Autism as the defusion of drives

摘要

The author's metapsychological view of the dismantling and adhesive identification typical of infantile autism is that these phenomena result from the fate of the death drive and the libido in a situation of thoroughgoing defusion of the drives. He notes that Freud's original idea of the defused death drive was taken up by Ferenczi and then by Klein, who applied it to the situation at the very beginning of life. A clinical illustration is given and the author observes that this view has therapeutic consequences that are also relevant to the work of an institution and to the therapist's counteransference, in terms of the value of sadism and masochism in helping to fuse the drives.