Dismemberment Murder: In Search of the Object

Abstract

This paper expresses the thesis that acts of dismemberment attempt to disintegrate the most important object representation in order to reconstitute it in a subjectively more meaningful way. The older man cut his victim into seven pieces, each one representing a lost member of his own family. Then he merged with his own mother-child image. The younger man attempted to protect his wife from his image of her destruction by dismembering his victim. Dionysian, Toltec, Mayan and Aztec ritual dismemberments are collective repetitive reenactments of infantile ego states seeking access to the gifts of the gods through primary identification.