*The Psychoanalytic Crisis: The Place of Ego in a Contemporary World DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.107249*

mother-baby relationship under the conception of projective identification as an unconscious interpersonal psychology in which mother and baby think together at the same time that remain separate since the first year of life.

Winnicott, Bion, and Rosenfeld [25–27] highlight the importance of mothers in the infant's psychic constitution, that is, the development of children's psychological life is not conceived only in terms of infant individual progress, but also in terms of a bond created by mother and baby. The initial unconscious fantasies of the baby are supported in its primitive mind, in the mother's psychological mature life and in the interaction of both. Thus, in this perspective, the mother as a developmental context includes the mother as an environment for the baby, but also the mother as functional aspects, such as the metaphoric interior of the baby mind built by two [28].

To Winnicott, the mother's look is the life's mirror to the baby. By handling and holding, the baby understands the world and sees themselves projected in the mother's desire. Therefore, the mother's affective expression helps the baby to understand their own identity, to separate themselves, and to live [25].

Consequently, the importance of dealing with reality, the emotional maturation, and the consequent integration of Ego (good and bad together, bringing the idea of human incompleteness), the perception and acceptance of an internal object, which is separated from Ego and might be respected and loved, as happens in the differentiation in breast, in the depressive position, helps the development of the negative capability [29], that means to tolerate the uncertainties, in accepting the unknown as integrant part of life, which inside the analytic setting might be represented as not known. The daily search is the resultant of this first relation, that is, deal with the pleasure principle versus reality principle without draining out of what is good inside.

The principle of reality is a modification of the pleasure principle. The origin of thought resides in the process of testing the fantasy (mental expression of instinct) against reality. The fantasies derive from instinct in the frontier between the somatic and psychic activity, so, the fantasies might be lived somatically or mentally, being the beginning of emotional life, of infant world. The fantasized objects and their satisfaction are lived as physical experiences, the reality moment in interaction with the unconscious fantasies and the memory traces are incorporated in mental life; they are changed by reality contact, conflict, and maturation. Consequently, the mind develops from the body [30].
