Marion Milner e il passaggio dall’oggetto primario all’oggetto secondario

Marion Milner places the passage from the original primary object to the secondary object (a passage that is based on the identification mechanism) equally at the centre both of a child’s healthy psycho-emotional development and of the psychoanalytical process undergone by those who have been unable to achieve such development. But how is it possible to pass from the primary object to the secondary one? Milner identifies five elements in the answer: fantasy, illusion, setting, concentration and ecstasy, which all constitute facets of the one same entity. Five elements that we can identify in our clinical work if we pay attention both to the verbal and non-verbal material that the patient brings to the “here and now” of the analytical relationship and to our own counter-transference.