Within the depth-psychology corpus, ‘symbiosis’ operates across two distinct registers that rarely speak to each other but whose juxtaposition is illuminating. In the biological and philosophical sciences — represented here by Thompson, Damasio, Simondon, and McGilchrist — symbiosis names the intimate, constitutive interdependence of organisms across species boundaries, a phenomenon that challenges gene-centric accounts of heredity and individual identity. Thompson draws on Margulis to argue that symbiosis undermines the equation of biological identity with DNA lineage alone; Simondon elaborates a taxonomy of symbiotic modes (homophyseal, heterophyseal, parasitic, associative) as a window onto the ontology of individuation itself. In the psychoanalytic and developmental tradition — Flores, Heller, Kalsched, Ferenczi — the term migrates inward to describe the undifferentiated mother-infant dyad theorized by Margaret Mahler, where failure to achieve or exit normal symbiosis generates the character pathologies central to addiction, borderline structure, and traumatic developmental arrest. The term thus carries a productive ambiguity: it can denote a generative, co-constitutive union or a pathological fusion that forecloses individuation. This tension — between symbiosis as evolutionary creativity and symbiosis as developmental entrapment — marks the conceptual fault line the concordance must hold open.
These facts about symbiosis undermine the simplistic equation of biological identity through time with the transgenerational bridge of DNA.
Thompson argues, following Margulis, that hereditary symbioses — in which whole functioning microbial communities are transmitted across generations — dismantle the gene-centric reduction of biological identity.
, Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind, 2007thesis
During the first five or six months of life, in the developmentally healthy child, there is innate attachment-seeking behavior to bring about a normal symbiosis. The earliest mental representations of self and object (the undifferentiated self-object representation) is characteristic of this stage.
Flores, drawing on Mahler, frames normal symbiosis as the developmentally necessary merger of self and object in early infancy, the failure of which produces the attachment deficits underlying addiction and characterological disturbance.
, Addiction as an Attachment Disorder, 2004thesis
Homophyseal is an adjective that describes living beings growing together within the same symbiotic complex, while heterophyseal describes living beings growing on their own within the same symbiotic complex.
Simondon introduces a precise ontological taxonomy of symbiotic modes to illuminate how individuation is conditioned by the type of co-existence operative within a shared biological complex.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020thesis
Traumatic Symbiosis Margaret Mahler, MD, used the expression dual unity to describe the early period of development in which mother and child are merged in suc
Heller introduces ‘traumatic symbiosis’ as a clinical category derived from Mahler’s concept of dual unity, linking disrupted or prolonged merger states to the developmental foundations of trauma.
, Healing Developmental Trauma How Early Trauma Affectsthesis
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 identifies Winnicott’s insight that aggression — not only love — is the developmental engine by which the child disentangles itself from the omnipotent symbiosis of early object relations.
, The Inner World of Trauma: Archetypal Defences of the Personal Spirit, 1996thesis
as Margulis and Sagan observe, prior to this step neither subsystem is alive, and after this step it is the whole system that is living (and hence the word ‘symbiosis’ to describe their merger is not quite right)
Thompson notes that Margulis and Sagan themselves question whether ‘symbiosis’ is the correct term for the membrane-enclosed merger that constitutes life, since the resulting whole supersedes the prior identities of its components.
, Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind, 2007supporting
an alga and a fungus associated as a lichen are, in fact, for one another elements of the exterior milieu and not of the interior milieu… the alga assimilates carbon through its chlorophyll, which is beneficial to the fungus, and the fungus protects the alga against desiccation
Simondon uses the lichen as a paradigm case of mutualistic symbiosis in which each organism functions as an element of the other’s exterior milieu, illustrating the informational rather than merely metabolic character of inter-individual relations.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting
The failure to develop attachment and to achieve a satisfactory symbiosis because of environmental factors, such as institutionalization, may lead to the development of characteristic disturbances such as the inability to keep rules, lack of capacity to experience guilt, and indiscriminate friendliness.
Flores documents the clinical sequelae of failed early symbiosis — including the ‘affectionless psychopath’ pattern — as foundational to the character pathology encountered in addicted populations.
, Group Psychotherapy with Addicted Populations An, 1997supporting
all multicellular organisms are involved in mutual, symbiotic relationships of various kinds with a host of microorganisms. And the organisms, similarly, with the environment.
McGilchrist invokes symbiotic interdependence as evidence against the machine model of organisms, arguing that the organism-environment boundary is always approximate and negotiated.
, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
all multicellular organisms are involved in mutual, symbiotic relationships of various kinds with a host of microorganisms. And the organisms, similarly, with the environment.
McGilchrist invokes symbiotic interdependence as evidence against the machine model of organisms, arguing that the organism-environment boundary is always approximate and negotiated.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
organisms give up something in exchange for something that other organisms can offer them; in the long run, this will make their lives more efficient and survival more likely. What bacteria, or nucleated cells, or tissues, or organs give up, in general, is independence.
Damasio frames evolutionary cooperation — the deep substrate of symbiosis — as a homeostatic trade-off in which independence is surrendered for access to shared resources and greater adaptive efficiency.
, The strange order of things life, feeling, and the making, 2018supporting
Her work on symbiosis, cell evolution, and the Gaia theory has greatly enriched the autopoietic perspective.
Thompson credits Margulis’s work on symbiosis with substantially enlarging the autopoietic framework, linking cellular evolution, symbiogenesis, and planetary ecology within a single theoretical orientation.
, Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind, 2007supporting
the asymmetrical relation of parasitism leads the parasite to a regression; in the majority of parasitic species, it is impossible to speak of an ‘adaptation’ to parasitism, since this adaptation is a destruction of the organs that guarantee the being’s individual autonomy.
Simondon distinguishes mutualistic symbiosis from parasitism by showing that the latter entails organismic regression and a reduction in the overall level of organisation of the heterophyseal complex.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting
Symbiosis, 152
Ferenczi’s index entry confirms that symbiosis is an explicit conceptual node in his clinical thinking, though the indexical form leaves its precise argumentative role to be reconstructed from the surrounding diary entries.
, The Clinical Diary of Sándor Ferenczi, 1932aside
Margaret McFall-Ngai, ‘The Importance of Microbes in Animal Development: Lessons from the Squid-Vibrio Symbiosis,’ Annual Review of Microbiology 68 (2014): 177–94
Damasio cites the squid-Vibrio symbiosis as a scientific reference point for understanding the importance of microbial relations in animal development, situating the concept within a broader bibliographic framework.
, The strange order of things life, feeling, and the making, 2018aside
Symbiosi
Harrison’s index contains a fragmentary reference to symbiosis within a comparative religion context, suggesting its use in discussing archaic Greek ritual structures, though the truncated form precludes fuller analysis.
, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, 1912aside