Symbiosis in Warrior's Rest

• Published in: Symbiosis and Ambiguity pp. 32 - 71
• Main Authors: Bleger, José, Churcher, John, Bleger, Leopoldo
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Routledge 1967
• Edition: 1
• Subjects: Obsessional Control; White Whale; Psychotic Dissolution; Young Man; Schizoid Depression; Internal Objects; Symbiotic Relation; Paranoid Schizoid Position; Vice Versa; Symbiotic Group; Agglutinated Nucleus; Regressive Level; En Bloc; Symbiotic Link; Dead Objects; Ambiguous Nucleus; Narcissistic Object Relation; Catastrophic Anxieties; Genital Relation; Body Schema; Negative Therapeutic Reaction; Schizoid Division; Internal Destruction
• ISBN: 0415464633; 0415464625; 9780415464635; 9780415464628
• DOI: 10.4324/9780203093986-5

My aim at this time is to deepen the study of symbiosis by undertaking an essay in applied psychoanalysis. I examine a novel of great psycho- logical subtlety by Christiane Rochefort, Warrior's Rest (Rochefort, 1958). Although this novel can be studied for its own sake, it also serves to illustrate and apply what I have deduced from clinical work, although it does not specifically include material of a clinical nature.The advantage of choosing a novel is that the material studied is easily accessible for anyone who wishes to compare opinions; another, even stronger reason is that the study of sym- biosis involves the analysis of the intercrossing of roles. In clinical material the field would be that of the transference and countertransference, which would therefore have to be limited to what is publishable, with evident impoverishment of the original material and disadvantages in relation to the clarity of the exposition. I was also interested in studying symbiosis that is allowed to follow its course in the interpersonal relation, whereas psycho- analytic therapy is, in this sense, a fundamentally 'antisymbiotic' task.