“I would prefer not to”—on rejecting and “fending off” absence

“I would prefer not to” is an enigmatic phrase by Herman Melville that epitomizes what I would like to explore, namely, the fate of the dissociated spontaneous gesture of rejecting and “fending off” early traumatic absence, and its clinical implications. I will attempt to consider the paradoxical impossibility of “fending off” absence, of rejecting what hasn’t occurred yet was expected and needed by the emerging self. Ferenczi’s (1933) conceptualization of “identification with the aggressor,” Winnicott’s (1950) assumptions about motility and aggressiveness, and Green’s (1986) concept of “effacement” are my stepstones for underscoring the crucial importance of rejection and of “fending off” for the development of the self. Bartelby, Ferenczi himself, and a clinical vignette will illustrate the devastating traumatic impact of the absence of facilitation of “fending off” in early development.