The symbiotic phase does not comprise only gratifying experiences; it includes many painful and frustrating experiences. When the infant's needs are not met adequately or immediately, he cannot but experience frustration, rage and other painful affects. But the infant's experience of this negativity is not experienced as his own or his mother's; it is part of a merged relationship. There is still no clear concept of self and other, and no clear boundaries between the two. Thus the frustration and suffering can only be experienced as what we call "negative merging," in contrast to the positive merging of the experiences of gratification.

The positive merging is dominated by the presence of the Merging Essence; its representation is an attempt to internalize it. On the other hand, the negative merging is dominated by a primitive affect of frustration.

Negative merging is not really merging; rather, it is two trying to be one while still maintaining twoness. Since this can never happen, there is always frustration. When I say that the negative merging, or the attachment, is hell, it doesn’t mean that freedom from it is heaven. We think of heaven as pure non-suffering, peace, rest, comfort, gratification, fulfillment. All of these things are what we call essence. However, if you are attached to essence, what do you increase? Not heaven—you accumulate hell. We cannot try to free ourselves from hell in order to go to heaven. What we need is to objectively understand the root of this vicious cycle of attachment. We need to see the basis of all this suffering for what it is. When attachment itself is experienced without the object of attachment, without attention to what you want to have and want to hold on to, when the sensation itself is felt, it is experienced as deep anguish, totally intolerable. We normally avoid this experience by not focusing on it; whenever you are attached you are in this suffering but you don’t know it. So the obvious question arises: what can we do about it? But where is this question coming from? From our attachment to pleasure, our wanting to avoid pain and frustration. But this is the very nature of attachment, the very source of all desires, the Ouroboros eating its tail.

When the need is not met, the heightened state of arousal and tension remains, and the Merging Essence is not released. This is clearly not healthy for the nervous system, for its function of autonomic regulation is being impeded. This state of contraction, which is the outcome of undischarged mounting tension in the nervous system, is frustration, the primitive affect characterizing negative merging. We call this affect "negative-merging affect," expressing its relationship to the state of negative merging, but distinguishing it from the undifferentiated object relations themselves, which are colored by the affect. This frustration, this painful and primitive affect is felt as pure suffering. It is the specific feeling of suffering. It is not just pain or anger or fear; it is emotional suffering in its purest form. It is the suffering at the core of all human pains.

The presence of negative-merging affect in the personality manifests as many kinds of desires. Since it is a state of painful undischarged tension, the desires are ultimately for discharge, though the objects of desire will vary greatly. And since only Being is a Presence without negative-merging affect, then our ultimate desire must be for realizing Being.

Negative merging is a powerful force in the personality. It is the core of suffering, the basis and the fuel of all emotional conflicts, of all negative object relations. It is in the deepest core of the unconscious, in the merged representations, manifesting in the more superficial layers of the personality as the various conflicts and distortions specific to the later stages of ego development.

Negative merging, and the attachment to negative relationships, is produced by the part of you that doesn’t want to give up. There is a tremendous mountain of hope supporting this part. This is what I sometimes call the libidinal ego, the ego infused with libido, full of energy, vigor, strength, and instinctual intelligence. Because it is always going after this wonderful object, and because most of the time it cannot attain it, it ends up in a frustrated, ungratified condition, which we call negative merging. If we inquire into our various relationships, especially the object relationships we enact in the world, we find many varieties, but underneath them, much more hidden than most forms of relationships, is the libidinal relationship. This is the powerful part of the ego-self that embodies the animal soul and all her tendencies, which becomes constellated around the infantile desire, hope, and wish for the wonderful object, the libidinal object that will gratify all of the soul’s needs and desires. The libidinal ego is the instinctual and infantile source of attachments and desires, and typically is split off from our conscious experience.

Negative merging is undischarged frustration. And because the frustration is undischarged we lose or fail to develop confidence. This undischarged frustration is nothing but an undischarged blockage on the physical level which reflects the loss of confidence on the mental level.