The Seba library treats Object Survival in 5 passages, across 3 authors (including Kalsched, Donald, Winnicott, D W, Winnicott, Donald).
after ‘subject relates to object’ come ‘subject destroys object’ (as it becomes external); and then may come ‘object survives destruction by the subject.’ But there may or may not be survival.
Kalsched quotes Winnicott’s triadic sequence — relating, destroying, surviving — to argue that object survival is a contingent developmental achievement that inaugurates genuine intersubjectivity and depth perspective.
, The Inner World of Trauma: Archetypal Defences of the Personal Spirit, 1996thesis
usage cannot be described except in terms of acceptance of the object’s independent existence, its property of having been there all the time.
Winnicott distinguishes ‘relating’ from ‘usage,’ arguing that the latter requires acknowledging the object’s independent existence — the very condition secured by object survival.
, Playing and Reality, 1971thesis
If the object is not destroyed, it is because of its own survival capacity, not because of the baby’s protection of the object.
Winnicott insists that it is the object’s own survival capacity — not the infant’s protective impulse — that determines whether destructive fantasy results in a real, usable external world.
, The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment, 1965thesis
the babies that have been seen through this phase well are likely to be more aggressive clinically than the ones who have not been seen through the phase well, and for whom aggression is something that cannot be encompassed
Winnicott reframes clinical aggression as evidence of successful passage through the object-survival phase, requiring a wholesale revision of how psychoanalysis understands the roots of aggression.
, Playing and Reality, 1971supporting
In later writing Winnicott emphasizes the crucial importance of the child’s destructive impulses (the aggressive side) for growing out of an omnipotent symbiosis.
Kalsched contextualizes object survival within Winnicott’s developmental trajectory, showing how the aggressive dimension of the self is indispensable for escaping omnipotent merger with the mother.
, The Inner World of Trauma: Archetypal Defences of the Personal Spirit, 1996supporting