Changes

According to Sigmund [[Freud]], the [[loss ]] of the [[object ]] is a two-step [[process ]] whereby the [[subject ]] is constituted. First, the earliest [[partial ]] object, the [[breast]], is lost. Then the primary [[love ]] object, the [[mother]], is likewise lost.

The earliest [[sexual ]] object is the breast, and the earliest source of [[satisfaction ]] for the sexual [[instinct ]] is the [[encounter ]] between two partial [[objects]], the [[infant]]'s mouth and the mother's breast. In [[Three ]] Essays on the [[Theory ]] of [[Sexuality ]] (1905d), Freud explained that the breast becomes a [[lost object ]] "just at the [[time]], perhaps, when the [[child ]] is able to [[form ]] a [[total ]] [[idea ]] of the person to whom the [[organ ]] that is giving him satisfaction belongs" (p. 222). Loss of the object of the [[oral ]] instinct is thus a precondition of access to the total person as a possible love object. At the same time, however, this loss opens the door to [[autoeroticism ]] for the infant as the infant assumes a [[complete ]] [[body ]] [[image]]. The infant, though in a [[passive ]] [[position]], is [[active ]] with [[regard ]] to a part of its own body, and this enables the infant to find a source of satisfaction that is the first [[substitute ]] for the breast.

Later the lost object becomes the "[[whole ]] person" in the context of the "Fort!/Da!" [[game ]] described by Freud in Beyond the [[Pleasure ]] [[Principle ]] (1920g). Here [[separation ]] from the object is addressed in two ways: either the child expresses an impulse to [[master ]] the object by breaking it, casting it aside, or incorporating it in [[fantasy ]] (and so [[working ]] it over in the [[psyche]]), or the child bypasses the [[need ]] for the object by regarding it as a lost object beyond the reach of the [[self]]. With the [[recognition ]] of the [[absence ]] of the object, therefore, the child makes a transition, as a result of working over in the psyche, to a capacity to do without the object.

When the subject does not recognize the object as lost, as in [[melancholia]], the object is incorporated in fantasy, where it maintains a silent [[existence ]] within the subject. Freud described this process in "[[Mourning ]] and Melancholia" (1916-1917g [1915]). Object loss can also provoke [[anxiety]], mourning, or [[pain]], as Freud outlined in Inhibitions, [[Symptoms]], and Anxiety (1926d [1925]).

After Freud, a [[number ]] of [[psychoanalysts ]] took up the lost object and developed it in their theories. Melanie [[Klein ]] described [[internal ]] objects in "Mourning and Its Relation to Manic-Depressive States" (1935). Jacques [[Lacan ]] theorized that [[object a ]] is substituted for the lost object. And Nicolas [[Abraham ]] and Maria Torok related mourning and melancholia to the lost object.

[[Bibliography]]