97

The author begins by describing the severity of the clinical cases presented by the reporters, situating them on the frontier between life and death. Then he takes up Winnicott's idea that there may be something positive in the psychosomatic symptom. It would constitute a final cry of despair - a last appeal for help prior to psychic death or the loss of subjectivity. Using some research by the Chilean biologist H. Maturana on the creation of a psychic space in human beings, the author confirms Bion's and Winnicott's ideas on the necessity of the object in the formation of the psyche. He further emphasises that in the present culture, individuals show a tendency to diminish this psychic space, which he also calls a space of poetry, as the result of an attempt to free themselves of psychic suffering by attacking their own subjectivity. A clinical case is presented to illustrate this situation.