The psychotic patient splits the ego into minute fragments and projects them into the external objects. Thus he/she directs destructive attacks on objects that are felt to have the function of linking one object with the other. The primitive breast or the penis is the prototype for all links. The psychotic patient contains an internal object which is destructive of all links. The internal object was in its origin an external breast (the mother) that refused to introject the sensations and emotions that were projected by the infant. The infant is submerged then by these emotions and sensations that he perceives too powerful to be contained by his/her immature psyche. A patient that Bion discusses in this article shows to the analyst the importance of projective identification, as a primitive mechanism that emerges in the paranoid-schizoid phase. Projective identification allows the child to recognise his/her own feelings. The refusal of the mother to introject the infant’s emotions or the hatred and envy of the child who cannot allow her to receive them, leads to the destruction of the link between the infant and the breast. In consequence, curiosity on which all learning depends, is severely impaired.