title: ATTACKS ON LINKING OR A DRIVE TO COMMUNICATE? TOLERATING THE PARADOX.
abstract: The notion of attacks on linking, as described by Bion, may depict a patient's drive to communicate the internalization of a destructive relationship between a primary object and an infant. This may be enacted between patient and analyst in the here and now of the analysis, whereby fragmentation and numbing of thinking may point to a primitive catastrophe relived in the psychoanalytic setting. The patient's material may seem incoherent, but incoherence might be the communication the patient is unconsciously trying to convey. Thus, the notion of attacks on linking depicts a paradoxical, caesural experience in which the attack on linking is itself a link.
authors.affiliation: Faculty member and Training and Supervising Analyst at the Israel Psychoanalytic Society.
authors.forename: Avner
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Bergstein
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003142:Communication; D004328:Drive; D006801:Humans; D011574:Psychoanalytic Theory; D011575:Psychoanalytic Therapy / Q000379:methods*; D014167:Transference, Psychology
keywords: -K; Attacks on linking; W. R. Bion; drive to communicate; early loss; here and now; realistic projective identification; unrepressed unconscious