  Freud distinguishes between auto-erotism and primary narcissism, attributing to the latter a new psychical action. While auto-erotism precedes the formation of the ego and the individuation of the self, primary narcissism only ensues with the preliminary development of egoic unity, when the ego is able to demarcate itself from the surrounding world and take itself for an object. The semiotic corresponds to the diffuse drive energy of auto-erotism and Kristeva takes up Freud's challenge to assess the psychical action of ego-formation that enables primary narcissism, which she attributes to a primary identification with the imaginary father. In Tales of Love, which jumps off from Freud's claim in The Ego and the Id that identification with the father of individual pre-history is prior to and more primary than object-cathexis, Kristeva offers an original account of the pre-Oedipal period, finding a paternal figure there. Since the bond of identification precedes any bond with objects, the imaginary father is what makes possible the initial separation between ego and object, or rather proto-ego and proto-object. This father is not the first object, but the first identification, making language and love possible, movement within and among a world of others. This identification, Kristeva hypothesizes, alters maternal space, interrupts it with something beyond its borders. But it also indicates that there is a preliminary pre-thetic symbolic capacity at work in infantile life. As the drives expel, detach, or isolate a proto-object, the space of differentiation is supported by identification with the imaginary father, who holds it open. The imaginary father is here associated with love (unlike the symbolic father who is associated with law), an invitation to language and subjectivity, to become a being who can have relations with others.