The present work aims at rereading the clinical cases reported in the fourth chapter of “Death instinct and Knowledge,” examining the theoretical elaboration of envy and negation concepts, and then identifying their fundamental contribution to the interpretation of specific dynamics that take place between the patient and the therapist.
Generally speaking, we can observe how in his first work, Massimo Fagioli exposes clinical cases in an original way, following a not univocal criterion. The first chapter is the report of a longstanding therapy. In the other parts of the book, the session’s interactions are faithfully described, fulfilling the theoretical elaboration’s function in a varied and composite way, starting from what happened in the relationship with patients.
This difference expresses the author’s need to verbalize in “History of a case” the discovery and formulation of the death instinct as fantasy of disappearance through the elaboration of transference and countertransference dynamics in the relationship with a schizophrenic patient.
Instead, the clinical cases mentioned in the chapter “The fantasy of disappearance and oral ambivalence. Curiosity and affectivity,” allow the author – through the dynamics of transference and countertransference – to explicate the limits of the greedy libido and then to transform it into a receptive and genital libido through a constant work of interpretation.
In this paper we will focus on the fourth chapter: “Fantasy of disappearance and envy”, where clinical cases «obey more to a demonstrative cause of the showed dynamics rather than a elucidation of the counter transferential work meaning» (Instinct of Death and Knowledge, page 288).The latter offer a precious witness of the author’s therapeutic practice, who faces the therapeutic relationship understanding the pathological dynamics of denial, which emerges in the expression of dream images.
To highlight the peculiarity of Fagioli’s envy concept compared to what has been proposed by the psychoanalysis, it can be useful to focus on the differences with Klein’s theory.
She makes envy one of the key concepts of a theoretical corpus, which has contributed to the birth of that psychoanalytic orientation that has privileged the importance of object relations in the human being development.
- Klein sees envy as an unavoidable dynamic for the newborn, because biologically determined and consequence of the death instinct. Hence the classic definition of envy as an expression of sadistic-oral and sadistic-anal destructive impulses. According to her, envy performs when the child develops the awareness that the breast is a source of life and satisfaction.
Fagioli revolutionizes the envy concept based on his discoveries and theorizes the fantasy of disappearance as a mental expression of the death pulsion.
Distinguishing the envy dynamics from greed and from the projective identification, he comes to reformulate it as a “sadistic-visual” attack and a consequence of a profound alteration of the dynamics of intuition of the human content of the object. This attack aims to damage, to tell a lie, in other words, to deny the psychic qualities (libido-affectivity) of the object.
The three clinical cases of the fourth chapter reveal both how the envious negation behave in the relationship with the object, and the therapeutic value of the interpretation that allow the patient reintegrating his dynamic pulsion and rediscovering those possibilities lost throughout the disease.
Therefore, this original theoretical elaboration of the envy concept and the presentation of the negation dynamics of the therapeutic relationship, allow to acknowledge and value the author’s thinking method.
Starting from the study of the “Birth theory,” introduced for the first time in “Death instinct and knowledge,” a theory of praxis, essential to the “to do” in psychotherapy, can be developed.
Bibiliografia
- Fagioli, M. (1972). Istinto di morte e conoscenza (14th ed). Roma: L’Asino d’oro.
- Fagioli, M. (1974). La marionetta e il burattino (10th ed). Roma: L’Asino d’oro.
- Fagioli, M. (1975). Teoria della nascita e castrazione umana (10th ed). Roma: L’Asino d’oro.
- Fagioli, M. (1980). Bambino donna e trasformazione dell’uomo (8th ed). Roma: L’Asino d’oro.
- Klein, M. (1950). The psychoanalysis of children. London: The Hogarth (trad. it. La psicoanalisi dei bambini, Martinelli, Firenze, 1970).
- Klein, M. (1957). Envy and gratitude. London: Tavistock (trad. it. Invidia e gratitudine, Giunti, Firenze, 2012).
- Segal, H. (1964). Introduction to the Work of Melanie Klein. London: Routledge (trad. it. Introduzione all’opera di Melanie Klein, Giunti, Firenze, 2015).
