Primitive mental states and the body: A personal view of Armando B. Ferrari's concrete original object

Abstract

The author explores some psychoanalytic hypotheses about primitive mental states and their implications for a direct focus on body experience in clinical work. Some aspects of current clinical research about the patient's difficulty in achieving awareness of his emotional life as it emerges from object relations are presented, and this problem is viewed in connection with the relation of the analysand to his own body and to his capacity to pass through the different levels of mental elaboration, from motor discharge to abstraction. Ferrari's theories on the body-mind relationship are discussed and compared with the work of other authors. Ferrari calls the body the Concrete Original Object to indicate that it is the first source, differing from person to person, from which mental phenomena are generated and against which they are constantly measured. A clinical case serves as an illustration of the importance of the perception of the body for the birth of genuine, non-imitative mental activity.

Flexibility of the Psychoanalytic Approach in the Treatment of a Suicidal Patient: Stubborn Silences as “Playing Dead”

“…His reaction seemed more constructive, on the other hand, when I spoke of hatred in general, and of his propensity for ignoring it and the ways it manifested itself. This was apparently consistent with a need to focus on a working through at the level of the analysand's relation to himself (Bion, 1987a)-or, more precisely, on the axis of the body-mind relationship (Lombardi, 2002(Lombardi, , 2007a(Lombardi, , 2008a)-rather than on the traditional transference interpretation, which, in a case like A's, would just risk increasing the patient's confusion and dissociation.…”

Ce corps où la pensée s’est logée

“…J'abonde dans le sens de Lombardi (2002) quand il affirme que le corps peut être pris comme point de départ du fonctionnement mental, pour passer de la sensation à la pensée tel qu'esquissé ici dans le travail avec Virginie ou Denis. Le travail interprétatif se déplace alors sur le transfert fait sur les objets internes de l'analysant, alors représentés par des parties ou des fonctions corporelles, plutôt que sur les aspects plus généraux d'un transfert classique réactualisant des scènes du passé ou sur l'analyste lui-même, éléments du transfert qui, sans être exclus, seront abordés à d'autres moments choisis.…”

Knowledge and experience of time in primitive mental states

“…And again, 'nostalgia or anticipation are important because they exist in the present ' (p. 8). In my perspective, though, what is central is the relation of time not just to the space of the setting (Lombardi, 2002c), but also to the body space (Lombardi, 2002a(Lombardi, , 2002b. Sabbadini, 1989) is turned upside down to emphasize instead a 'progressive' perspective where what is of central importance is the directionality of the time's arrow.…”