2. LOVE BETWEEN PARENT AND CHILD
The infant, at the moment of birth, would feel the fear of dying, if a gracious fate did
not preserve it from any awareness of the anxiety involved in the separation from
mother, and from intra-uterine existence, Even after being born, the infant is hardly
different from what it was before birth; it cannot recognize objects, it is not yet aware
of itself, and of the world as being outside of itself. It only feels the positive
stimulation of warmth and food, and it does not yet differentiate warmth and food
from its source: mother. Mother is warmth, mother is food, mother is the euphoric
state of satisfaction and security. This state is one of narcissism, to use Freud's term.
The outside reality, persons and things, have meaning only in terms of their satisfying
or frustrating the inner state of the body, Real is only what is within; what is outside
9 Freud himself made a first step in this direction in his later concept of the life and death instincts. His concept of the former (eros)
as a principle of synthesis and unification is on an entirely different plane from that of his libido concept. But in spite of the
fact that the theory of life and death instincts was accepted by orthodox analysts, this acceptance did not lead to a fundamental
revision of the libido concept, especially as far as clinical work is concerned.