The broken symbol: The fear of the mind of the other in the symbolic history of the individual

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Paper presented at the 3rd Colloque International Nicolas Abraham and Marie Torok, Paris, October 9–10, 2004.

Notes

Paper presented at the 3rd Colloque International Nicolas Abraham and Marie Torok, Paris, October 9–10, 2004.

1. One of the fundamental differences between this new perspective and the classical theory is that, in the latter, the symbolized object is thought of as something existing before the symbol (e.g. the penis exists before, and independently from, the snake), whereas in the new perspective the form and the content of symbols are interdependent; this is what allows us to recognize the symbol as a factor of objectification, articulation, and organization of reality.

2. “Like a commemorative monument, the incorporated object betokens the place, the date, and the circumstances in which desires were banished from introjection: they stand like tombs in the life of the ego.” (Torok, 1968, p. 114).

3. When Ferenczi coins the concept of introjection (1909) as a propelling force for psychic growth and for “the expansion of the Ego,” he also refers clearly to a hypnotic introjection of messages that are extraneous to the subject. Such messages impose and “command” “internal blindness” in certain areas of perception and experience, dominating the life of the unknowing subject by means of fear and seduction, to the point of making him or her ill, or even leading the subject to death. Ferenczi says that these messages are often inscribed in the body, “incorporated” more than introjected (1909) into a body that he later described as a “tombstone” or a “funerary monument” (1916).

4. The clinical histories of Ilaria and Anna are presented by Carlo Bonomi, and those of Teddy and Mara by Franco Borgogno.

5. As Ferenczi wrote, what happens then is a “precocious super-imposition of love, passionate and guilt-laden on an immature guiltless child” (Ferenczi, 1932, p. 164).

6. This happened after Mara was visibly touched by a bombastic interpretation that illustrated, by means of the violent images of her own dreams, the “autotomic” operations that she had repeatedly enacted, struggling to make the analyst become her accomplice.

7. We would like to mention here the case of a child, seen by Dina Vallino, who dramatically made this situation manifest by concretely piercing, for many months, the ears, eyes and bellies of the several dolls she could lay her hands on (instead of playing with them), desperately seeking to breach the empty, inaccessible mind of her enigmatic, distant, and depressed parents.

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Notes on contributors

Carlo Bonomi

Bonomi, Carlo, Ph.D. Training and supervising psychoanalyst, Istituto di Psicoterapia Analitica, Florence. EC Member of International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies (IFPS). Author of several articles on history of psychoanalysis and psychiatry. Associate Editor of International Forum of Psychoanalysis. Florence, Italy

Franco Borgogno

Borgogno, Franco, Ph.D. Training and Supervising psycho-analyst, Societá Psicoanalitica Italiana (I.P.A.). Full Professor of Clinical Psychology and Director of Post-Graduate School in Clinical Psychology, University of Turin. Authors of numerous articles and books on clinical psychoanalysis and history of psychoanalysis. His book Psychoanalysis as a journey is now going to be published in English by Open Gate Press, London. Turin, Italy