La constellation œdipienne entre phylogenèse et ontogenèse

Abstract

In this article, the author proposes a modern psychoanalytical hypothesis, formulated by the Italian-Brazilian psychoanalyst Armandi B. Ferrari. Starting from Freud, Klein and Bion (with whom he collaborated during the 1970s and until Bion's death), Ferrari substantially transforms, in a dynamic and processual sense, the main postulates of psychoanalytical thought and technique, placing the body as the origin of the mind and its only Object. He hypothesises that neither the mother nor the mother's breast is the object for the child's nascent mind, but its own hunger. From birth, the complexity of a system of relations between body and mind is activated, already present at birth through the functions of perception and registration of sensory data. From this substantial transformation of the concept of Object, there follows a transformation of the role of the mother (or those who care for the child in the mother's stead), which fulfils the important function of catalysing the resources already present in the child from birth. The analytic relationship is transformed into a context of experience for both analyst and analysand, in which the analysand knows about himself or herself, but does not yet know that he or she knows, and the analyst assumes the function of catalyst of the analysand's knowledge and resources. The Oedipus complex, postulated by Freud, is transformed in this hypothesis into an Oedipal Constellation, which is born with the coming into the world of the subject and settles with his or her death: the Oedipus complex thus has no resolution, but constitutes the matrix of gender identity, in perpetual transformation in relation to the vicissitudes of life and to the transformations which affect the bodily dimension. The Oedipal Constellation and gender identity are therefore closely linked, and the subject is the director who moves the characters, the imagos which, over time, will flank the maternal and paternal image. It is therefore not a question of models of influence, coming from the outside world, but of a complex process of self-construction, which stems from instances deeply rooted in everyone.