic part of the personality resorts to repression as a means of cutting off certain trends in
the mind both from consciousness and form other forms of manifestations and activity, the psychotic part of the
personality has attempted to rid itself of the apparatus on which the psyche depends to carry out the repressions
[...]. (BION, 1957a/1993, p. 52).
xxi
Now some Five months previously I had worn dark glasses; the fact had, as far as I could tell, produced no
reaction whatever from that day to this, but that becomes less surprising if we consider that I, wearing dark
glasses, was felt by him as one of the objects to which I referred when describing the fate of the expelled
particles of ego. (BION, 1957a/1993, p. 56-57).
xxii
[...] have to wait the occurrence of an apt event before it feels it is in possession of an ideograph suitable for
use in communication with itself or with others. (BION, 1957a/1993, p. 57).
xxiii
I know the patient’s hatred of reality is strongly coloured by the feeling that a sense of reality carries with it a
stimulation of the socially polarized aspect of his emotional drives, and that this stimulation is felt to menace the
ego-centric aspect of his emotional drives and therefore his narcissism […]. (BION, 1994a, p. 19).
xxiv
[…] the storage of such an event for use as an ideograph approximates to Freud’s description of a search for
data, so that they might be already familiar, if an urgent inner need should arise, as a function of attention as one
of the aspects of the ego. (BION, 1957a/1993, p. 62).
xxv
[…] what there is in reality that makes it so hateful to the patient […] it is the sexually orientated Oedipus
situation […]. (BION, 1957b/1993, p. 88).
xxvi
The patient, even at the outset of life, has contact with reality sufficient to enable him to act in a way that
engenders in the mother feelings that he does not want, or which he wants the mother to have. To make theory
correspond to these clinical findings I have suggested an emended version of Freud’s pleasure principle theory