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Volume 10, Number 2
July-December 2006

The perceptive trace: at the origin of death's instinct
Ferruccio Bianchi


SUMMARY

A patient in his seventh year of analysis develops a physical break-down with fatal risk; the break-down seems to be the result of a sequence of actings that have unconsciously been caused by himself. This acting does not make part of his basic psychic functioning, which is of the neurotic type, and has engaged the analyst to a profound reflection, also based on his countertransference, about the tendency to auto-destructivity.

The author proposes some developments of the Freudian concept of primary inscription of experience, differentiating between perceptive trace (pT) and memory trace (mT). Perceptive trace is the primary inscription to the neuro-psychic system and still doesn't have any psychic properties. Its transformation into memory trace is to be understood as the step to the most elementary psychic level; successive transformations will lead to associative chains which characterize the unconscious-preconscious system.

The pT transforms itself in mT by means of the newborn's repetitive experiences of being met his needs by his care-giver. This leads to the development of erotogenic zones, of autoerotisms and of desiring mental activity, in other words to the libidinal drive or life instinct.

The perceptive trace which is not translated in memory trace corresponds, according to the author, to the inscription of repeated experience of denied satisfaction of (basic) needs. It constitutes a fuero, that is to say, a sac inside the psychic apparatus, where reigns an archaic mental functioning which aims to total discharge, reproducing automatically the primary experience of denied need, which (time ago) has caused severe discomfort and, eventually, the risk of death. The pT would be at the origin of auto-destructivity and of death instinct.