Review article

REGRESSION AND PROGRESSIVE DISORGANISATION – PATH TO A PSYCHOSOMATIC ILLNESS

Ljiljana Milivojević orcid.org/0000-0003-4455-7401 ; neuropsychiatrist, training group analyst; Vojvodina Association of Group analysts, full member, training psychoanalyst, Serbian Psychoanalyst Association, full member

Abstract

S. Freud (1) said that death drive (Todestrieb) destroys things and tears down what was created, returning it to less differentiated and organised states, right back to the inorganic state; the state of ultimate rest. With psychosomatic patients death drive is predominant and in such individuals there is never an instance when death drive and the drive to life function together because there has been no amalgamation of the drive to life and death drive in which they function together and towards the same goal of preserving that which has been created. In this paper, I present complex processes of psychosomatic disease through a case study of a female patient who never had the opportunity, in her internal space, to play out this hugely important and very powerful dance between Eros and Thanatos. In her, the latter had triumphed, because the life instinct had not been constructed solidly enough. The patient remained
forever trapped in silent crisis, full of emptiness, nothingness, unable to feel the majesty of meeting between the drives to life and to death, or to experience again creation in the external world of what already exists within; to accept the joyous excitement of going further and
further in the creation of more, and the sharing of more, living, new and inspiring.

Keywords

regression; early trauma; somatisation

Hrčak ID:

177385

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/177385

Publication date:

13.6.2016.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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