The Basic Fault

Book excerpt: In this volume, Michael Balint, who over the years made a sustained and brilliant contribution to the theory and technique of psychoanalysis, develops the concept of the 'basic fault' in the bio-psychology structure of every individual, involving in varying degree both mind and body. Balint traces the origins of the basic fault to the early formative period, during which serious discrepancies arise between the needs of the individual and the care and nurture available. These Discrepancies create a kind of deficiency state. On the basis of this concept, Balint assumes the existence of a specific area of the mind in shich all the processes have an exclusively two-person structure consisting of the individual and the individual's primary object. Its dynamic force, originating from the basic fault has the overwhelming aim of 'putting things right'. This area is contrasted with two others: the area of the Oedipus complex, which has essentially a triangular structure comprising the individual and two of his objects, and whose characteristic dynamism has the form of a conflict; and the area of creation, in which there are no objects in the proper sense, and whose characteristic force is the urge to create, to produce