Britt-Marie Schiller
Cannibalistic fantasies underlie some core mechanisms in psychoanalysis: identification, incorporation, introjection, and internalization. Freud (1917) saw melancholia as an incorporation of the object by devouring it, and Julia Kristeva (1989) takes the melancholic cannibalistic imagination to be a repudiation of loss, a destruction in order to possess the object. The author argues that cannibalism is a useful concept for understanding the double dynamics of trichotillomania and trichophagy - as destructive disconnection followed by incorporation of the hair; both suggest a magical reconnection with what was disconnected in order to establish a bond with the mother/analyst...
October 2021: International Journal of Psycho-analysis