Bion’s 1959 paper ‘Attacks on Linking’ stands as one of the most consequential contributions to post-Kleinian psychoanalytic theory, introducing a concept that names the psyche’s most primitive destructive operations: the assault upon any mental function that connects one object, idea, or experience with another. The corpus treats this term primarily through Bion’s own clinical elaborations, where destructive attacks on linking are understood as arising from primary aggression and envy directed first against the breast as the prototype of all connective functions, and subsequently against thought, emotion, the parental couple, and the analytic relationship itself. The mechanism identified is projective identification turned against linking itself, resulting in surviving psychic bonds that are ‘perverse, cruel, and sterile.’ Bion’s later work in ‘Learning from Experience’ situates attacks on linking in direct relation to alpha-function and the capacity for reverie, establishing that when linking is attacked, the very substrate of thought formation is imperilled. Kalsched’s Jungian reception extends the concept into the domain of trauma, reading archetypal defensive systems as enacting attacks against linking through self-destructive internal figures. Across the corpus, a central tension persists between understanding attacks on linking as driven by constitutional envy and aggression versus as reactive to environmental failures — a tension Bion himself acknowledges without fully resolving.
destructive attacks which the patient makes on anything which is felt to have the function of linking one object with another… phantasied attacks on the breast as the prototype of all attacks on objects that serve as a link
Bion’s founding statement establishes attacks on linking as destructive assaults on any connective function, with the breast as the original prototype, rooted in Kleinian accounts of projective identification and sadistic fantasy.
, Attacks on Linking, 1959thesis
These attacks on the linking function of emotion lead to an over-prominence in the psychotic part of the personality of links which appear to be logical, almost mathematical, but never emotionally reasonable. Consequently the links surviving are perverse, cruel, and sterile.
Bion identifies the clinical residue of attacks on linking: the destruction of emotionally meaningful connection leaves only cold, sterile pseudo-logical bonds, characterising the psychotic personality’s impoverished inner world.
, Attacks on Linking, 1959thesis
primary aggression and envy… the psychotic infant is overwhelmed with hatred and envy of the mother’s ability to retain a comfortable state of mind although experiencing the infant’s feelings.
Bion locates the constitutional roots of attacks on linking in primary aggression and envy, which are intensified when the mother fails to introject and metabolise the infant’s emotional states.
, Attacks on Linking, 1959thesis
The link had been regarded with hate and transformed into a hostile and destructive sexuality rendering the patient-analyst couple sterile.
Through clinical vignette, Bion demonstrates that any creative or understanding link between analyst and patient becomes a target for destruction, transformed into something hostile and sterile by the patient’s envy.
, Attacks on Linking, 1959thesis
the pleasant feeling of being understood had been instantly destroyed and ejected… he felt understood by me. This was an agreeable experience, but the pleasant feeling of being understood had been instantly destroyed
Clinical material illustrates how the experience of being understood — itself a linking function — is instantaneously annihilated and evacuated, demonstrating the automaticity and urgency of attacks on linking in the analytic session.
, Attacks on Linking, 1959supporting
Problems, the solution of which depends upon an awareness of causation, cannot therefore be stated, let alone solved… there is never any question why the patient or the analyst is there
Bion traces a cognitive consequence of attacks on linking: causal reasoning is severed because ‘why’ has been split off through guilt, leaving the patient unable to formulate or address the origins of mental states.
, Attacks on Linking, 1959supporting
related to attacks on linking, 21, 22… Attacks on linking, related to projective identification of conscious, 21
Bion’s index entry in ‘Learning from Experience’ formally links attacks on linking to alpha-function, projective identification, and the capacity to dream, situating the concept within his broader epistemological framework.
, Learning from Experience, 1962supporting
the material poured out could be seen as the link between patient and analyst and I could interpret in the way described in Attacks on Linking.
Bion reflects on applying his attacks on linking framework in clinical practice, identifying the flow of analytic material itself as a link subject to interpretive intervention.
, Learning from Experience, 1962supporting
attacks against linking 23, 36–7… Bion, W. 23, 36, 102; attacks against linking 123–4
Kalsched’s index entries signal that attacks on linking are substantively integrated into his theory of archetypal defences, indexing the concept alongside Bion as a key reference point for understanding self-destructive trauma dynamics.
, The Inner World of Trauma: Archetypal Defences of the Personal Spirit, 1996supporting
Both Melanie Klein and Wilfred Bion are significant to our discussion because of their emphasis upon the death instinct and its personification as a terrifying ‘object’ in unconscious fantasy-systems… Both use Freud’s construct of the superego to describe this tyrannical inner attacker
Kalsched contextualises attacks on linking within the broader Kleinian-Bionian tradition, showing how the death instinct, personalised as an internal tyrannical attacker, underpins both Klein’s and Bion’s accounts of destructive psychic operations.
, The Inner World of Trauma: Archetypal Defences of the Personal Spirit, 1996supporting
parts of the personality were mistaken as not-self elements and attacked, leading to self-destruction in a kind of auto-immune disease (AIDS) of the psyche.
Kalsched presents Stein’s immunological analogy for self-destructive archetypal defences as a parallel to attacks on linking, wherein the self attacks its own connective parts as if they were foreign invaders.
, The Inner World of Trauma: Archetypal Defences of the Personal Spirit, 1996aside