Body relations and the black hole

Abstract

The psychic Black Hole is a primitive psychosomatic representation of undifferentiation and loss of the vanished mother of infancy. It is evoked during a psychic collapse, originated when awareness of the reality of separation from the mother comes in too soon. Its repetition creates an implosion into the self instead of an explosion into the receiving other. The catastrophe that it marks is an overwhelming affective storm that has resulted from a loss of the containing (m)other and a subsequent annihilation of the self. As a sign or a signal used for self-regulation, the Black Hole marks a deficit in the ability to symbolize that evokes states of meaninglessness, nothingness, and hopelessness.

Key Words:

• Black Hole
• body relations
• collapse
• symbiosis
• undifferentiation
• adhesion
• psychic event horizon
• primal position
• primary trauma
• secondary trauma

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Judy K. Eekhoff

Judy K. Eekhoff, PhD, FIPA, is an IPA-certified training and supervising psychoanalyst and a licensed child psychologist who has a private practice in Seattle, Washington, USA. She is a full faculty member of Northwestern Psychoanalytic Society & Institute, of Seattle Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, and of COR Northwest Family Development Center. She is the author of numerous articles and book chapters and of the book Trauma and primitive mental states: An object relations perspective. Her second book, Bion and primitive mental states: Trauma and the symbiotic link is due out from Routledge in 2021.