AUTISM & CHILD PSYCHOSIS (1972). The infant's primary illusion is that he and his mother are a continuum of body stuff. This negation of the outside world seems to be a persisting umbrage arising from aversion to the 'not-me' which has been catastrophically upsetting.

AUTISTIC BARRIERS IN NEUROTIC PATIENTS (1986). This "auto-sensual construct of a mother who is experienced as part of his body." The feeling that the sensation-giving mother is an exciting part of the child's body is at variance with the realization that she is separate from him and has to be shared with others. The image of a 'hole' to express traumatic awareness of bodily separateness.

          67--Awareness of the 'not self' mother impinges in a way which does violence to the bodily experienced self. 107--Such a child never experiences 'missing'.  In his concretized mode of experience, absence of a needed person is experienced as a 'hole', which can be filled immediately with an Autistic Object.  He experiences 'emptiness' and 'nothingness', which are different from missing a needed person.

AUTISTIC STATES IN CHILDREN

The child behaves as if fused with the outside world, and outside objects are experienced as a prolongation of his body sensations or movements--everything is experienced as 'me'...the 'not-me' is quickly made into 'me', by feeling that it is a part of his body and under his control.  The predominant delusion of the confusional children is that they engulf and entangle the 'not-me' and draw it into the 'me-ness' of 'me.' It had been a catastrophe when they realized that the sensation-giving mother was not part of their body. Awareness of bodily separateness on these basic levels is experienced as the loss of part of the body, which leaves a 'hole' or a 'wound'.

The 'not-me' is felt to be inimical because it brings unbearably painful awareness of bodily separateness which is experienced as an amputation. Another way in which such a child avoid being aware of his bodily separateness is by experiencing everything as if it is part of, and not separate from, his body.

AUTISTIC STATES IN CHILD (revised edition, manuscript, 1992). Awareness of bodily separateness is the heartbreak at the center of all human existence.

Koenigsberg--Objects in culture function to mend the split or cure the 'hole' by providing objects with which we can imagine ourselves to be fused. These cultural objects replenish the self. The family and internal objects are experienced as if a substance fused within one's mind, body, self.  This is a form of gratification (transitional oral supplies), but also a burden:  the symbiotic object is experienced as if attached to the self.

It's as if a person or body is inside of one.  Attachment to cars, newspapers, books, buildings, and homes--these objects function to mend the ego, fill the hole in the self by providing new objects that pour into the depleted ego.  The ego must find other objects with which to connect, now that it has a sense of being "split" or separate from the symbiotic object (separateness leads to the need for money to form a new symbiotic "independence").

Koenigsberg:  "MacArthur Park is melting in the pouring rain.  Someone left the cake out in the rain.  I don't think that I can take it, cause it took so long to bake it, and I'll never have that recipe again."  The "melting" expresses both loss of substance (the internalized object as a thing or a piece of matter or material), and on the other hand the sadness, which is loss of the human beings who became "substance" when they were internalized.  It's a diffuse kind of sadness. I tend to glop the people together as one omnipotent object constituting the infantile paradise” (all the people I have known fused to my body). I don't recall that I'm losing human relationships.

            To "liquefy" means to turn the "hard object," the substantial internal object, to libido or lust, to "melt" it. Genocide was about killing the object that is experienced as if a negative substance fused with the self, a poison or "bacteria." When the idealized object (be it a country or a woman) is de-idealized, or degraded, the "melt down" occurs, revealing the perverse fantasies, turning the "object" into lust, libido.

           Thus, transitional objects may be viewed as new symbiotic bodies which are to replenish the self, whether these be books, records, a "body of work." The CD sets, for example, which provide the collected works of a particular recording artist: people want to consume this entire body.  These cultural objects mend the split, fill the ego with new substance, fill the "hole in the self," replenish the "substance" which had been lost.  This kind of "identification" is filling the ego with a new magical substance, a new object to substitute for mother and family. Thus, one becomes part of one's culture by internalizing these substitute objects to replace the earlier objects.

PS: And nowadays, it seems as if the entire world is a symbiotic object. With the Internet, everything becomes a part of the self. The self and the world fuse. The world turns into one gigantic symbiotic object, every occurrence is included, every individual is included. A GIGANTIC SYMBIOTIC, OMNIPOTENT FANTASY. The New York Times tries to keep up. "All the News that's fit to print." But the newspaper can't compete with the Megalomania of the Internet.