Symbiosis and Ambiguity ─ A Psychoanalytic Study

Symbiosis and Ambiguity is the first English edition of the classic study of early object relations by influential Argentinian psychoanalyst Jose Bleger (1922-1972). It is rooted in Kleinian thinking and rich in clinical material.

Bleger's thesis is that starting from primitive undifferentiation, prior to the paranoid-schizoid position described by Klein, autism and symbiosis co-exist as narcissistic relations in a syncretic ‘agglutinated’ nucleus. In symbiosis part of the mind is deposited in an external person or situation; in autism it is deposited in the patient's own mind or body. The nucleus is ambiguous and persists in adults as the psychotic part of the personality.

Symbiosis tends to immobilise the analytic process, so the analyst must mobilise, fragment and discriminate the agglutinated nucleus, whose ambiguity tends to ‘blunt’ persecutory situations. The psychoanalytic setting functions as a silent refuge for the psychotic part of the personality, where it creates a ‘phantom world’. At some point, therefore, the setting itself has to be analysed and the analytic relationship de-symbiotised, as Bleger observes in a celebrated chapter on the setting.

Jose Bleger’s work demonstrates the need to analyse early narcissistic object relations as they arise clinically, especially in the setting. More widely, he regards undifferentiation and participation as operating throughout life: in groups, institutions, and society as a whole.

Jose Bleger was born in Argentina in 1922. An active member of the Asociacion Psicoanalitica Argentina, he was also a highly-regarded Professor of Psychology and a well known intellectual. Author of many books and papers, his reputation grew steadily after his early death in 1972. He is now considered a major figure of Argentinian psychoanalysis.

John Churcher is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Manchester, and a member of the British Psychoanalytical Society. Until 2002 he was a Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Manchester.

Leopoldo Bleger, born in Argentina, has lived in Paris since 1976. A Training Analyst of the Association Psychanalytique de France, he is currently General Secretary of the European Federation of Psychoanalysis.