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The context for this excerpt is very particular. However, I’m offering it for the closing reference to baO.

excerpt from:THE FORGOTTEN SELF:
With the Use of Bion’s Theory of Negative Links
Rafael E. Lopez-Corvo

THE FALSE SUB-SELVES
Winnicott originally polarized false and true selves. However, Winnicott’s false self can be considered as containing two false subselves as well (Lopez-Corvo 1996), one complying or pleasing, which I refer to as the “complying false-self,” and another aggressive, which I call the “negativistic false-self.” The latter is often confused with a true self 1

POLARIZATION OF THE FALSE SELVES
The “complying false self” attempts to deceive an imaginary castrator projected into the outside object by providing that object with what the patient believes that object wants. This false subself is related to early oral fixations. The, other, “negativistic false self.” is hidden, vengeful, and related to anal-sadistic early object relations, which usually determine certain forms of acting out. This negativistic false self is the complete opposite of the complying false self and attempts to provide the outside object with exactly the opposite of what the patient believes that object wants. Between the two false selves a paranoid-schizoid circularity takes place, where a great need to comply and deceive induces castration anxiety and fear of “fusing” with the object’s desire, of just becoming the object’s wish and changing into a lie. This fear increases the need for a negativistic false self as a Psychoanalytic Review, 93(3), June 2006 ! 2006 N.P.A.P. 364 RAFAEL E. LOPEZ-CORVO way of attacking the castrator and providing the patient with an identity, albeit a negative and false one.

THE COMPLYING FALSE SELF The complying false self represents a universal form of defense, present to a greater or lesser degree in most patients, although more obvious in borderline pathologies. It characterizes a pleasing behavior with the purpose of deceiving, pacifying, and controlling a possible castrator, determining the direction of the transference as well as of interpretations. It could be described as an inversion of the natural order of desires, where the Other’s wish is privileged over the wish of the self.

II.

BION’S THEORY OF LINKS
Bion referred to the phenomenology of three links, +L (love),
+H (hate), and +K (knowledge), as well as negative ones: −L, −H, and −K. According to him, “negative” links do not represent opposite emotions: for instance, −L is not equivalent to +H. About −L and −H, as far as I can determine, Bion said very little, whereas about −K he was much more explicit (Lopez-Corvo, 2003, pp. 36–37, 93–94). Positive links are related to truth, while negative ones are associated with lies and evacuatory processes. The former are the product of a “maternal reverie,” which can be observed during normal growth, when a mother–child relationship is established as a container–contained interaction dominated by a “commensal” link, that is, when the three variables involved— self, object, and the relationship between them—all benefit from each other. In this condition the baby projects his feelings inside the mother, for instance, that he is dying, and then reintrojects them after the mother has changed them into something more bearable to the baby’s mind. This condition represents a basic model where the apparatus for thinking thoughts will be structured as well as the growth of K (knowledge). On the other hand, if the situation were dominated by envy—baby’s and mother’s— the baby would split and project his feelings inside the breast together with envy and hatred, which would hinder the possibility of establishing a container–contained relationship of a “commensal” type. Under such circumstances, the breast is felt to enviously denude all good and valuable elements capable of metabolizing the baby’s fear of death, and in its place it will force back denigrated residues that will determine the manifestation of a high level of anxiety, or in Bion’s terms, a “nameless terror.” It corresponds to a container–contained interaction between the baby and the breast, represented by Bion as −K. Such a condition is serious indeed because not only does the breast not mitigate the fear of death, but it also takes away the desire to live (Bion, 1962, pp. 97–99). 368 RAFAEL E. LOPEZ-CORVO

Because complying is not real love and revenge is not true hate, the false selves are related to negative links, where the “complying false self” corresponds to −L, and the “negativistic” one to −H. Though we might promptly agree with complying being equal to −L, there might be some disagreement as to why −H should not be considered true aggression. It is possible that Bion’s use of the term “hate” was not as accurate as Freud’s use of the term “aggression.” however, Bion may have preferred to use hate because he was referring to an emotion and not to a drive. In any case, what seems to be important is to discriminate between what we might call a true or a false feeling of hate. Why should the aggression present in the vengeful behavior of a negativistic false self be considered false? I believe the difference depends not so much on the nature of the feeling itself, but on the nature of the object toward which the emotion is being expressed. For instance, aggression expressed in transference toward a “father- like” internal object projected into the analyst is not true aggression against the analyst; instead, it represents false hate or −H, aimed at a narcissistic object placed outside by means of projective identification mechanisms. Such aggression can also be directed toward an internal object, in ways I have previously described as mechanisms of self-envy (Lopez-Corvo, 1994, 1995). Both the compliant and the negativistic aspects of the false self are related to mechanisms of projective identification present in the paranoid-schizoid position. They are defensive against an awareness of the process of mourning toward separateness of the object and one’s dependence upon it, conditions that are present in the depressive position and of a true self. In summary, I hypothesize a direct relationship between Bion’s concept of negative links −L and −H, on the one hand, and the complying and negativistic false selves, on the other. Furthermore, a significant amount of false self, as observed in borderline pathologies, induces a state of −K, which could be considered an empty self. Winnicott (1960) declared that the false self hides the true self; I add that not only does the false hide the true, but the former also hinders, alienates, proscribes, and forgets the latter, making it impossible for the true self to evolve. Expressed in terms of the theory of links, this formulation can be stated in the following way: −L and −H induce a THE FORGOTTEN SELF 369 condition of −K, of “without-ness,” which I propose to call an empty or “forgotten self.”

THE FORGOTTEN SELF
What I referred to as the forgotten self is also not a true self. The true self is just possibly parallel to Bion’s O, similar to the becoming of time, something that takes place and then vanishes, because it only exists while it is becoming, as in Plato’s description in the epigraph to this paper. The forgotten self, on the other hand, has a negative presence that stays still until it is changed with the help of insight. It is a “minus self” directly linked to minus knowledge or −K.

excerpt – THE FORGOTTEN SELF< full paper