Die Passion der Spuren.

In this paper I will try to show how the chimera, as I understand it, is the result of an unsettling encounter between the traumatic traces of the two protagonists, culminating in a process of reverie, a process, indeed, of hallucinatory emergence, in which a creature emerges from the emotional embers of their traumatic clay. Although I take up Michel de M’Uzan’s notion of depersonalization, I would like to show how my understanding of a chimera filled with sensory qualities is different from his. Back in 2016, I spoke of the unconscious and clandestine agreement of the traumatic traces of both protagonists, from which I think it emerges. This conception seemed to me to reposition the question of the subjective and intersubjective effect of the two protagonists in the session, reaching into their deepest interior, since this »mythical creature«, to use de M’Uzan’s words, emerges from in between them during the analyst’s reverie, expanding into depersonalization. Not only does it arise from the dispositif that contains the emotional truth of the patient and of the analyst, but it also completes the attainment of O, that ultimate reality by which the analyst abolishes their ego by becoming one exclusively with the emotions of the patient. In the first section I will discuss in detail the metapsychology from which de M’Uzan recasts his conception of the chimera, followed by that of James Grotstein, who insists on the agency of projective identification, and finally I will address de M’Uzan’s challenge to the Kleinian approach through his conception of the »vital-identital«, which delineates a field of self-preservation infused with unheard-of energies. With the help of an example, I will try to show that when this creature emerges from the very deepest intimacy of each couple, it comes from the greatest distance and mixes the species based on what is most affective in the transitional characters of the infantile. I will follow a path that connects the Freudian memory traces of 1896 with Bion’s rejection of memory in the session in favor of O – that ultimate reality achieved through the experience of oneness or »at-one-ment« when the analyst, confronted with the patient’s emotional experience, draws on his or her own corresponding emotional resources. Evidence for this will be provided by a detailed example of a chimera. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]