Early trauma and psychic bindings, a psychoanalytic study

Author(s)

Maria Manuela Assunção Moreno

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Instituto de Psicologia (IP/SBD)
• Defense date: 2014-12-05

Examining board members

Nelson Ernesto Coelho Junior; Mara Lurdes Dias Caffe Alves; Luiz Claudio Mendonca Figueiredo; Marion Minerbo; Octavio Almeida de Souza

• Advisor: Nelson Ernesto Coelho Junior

Abstract

The present work is designed as an interrogation to the psychoanalytic theory about the resonance of early trauma and the defenses caused by it during the primary symbolization process, specially on resulting psychic bindings and construction of unconscious sense. The concepts of early trauma and primary symbolization are interlinked in the psychic constitution, which is built through the tense, paradoxical and supplementary dynamics between intrapsychic and intersubjective poles. Discussions are made among inaugural propositions from Freud and Ferenczi and their consequences on the post-freudian psychoanalytic theory, particularly on the works of Donald Winnicott, André Green and René Roussillon. The first axis of the present discussion focuses on the notion of primary symbolization in its intrinsic relation with psychic differentiation processes between the fields I/not-I and Id-I, at the primary narcissism time. I consider that the psychic organization, not only at the level of I, but also at the level of representations, is constituted by simultaneousness to the alterity symbolization process (internal-external). I emphasize the problem on the conception of constituent helplessness from the study of the effects of difference in psychic organization. I hypothesize that the internal possibility of recognizing the differences depends on a recognition function that is created in the intersubjective space, from the objects investment. The way the primary object recognizes the infans experiences, and reflects them back, in an experience of sharing pleasure, constitutes the symbolizing psychic bindings, which are necessary for installing a differentiated I and the symbolization function. The symbolizing bindings reflect, therefore, the construction of tertiary psychic structures that support the psychic associativity. I associate the early trauma to a failure of the object on his primary mirror functions, which internally unfolds into a psychic suffering due to disturbances on the drives integration processes, of psychic differentiation and internalization of the symbolization function. Another hypothesis of the present thesis is that the subject fends off traumatic reality through several defenses, ruled by the action of desintricated death drive (disconnection and psychic splitting), which define a negative transitional function according to traumatic psychic binding modalities. Such bindings aim to avoid the recognition of traumatic reality, condition of psychic elaboration, by building barriers, through mechanisms such as disavowal and negative hallucination, between perceptive traces of trauma and its connection to a significant associative chain. Research theoretical articulations intend to offer contributions to the metapsycholgy of inaugural, constitutive and traumatic psychic processes, as well as subsides the clinical/psychopathological thought in psychoanalysis (AU)