Richard
Because Melanie Klein’s method of psychoanalysis is full of insight, but not altogether systematic, she felt it would be good to provide a case study example to show how interpretations could affect children and change their style of play and show some therapeutic value. Her case study was of a child named Richard who was 10 years old. His symptoms ranged from hypochondria, depression, and avoidance, because the second world war had instilled fears into him about air-raids and bombs, and he also had a fear of other children and an inability to control his anger. He didn’t get along with most people except for adult women where “he tried to impress them by his conversational gifts and to ingratiate himself in a rather precocious way.” Breastfeeding when he was young only lasted weeks and was unsatisfactory. He was delicate and suffered from colds and illnesses. The mother “worried about any illness in Richard, and her attitude had some effect on his hypochondriacal fears. There was no doubt that Richard was rather a disappointment to her and that, although she tried not to show it, she preferred the elder brother, who had been a great success at school and had never caused her any worry. Though Richard was devoted to her, he was an extremely difficult child to live with; he had no hobbies to occupy him, was overanxious and over-affectionate towards his mother and, since he could not bear to be away from her, clung to her in a persistent and exhausting way; his hypochondriacal fears related to her health as well as his own.” The father also left the raising of Richard predominantly to the mother. The older brother was friendly, but they had very little in common.
Melanie treated Richard in a playroom in Pitlochry, Scotland, and then moved him to a Welsh village in the countryside that was away from much of the bombing in WWII. “In my interpretations I tried, as always, to avoid (as I would with adults as well as with children) introducing any similes, metaphors, or quotations to illustrate my point. In practice, even when reminding a patient of former material, I never use technical terms…I make a point of using whenever possible the words that the patient has used, and I find that this has the effect both of diminishing resistance and of bringing fully back into his mind the material I am referring to. With Richard I had to introduce in the course of the analysis certain terms which were unknown to him, such as ‘genital’, ‘potent’, ‘sexual relations’, or ‘sexual intercourse’. From one point onwards Richard referred to the analysis as ‘the work.'”
In this work, the interpretations Melanie provided, had the goal of illuminating the transference, which is how a reaction from an earlier relationship is being used to predict the behaviors of others. This brings to mind the dichotomy of reality vs. distortion and Klein aimed at getting the transference mistakes traced back as far as possible to their origin. In Richard’s case, it was back to the earliest time that it happened: A fear that daddy was doing something bad to mummy at night. At the age of ten Richard knew that “babies grew inside [his mother], that she had little eggs there and Daddy put some kind of fluid into her which made them grow.” Probably to be more general about children at this time in the 20th century, they were more aware of the attention that their desired parent received, and they were more fearful of the aggression that they might experience in response to competition for that attention. Being in the Oedipus Complex is like being a third wheel. Good and bad experiences lead to a worldview and then get transferred onto other authority figures, who are also fought over for attention by others, and these expectations manifest as more predictions of behavior or rehearsals on how to respond to those powerful people. Our worldview gets shaped by these experiences, especially if they repeat, and then we go into different environments and experience conflict when we act on these outdated expectations, like using a hammer and thinking everything is a nail.
Case Studies: ‘Little Hans’ – Sigmund Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gu93b-case-studies-little-hans-sigmund-freud.html
In this case, Richard was transferring the good behavior of parents onto world leaders, like Churchill, and the bad behavior onto Hitler, because this was 1941. There were also projections where Richard was aware of his own aggression and therefore would worry about retaliation if he acted on his violent urges. The playacting of roles often happens when there is a desire to wield the power of authority figures as a way to avoid helplessness, and then an identity with an aggressor can arise. Children also apply a splitting of “good” and “bad” characteristics onto themselves, leading to feelings of guilt, avoidance of guilt, manic defenses, and in some cases, attempts to pass off the guilt onto others. In these cases, the splitting has yet to be integrated so that people can be seen to be more realistically as a mix between good and bad, and to also accept that one has the capability of being both good or bad, depending on the situational pressures. There’s also an envy at play when competitors who were considered bad before are forgiven after displaying good behavior for a period time. Forgiveness is hard to fathom when the onlooker is stuck in splitting. Splitting judgments are typically perceived as forever judgments.
Object Relations: Melanie Klein Pt. 2: https://rumble.com/v435lsq-object-relations-melanie-klein-pt.-2.html
The reason why the sexuality is so emphasized in such a blunt way by Melanie, has to do with the feelings children have related to the sexuality. Since many children have little understanding of biological sexuality at this age and time in the past, their early sexual theories, like children being born out of the anus, and penises dislodging and remaining in the vagina, etc., should really describe more the jealousy children have towards the amorous attention that parents give each other. The biological reality of sex, and the propriety of incest taboos, can be realistically described so as to get the young child to effectively start looking for better object choices than their parents, but of course these kinds of jealousies can reappear anytime there is a new fight over scarce partners and attention. There can also be projections that shift blame when loved objects are perceived to be the cause of the desire, like it was their fault for being desirable, like a returning of love being perceived as an entitlement.
Sexuality Pt 2: Infantile Sexuality – Sigmund Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gtort-sexuality-pt-2-infantile-sexuality-sigmund-freud.html
Richard’s fears, related to conflicts with others, also connected to his desires and manifested in dreams and play scenarios. Melanie interpreted “Richard’s concern about the disruption in his family if his desires to have Mummy all to himself were to be satisfied…[which caused] the strength of his feelings of persecution: he had said he felt surrounded by hundreds and thousands of enemies, and quite powerless.” It’s hard for adults, let alone children, to desire objects that are free when desires are mainly mimetic. If you have to imitate to learn what desires exist in the world, you’ll likely bump into inappropriate objects that cannot be shared and suffer the consequences of envy, resentment, oppression, and repression.
What can be unconscious is the symbolism in dreams related to these conflicts, as well as a gradual understanding of boundaries and ownership to move more towards better object choices. Boundaries for oneself also allow one to be helpful towards others in protecting their boundaries, and ideally there is reciprocity if these are good family or friend situations. An ideal end result of therapy is for patients to pursue their interests and desires with others while at the same time making object-choices that are free from rivalry. This is why the Oedipus Complex is like an atheistic version of the Ten Commandments.
Crossing those boundaries leads to castration fears related to any prohibitions and threats of punishment coming from parents or other authority figures. When there is acceptance of how inappropriate a relationship a child has for one parent or another, that acceptance can lead to reparation and a desire to choose a different object. Positive social attention that is suffused with a clear conscience can then be added to the child’s overall well-being and happiness. Social savoring was connected to emotional feeding for Melanie Klein, going all the way back to breastfeeding. Psychoanalysis is successful when wrong object choices are abandoned and replaced with more peaceful non-conflictual ones. To really be in reality is to realize that judging actual behaviors is the only way to see clearly the real mix of good and bad in a person and it allows one to notice development in a person and as well to notice any compartmentalization or hypocrisy. The granular detail allows people to notice if there’s enough good in a person to negotiate with and still remain in their lives.
Any relief the child experiences from this kind of analysis then can turn into a positive transference towards the helpful analyst. One can also see this play out in pride towards nations and attribution of parental behaviors to others of the same nationality, or culture. National feeling is connected with shared values of a citizenry. Emotions demonstrated in therapy by the analysand, or drawing exhibits for example, like those of Richard, can be linked to inner conflicts, or inner peace, depending on the progression of the treatment. Peaceful drawings, for example, are about good relationships and sharing pleasure in a way that demonstrates social problem solving. The child improves as they see the good in themselves, and are better able to see the good in others, so new relationship negotiations can start. Eventually the child, or adult in analysis, can now connect the good in all the people in his or her life as well as the good helpful objects inside him or herself. This increases the belief that there is good in the world and it relaxes the feelings of idealization, devaluation, mercilessness, and persecution.
The idealization, or over-valuation also increases when the good in another is felt to be lost, and devaluation when there are punishments and defenses erected against the pain of that loss. A realistic appraisal of good and bad behavior reduces the idealization and devaluation so that distortion decreases. When envy and jealousy decrease, so does the distortion even further. Also if one feels there is good in oneself, losses of goodness in others leaves one not empty but with good enough self-esteem to find new relationship arrangements. One grieves, but continues to believe in love enough to pursue other relationships. The ego can now assert itself in negotiation, because now there are good aspects in people that one can see is worth connecting to, and the super-ego has already quieted down the alarm, rehearsals, and catastrophizing. By finding commonality with enemies, a compassion can arise when those formerly “bad objects” are found to be damaged. For Melanie, this is a sign of the life instinct increasing in power. The life instinct leads to negotiation, reparation, development, building, and creating. Contrary to Freud’s idea of the Nirvana Principle and the death drive, Melanie construed the death drive as being more related to stress, internal conflict and fragmentation.
Beyond the Pleasure Principle – Freud & Beyond – War Pt. (2/3): https://rumble.com/v1gv855-beyond-the-pleasure-principle-freud-and-beyond-war-pt.-23.html
Children can’t choose who their parents are, so they have to imitate the good aspects of their parents, if there are enough of them, and then do the same with others in the community to fill out what is missing. It’s about developing skills to trade good with good; to have faith and trust that good can be reciprocated by others. This can be seen in businesses that have to have faith in their suppliers and customers. In intimate relationships, the faith is based on the belief that there are enough good behaviors in the person to make emotional-social exchanges with them in the long-term.
In conflicts over scarcity of love and attention, patients can regress into further splitting and distortion. Fear heightens the labels of good and bad, which is fine if labeled accurately for real behaviors, and especially if those behaviors haven’t been deterred as of yet. Habitual aggression and frustration are reasonable in dangerous environments, but are distorted and inappropriate in peaceful environments. The world is full of opposites and childhood strategies need to change and adapt if there is to be any growth. The reason why so many interpretations lead back to the parents, is because the parents are modeling their level of skill and the child’s sampling is limited by that environment. You can only imitate what is accessible to you.
Fears that inhibit
For Melanie, the analysis doesn’t start with immediate attempts at play, but a simple exploration of what is bothering the analysand. She started the conversation with Richard by saying “I know why you are here…” allowing him to explain his predicament, which was a fear of other boys on the street and going out by himself, and it was why he hated school. He was also cognizant of the war and very angry about Hitler’s invasion of Poland. There was a starting acknowledgement that Hitler was bad to Austrians, while he was also an Austrian, as well as Melanie. She had a world map in the playroom that allowed Richard to roam over and make freely associated judgments against the Axis or towards any perceived betrayal by Allies.
Melanie asked about Richard’s worries over his mother when he couldn’t think of anything else that bothered him at that moment. He was worried about his mother’s health, which was sometimes bad, and he felt “lonely and deserted” before going to bed. He would have nightmares of a tramp coming in the middle of the night to kidnap his mother, which made Richard attempt to save her by scalding the invader with hot water from a boiling pot. Melanie already at this time started with her interpretations, and in this case she made a link between Hitler’s behavior to others and this tramp. She then brought up the possibility that he might be afraid of what his parents were doing in the bedroom with their genitals. As he looked perplexed she found out that he didn’t have words for going to the bathroom at this time in his childhood, which she had to introduce with rudimentary vocabulary like “big job” and “little job.” He then told her his theories about sexuality as described above. Melanie eventually introduced the words “sexual relations” and “sexual intercourse” for what he described.
She also interpreted that, even though he felt that his dad was nice to his mom, that the reason why he didn’t remember his father in the nightmares as a candidate to protect his mother, was in fact that he had more ambivalent thoughts about him than he led on. This “Hitler-tramp” was standing in the place of Richard’s father. He was impressed with the interpretation and appeared to have accepted it. When Richard could see his dad in the daytime he had confirmation of his good behavior, but when he couldn’t see him at night, theories would arise and transferences involving Hitler, plus nearby bombings that shook and broke windows, it was now possible for him to believe that terrible things were happening to his mom. This was a form of splitting for Melanie to make his father bad, especially at night. Melanie was looking for confirmation in Richard’s attitude that the interpretations were affecting his behavior. He did reject some interpretations, but Melanie focused on his attitude at the end of the first session as being “friendly and satisfied.” Already Melanie could see a displacement made by Richard to prevent the father from having a bad reputation in his eyes. By saying that his father was good in the daytime, he could accept that he must be all good, but at night, he could get relief from guilt by blaming the tramp instead for taking attention away from his mother.
Unnecessary guilt
Richard’s later worries about planet collisions and countries at war were interpreted as transferences coming from object constellations in his mind in place of the family. In more concrete terms he felt jealous of the attention his brother got from his mother, but he didn’t feel that it was inappropriate for the mother to behave in this way, because his brother wasn’t entirely undeserving. In regards to Richard’s references to Ribbentrop’s lies, that Britain was the aggressor in WWII, Melanie interpreted that as being about how Richard worried that his envy or jealousy would make him out to also be an aggressor. Fears of retaliation repeat again and again in this case study. Hatred instead for Hitler or the “tramp” felt better because it didn’t have the ambivalent feelings connected with hating his blameless father. When there are roles in the family that Richard didn’t like, he could create new relations to get what he needed. In this case it was his spaniel dog Bobby. Melanie interpreted the love he gave for Bobby as a way to be in Mummy’s place, and the love the dog returned was the love he wanted from Mummy.
The complexity that Melanie went through in this case study exemplifies the malleability of transference. In case studies like this one, there is usually a trauma of some kind, like his Mummy went through, when she was run over by a car, and there’s now an effortful rumination to reenact the trauma in different scenarios to prevent those things from happening in the future. Rehearsals are distorted when they are too omnipotent and put to much onus on the dreamer who has little control over circumstances. These transferences include the level of skill and imagination that the child has at the time, which can increase the distortion with a child’s predictable ignorance. Children sometimes feel helpless to prevent accidents and misfortune and take the blame upon themselves with this type of magical thinking. There was an example that Melanie interpreted with a link between Richard’s beloved Granny dying as well as an older dog before Bobby that had to be put down. There’s was a sense of guilt that those two events were connected and traced back to Richard. His mistrust of himself also appeared in transference towards Melanie with a worry that something bad could also happen to her through his own fault.
Projection
One of the challenges for readers of psychoanalytic case studies is that analysts appear to over-interpret everything. Readers require enough openness to realize that this is a 10 year old child that is being analyzed. Even adults who have unconscious memories from the past, that past is archaic in logic as well. From the point of view of Melanie, Richard’s worries about Britain vs. the Germans can be translated as being about the marital bed. For an adult to make these connections it would be moronic, but not for an adolescent or child. From the point of view of a young child’s small world, the news of the day can be a transference playground where current family worries can be projected on. Children are not likely to make accurate projections like that of a retired general analyzing military maneuvers, though adults are sometimes happy to use terms like “Mother Earth”, “Motherland”, “Fatherland”, etc. It’s clear that interpretations by a child can be more or less realistic at a surface level, but the motivations behind the surface usually involve deep fears and catastrophizing about what might happen if personal and embarrassing material is revealed. It’s much easier to process shameful thoughts using the news of the day, or by watching topical movies, or playing with toys, so that the thinking process can be explored through fiction to avoid blaming or shaming that comes from airing dirty linen in public.
The unconscious usually includes more superstitious material than found in conscious thinking, and so guilt and blame may appear in the mind of a child as something that may lead to instant punishment or death, for example, which Melanie thought was representative of omnipotent thinking. By transferring unpleasant thoughts to a weaker object, like a toy, or a pet, they can be disguised. For example, Richard identified himself with his dog Bobby, because Bobby liked to takeover the vacant armchair that was his Daddy’s favorite and leave little room for him when he returned and wanted to sit down again. For Melanie, this was an example of projective identification, which is an ability to put oneself in the shoes of another to resonate with others and their personal wishes, or to overlap one’s wishes against the will of another, in another omnipotent thought process. How that kind of projection can betray one’s intentions is if it is based on knowledge that “it takes one to know one.” Again, there are many kinds of projections, but that is the one that mystifies people because of the jarring hypocrisy.
With projections that reveal one’s hypocrisy, there is often a lack of reflection because the mind can only take in so many thoughts at once, and because it unconsciously knows familiar strategies, it projects them, and predicts the behaviors of others with that knowledge, while the mind is too overloaded to reflect on one’s own identical behavior. A positive transference is about identifying a person being cooperative and a negative transference the opposite. If one is desperate enough, one can accept any means necessary to achieve a goal, because the end justifies the means, and if an enemy is blocking one’s goals, it’s easy to judge with a double standard. We are more sympathetic towards our goals, especially when people, objects, or situations, cannot be shared. Cooperative people appear all good, because the ends justify the means again, and conflicting people are all bad, for the same reason, and that’s why standards are not fair until adjudication is administered by a fair body or court. I think the panic, and the importance of whatever goal is chosen, leads to blindness of this hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is also likely when a undesirable behavior is so common that many people are equally guilty. Also, if I know right from wrong, and demand good behavior from others, this knowledge may not be strong enough compared to my resistant bad habits. Like a doctor who smokes, the ideal behavior is simply a goal for society at this point. It hasn’t been acted on yet.
Another reason why projection may be used is that it can be a defense mechanism. One can feel not like the odd man out when one’s bad behavior is seen in others. By not being the only one, there’s a chance that others are doing the same bad behavior, and maybe there is a chance they can take all the blame, or they can be allies in the future if the analysand has a desire for the bad behavior to continue. If there’s a policing function that one wants to avoid, having a great many others who do the same behavior makes the policing action untenable. They would have to arrest everyone. For example, if everyone else is speeding, and getting what they want, which is to get some place faster, then if I’m caught speeding, my predictable excuse would be that it’s human to speed. Why should they get away without a speeding ticket and not me? One could also avoid this problem by speeding, but put the spotlight on others by not speeding as much as the lead car. Let them get all the policing attention.
Goals are also blinding. If my goal is to eat a lot at the expense of someone else, I can’t feel the cravings of another person, only my own. Conversely, if someone else acts just as greedy and eats portions that I crave, I can’t easily empathize with another who has the exact same cravings as me. People can’t taste their own medicine when it comes to their own goals. You would literally have to imagine yourself in your opponent’s shoes and manufacture a simulated craving with the internal imagery to balance out this bias. That takes an extra leap of energy and cognitive load to process what others may be thinking. It is inevitable that many people will avoid this kind of reflection. Before one accuses others, it may be wise to make sure that one is not doing the same behavior.
With accurate interpretations from an analyst, anxiety usually increases along with denial in the analysand, until it evaporates with acceptance. That acceptance ideally moves the patient onto problem-solving thoughts to aim goals in better directions. Later on in the analysis of Richard, Melanie found that the working out of thoughts that he had about himself and others eventually came to a partial solution by entertaining the idea of his dog also having a family. She interpreted this as an early thought for Richard to also start a family of his own so he could be independent and be free of the guilt arising from the Oedipus Complex.
Another way Melanie found to detect Richard’s fixation on his parents was in the form of humor. When having fun with friends and snow sledges another kid crashed into an adult couple and Richard laughed. Melanie interpreted that as an Oedipus wish fulfillment against his parents and a displacement on these strangers. Much like displacement on toys, or consumable entertainment, these wishes could be secretly enjoyed at the expense of these strangers. When children, or even adults are in a situation where other people are obstacles to one’s goals, the mind is unconsciously trying to find a way of removing them to feel relief. Movies in particular love to exploit object relations by setting up good and evil splitting, and satisfy audiences when the representatives of complete evil are destroyed. More refined forms of storytelling involve making characters complex, nuanced, and mixed with both good and bad aspects. When one is frustrated with life it’s very easy to turn to fiction stories or movies to find vicarious relief. This process can be more simply imagined by seeing oneself as a protagonist and people who are obstacles as antagonists. Others can more or less be cooperative allies or enemy confederates. You can then add complexity to the mental layout by looking at the analysand’s roleplaying and behavior. These play scenarios can also demonstrate object-memories with higher or lower power differentials in the analysand’s environment. Splitting at first denotes the stress experienced with these people as obstacles but relief happens when there is enough good found in people that can cooperate with the good in the analysand.
Richard at the time was processing Melanie’s interpretations of Churchill being the “Good Daddy” and Hitler representing the “Bad Daddy.” As a healthy adult, there are ways of working with good aspects of a person while navigating their bad side, especially when new goals are chosen to free up conflicts of interest. Instead for 10 year old Richard, it was more likely that he had thoughts about his mom’s accident and how his inappropriate wishes towards his parents magically caused this serious accident. Interpretations that clear up magical thinking and guilt, in these kinds of situations, can be done by reminding the analysand that these were thoughts that were never acted upon. When that kind of rumination ceases, the analyst should be looking for signs of relief, renewed vigor in the playroom, and a more positive transference. Sometimes anxiety remains, because the interpretation is still being denied for a period of time. At this time in the analysis, Richard was showing some of that kind of anxiety, but a positive transference to Melanie still remained. Positive transferences can last a long time as long as the analysand has found some gains to build on early in the analysis.
Interpretation anxiety
In the fourth session, Richard seemed resistant to some of the interpretations and started asking Melanie about her life, family, friends, and their vocations. Melanie did give some candid answers, including about her husband who passed away, but she felt that it was best not to do this and it often left her with regret when she did. In this example, Melanie saw some jealousy appear about the good things in her life which attracted an envious transference originally directed at his own family. It was the same jealousy that he had when others got more attention than he did. This was a link for Melanie on how patients have epistemophilia, a pleasure to know, which connected with his uncertainty about Melanie’s trustworthiness. This also appeared when he looked at the world map and talked about his uncertainty towards Melanie’s Austria, and also Russia. Without new experiences, the mind has to ask questions about other people’s experiences to try to improve predictions, otherwise people regress and predict based on their own experiences with family and culture. When dealing with authority figures, both children and adults also want to know about the authority figure so they can make their own judgments as to whether they should be taken seriously or not. The only positivity connected with the jealousy is that the patient believes the authority figure has enough status to be taken seriously. The danger of that positivity comes from patients becoming dependent on authority figures. The jealousy in this case continued with Richard and extended to another patient of Melanie’s he knew about who was older than him. Being young he felt left behind and ashamed that he was being treated in a lowly playroom instead of in an adult analysis room. It connected to his need to have positive regard in competition with others. These kind of comparisons can also motivate patients with shame towards a reaction formation to imitate authority figures, to try to use them as a role model, to attain power, and attract that very same positive regard.
Object Relations: Melanie Klein Pt. 1: https://rumble.com/v3vru21-object-relations-melanie-klein-pt.-1.html
Richard’s uncomfortableness predictably increased when Melanie explained sex education topics to him and interpreted his deeper intentions. These interpretations were making him want to leave some of the sessions early, but he stayed respectfully until the end every time. Melanie felt at this time that there was a sexual transference beginning. Again, any inappropriate desires could fuel more guilt and worries about punishment. These same fears of a punishing tramp-daddy towards his desire for his mom were now transferred towards Melanie. He felt that consummation of his wishes could lead to retaliation from his father or brother. The fears then would go spiraling towards catastrophizing that in the end he wouldn’t be taken care of or protected by anyone. His fear of enemies extended towards doctors, especially when he could recount some details of his traumatic circumcision. Being helpless towards the doctor was like being helpless towards the father. A castration anxiety. Complaining about his hatred for operations, dentists, and ether, Melanie could see Richard was beginning to feel relief through his venting and his experience of comfort that a sympathetic person was listening with interest.
Object Relations: Melanie Klein Pt. 3: https://rumble.com/v4l5hvn-object-relations-melanie-klein-pt.-3.html
Positive transference
His relief led to an increased positive transference towards Melanie by the next session. It was easier for him now to talk about his castration anxiety, which was a symbol of his need to be competent to be worthy of his mother and Melanie. At this time, Richard was beginning to integrate good and bad aspects in people little by little. When looking at pictures and the brown clock, Melanie associated his dislike of the color brown with feces, and his hatred of other children stood for his dad, in the sense that they were just more suitors competing for his mother. Part of the reason for so many interpretations, is the assumption that everyone lies, especially about shameful wishes. This reality means that interpretations have to go beyond protests to the contrary from the analysand. It still leaves open that the analyst can be wrong part of the time. The tell on how right or wrong an interpretation is, is if the child is able to find relief after an interpretation. This usually has a pattern of discomfort and embarrassment before acceptance and relief.
Case Studies: The ‘Ratman’ – Freud and Beyond: https://rumble.com/v1gu9qj-case-studies-the-ratman-freud-and-beyond.html
Beyond news stories about countries and their involvement in WWII, Melanie’s world map became a Rorschach example, where shapes of countries could be good or bad based on how they conformed to past good or bad experiences in Richard’s life. The oscillation between positive and negative for Melanie has a manic-depressive bent, where negative topics appear depressing, but then positive things, like his looking forward to a visit to London, would provide a manic escape. Dwelling on guilt, negativity, or shame over aspects of oneself fuels a desire for escape into novelty or addiction. These are also patterns that many therapists feel is a signal to the missing aspects of one’s life that one is running away from. While in this positive mood Richard was starting to move physically closer to Melanie and asked to put his feet on the bar of her chair, which Melanie of course found inappropriate. He realized this and began talking about what he liked and disliked in Melanie’s room which she interpreted as displaced feelings about her. He continued with more epistemophilia, wanting to know about Melanie’s other patients and how he compared to them, but he understood why she professionally couldn’t reveal their details. The danger of positive transferences with analysts is that any irregularity on the part of the analyst can be construed as a possible abandonment, like when Melanie forgot to bring her key one day and had to go back home to get it.
Unconscious controlling
Dreams are another avenue for analysis and can reveal deep worries about potentially unpleasant life changes, like worries about his mother having a rival baby. At this time, Richard showed some early signs of the depressive position where he began to feel sorry for France, despite some of their abandonment towards the allies. He could see that they may have had not much choice in the matter. Melanie then interpreted that this reduction of splitting was also applying to his family. He was also starting to see more of his darker side in an example of projection where Richard hated a girl with protruding teeth that Melanie felt reminded him of his desire to bite. The hatred of oneself, for maybe having characteristics that one hasn’t gotten a handle on yet, is defended against by outwardly displacing those characteristics towards others. Knowing what is dangerous about yourself makes you afraid that others can be dangerous in the same way. Melanie interpreted Richard’s mother’s womb as being displaced onto the playroom. He wanted to control the womb and it’s rivals like he wanted to control his play environment. Slowly he began to associate the lovely countryside when he was out in the garden as the good side of his mother and there was a reduction of fear towards the possibility of rival babies. Hinted in here of the depressive position is that one can look at people less like a rivalry and find something positive about allowing for others the chance to develop their potential, because one can enjoy those potentials and successes like enjoying a nice day. A nice day can be shared as well, and if one can find a new relationship situation for oneself, there’s no need to engage in rivalry. In this early stage, Melanie worried that this was still a manic defense in that this positivity was treated as an escape rather than a full acceptance. There is always a need in people to find usefulness in others to make alliances and it takes time to accept the aspects of people that are less cooperative. It takes time to accept the independence of others.
Melanie’s interpretations of Richard’s thinking eventually explored the possibility of his getting what he wanted from his mom without hurting her, and since his daddy and potential rival babies would be in the way, she might get hurt in the process of his emotional feeding. Melanie made a link with his thoughts of how Hitler could be removed without having to attack Germany. These kinds of thoughts lead to an understanding of inappropriateness in relationships and nudge the child closer and closer to wanting an object choice free of conflict. He also accepted that Germanic peoples included good things like Mozart. Just like there is sometimes good weather, life is not without opportunities for good combinations.
Art therapy
As talking and exploring the playroom was becoming boring, Richard became more interested in drawing. The first drawing included U-boats and names. Again, you have to imagine you are a child and know very little about how war is conducted and are projecting your life onto these objects. Melanie noticed a split in the ego where Richard and his older fellow analysand John were identified as the German U-boats, and his family were the English, represented by the Truant and Sunfish, but with an understanding that outside of his play he was not really against his parents. Melanie felt that John stood for Richard’s brother Paul. He also showed his liking for U 72, because 2 is an even number, and for example, when pretending to hunt rabbits he could not know how one could share an odd number of 7 rabbits between 2 people. Melanie felt that was Richard wanting to share equally with John to avoid conflict. Melanie also felt that John was treated as an ally of Richard’s against her because they were both in analysis together. U 102 was an object Richard also wanted to identify with and Melanie pointed out how much bigger he wished to be than his parents, the Truant and Sunfish. Wanting to be bigger was a result of his need to master his fear of counter-attacks. This also mirrored his desire to usurp is father’s place.
Of course the way to track how the transferences are working is through feelings. How people predictably become labeled as obstacles is through frustration with them, and anticipation of an obstacle is often enough to cause those feelings to arise. They then can meld with any new faces and situations that are in the current environment, regardless of accuracy. Distortions are found when those 0bject-relations display much better behavior than the transference predicts. It’s like remembering tactics and scenarios for further use with new situations, whether those tactics or strategies are helpful or maladaptive. Melanie pointed out that Salmon and U 6 were more representations of Richard and John. The anxiety and tension appeared when he didn’t know who would attack first. Richard also pointed out that the periscope from Sunfish was inside Truant, and this represented sexual relations between the parents. Melanie elaborated how Richard was viewing himself as an enemy U boat and it also represented his fear of the damage he could do to his mom and how his wish for an inappropriate relationship, or any inappropriate relationship, could lead to conflict and retaliation. This also included his desire to neatly share the rabbits, which were represented by the parents that were shot, divided, and devoured. John, as his brother Paul, was only a sometime ally, because he only sometimes helped Richard against his nurse, who was also projected onto Melanie.
In Drawing 2, Richard was U 10, which was penetrated by both his parents’ periscopes from Truant, and this time Salmon. He was also afraid of the damage he could do to his parents by being larger and dominating above them so he offset that by demonstrating how a swastika could be easily changed to a union jack, showing a reparative desire to change his U boat attitude towards his parents.
In Drawing 3, Richard wanted to add color and make a “lovely ship.” This time he wanted the underwater to have nothing to do with the upper part. The fish was his mom and the starfish a baby, which was interested in the plants. Melanie felt that the ship was a corrected form of the parents with two smoke funnels representing their genitals. He hadn’t seen a girls genital so chose to make her funnel thinner. Melanie interpreted Richard as the starfish and the plant was his mother’s breast. When he wanted what he wanted and the parents prevented him, his identity flipped to the U boat that was dangerous to the ship. This was extrapolated to John as well, and directed against the special attention he got from Melanie. She saw that the analysis was treated as a form of emotional feeding for Richard. The greed, jealousy, and aggression were underwater because they were best left unconscious to avoid shame and embarrassment. His conscious mind was wanting harmony demonstrated by the lovely ship. Richard accepted Melanie’s interpretation of a deeper unconscious and expressed relief.
When Richard was asked by Melanie if she could keep the drawings, he allowed it because he could return and see pictures when he wanted. Melanie’s interpretations further confirmed to her that Richard’s roleplaying was internalizing external relationships, making an inner world for him. Strategies found in external relationships could be incorporated (sampling), introjected (preferences), and identified with, (a habit of relating). A lot of a person’s identity can be soaked up by the environment based on seeing the emotional feeding of others and wanting the same things they want. This led to competition with others to dominate the feeding objects, symbolized by the breast, but could include any objects that provide pleasure. Outer conflicts then could turn into inner conflicts when the superego conscience absorbs the external prohibitions. In the earliest stages of life, it’s about dominating the breast as well as the mother who shows independence by controlling the availability of it. Splitting arises when the good and bad aspects of the mother are difficult to predict. Paranoia arises when the breast is deemed to be unreliable, and reparative feelings manifest when an imperfect mother is deemed to be mostly trustworthy, and patience grows in the baby.
Slow integration
In this session, Richard was sad because he was worried that his drawings would be seen by his mother and he magically associated her current sickness with his drawings, and this was especially true because she got indigestion from bad salmon. Richard wanted to make a new copy of the drawing for his mother, because he didn’t want to begin favoring Melanie over his mother, like with his past experiences with his nurse. The drawing ended up being different where the fish represented the parents warding off the torpedo. The second U boat was Paul. Richard readily defended that his torpedo was not going directly to the ship. The two funnels in the new picture were now equal, as if to make the parents more aligned and respectful of each other. The red color of the funnels was representative of their injuries, and they also represented the two canaries he had at home that were going bald. Richard mentioned that his father was also going bald, but he said he liked him and liked the fact that his father was exempt from the war conscription. To Melanie, the picture represented repression from his parents trying to prevent harm and Richard’s suppression, who also wanted to prevent himself from being harmful.
Richard’s play continued to be a mixture between good and bad, but his jealousy was waning and he was becoming more happy for his parents for loving each other. Sexuality was still dangerous to him, as exemplified in Drawing 5, but his gratefulness for Melanie’s interpretations overlaid a mother transference onto her. He went back to color in Drawing 6 where the Nelson was installed with portholes, which represented babies, as well as the many starfish. The octopus represented his dad’s genital being removed from his mother and the many babies were a result of her feeling better. Both the analysis was being felt as a feeding as well as the portholes allowing access to the mother. The “blazing fury” of the starfishes was Richard’s desire to replace the father so he could begin to feed on his mother. The swastika and union jack were melding together in the picture as well as in his super-ego.
In Drawing 7, Richard was the attacking boat above, and Paul was the bad ally below in the snoring boat, because as Richard pointed out, Paul snored. The mother was protecting the father against Richard and so he was depressed because his mother was betraying him for his father, so a reparation couldn’t be attempted. Richard also described the sharp points on the starfish as teeth. During this time, Richard was still worried about kids in the neighborhood and started relaying dreams he had. One time he was dreaming about a German kid who he yelled at. He also frightened away the Japanese Matsuoka who appeared friendly at first but then turned into an enemy. He also imagined himself as an armored car that the Germans chased out of Berlin, but they eventually ran away when he spit fire at them. These dreams happened at the time when his family abandoned him for a short period of time.
As the sessions continued on, Richard was beginning to differentiate Melanie from his mother. She felt that keeping a good object copy of herself in his mind would be helpful because objects could endure when the analyst was not around. If an influence is helpful, then it means the object in the mind will also be helpful. The analyst is in the position of being helpful in that they help the analysand understand their own unconscious. Even if there is some discomfort there, a learning mentality can arise because the conscious mind can accept the limitations of the unconscious and a lack of control over one’s unconsciousness reduces blame for mistakes. It’s less about being pure and more about acceptance, learning, and hope. “It is in fact striking that very painful interpretations could have the effect of reviving hope and making the patient feel more alive. My explanation for this would be that bringing a very deep anxiety nearer to consciousness, in itself produces relief. But I also believe that the very fact that the analysis gets into contact with deep-lying unconscious anxieties gives the patient a feeling of being understood and therefore revives hope. I have often met in adult patients the strong desire to have been analysed as a child. This was not only because of the obvious advantages of child analysis, but in retrospect the deep longing for having one’s unconscious understood had come to the fore. Very understanding and sympathetic parents—and that can also apply to other people—are in contact with the child’s unconscious, but there is still a difference between this and the understanding of the unconscious implied in psycho-analysis.”
Because both the internal environment and external have to work together for a therapeutic result, there are times when the external is easier to understand and vice versa. For example, when there was a fear of a German invasion of England, Richard felt that it was easier to fight Hitler externally. This could also be a source of scapegoating, when internal difficulties can only find relief in the external. External confirmations could also be a little obsessive for Richard. He often needed confirmation of his mother’s whereabouts to prove her safety when internal representations of her were more in danger.
Denial can also happen when internal objects are preserved and made to spread goodness to feel better internally, even if the external world is not actually getting better. Of course, if the external world gets better, a lot of the internal world can too, if relationship problems are permanently resolved. For Melanie, all the perceived external relationships also included what could be deciphered of other people’s intentions, and their inner objects, so that identity is like a strong vacuum cleaner that leaves little left to mystery in the external world. “In my view the processes of internalization and projective identification are complementary and operate from the beginning of post-natal life; they vitally determine object-relations. The mother can be felt to be taken in with all her internalized objects; the subject, too, which has entered another person, may be felt to take with him his objects (and his relations with them). The further exploration of the vicissitudes of internalized object-relations, which are at every step bound up with projective processes, should—in my view—throw much light on the development of the personality and of object-relations.” The mind doesn’t only take in oneself as a subject and keep others as Others, but it can also change roles with any of the personalities absorbed. In psychoanalysis, these are relationships based on emotional feeding goals and power differentials. Projective identification allows one to walk in the shoes of others and then imitate their internal nodal relationships.
Richard in his newer drawings was representing himself as a starfish and the color coding of his external influences, the conflicting goals, and their hungry intentions. The colors of the German and British flags were incorporated in the starfish. “…The black people were horrid and nasty. The light blue and the red were very nice people and were the ones the smaller countries did not mind having there…He said that the nasty black was Paul, the light blue was Mummy, the purple was the maid (Bessie) and the cook. The very small area of heliotrope blue in the centre was himself, and the red was Daddy. Suddenly he said, ‘And the whole is a greedy starfish full of big teeth.'” It was a territorial battle inside him like the world map. “‘This is me, and you will see what a large part of the empire I get.’ Then he coloured some sections light blue, and while doing so he looked up at Mrs K. and said, ‘I feel happy.’ A moment later, having finished the blue sections, he said, ‘Can you see how Mummy has spread herself. She has got much more of the empire.’ While filling in some sections with purple, he said, ‘Paul is nice, he is helping me.’ He had left a few sections near the centre blank and now filled them in with black, saying that Daddy was squeezed in, surrounded by Paul, Mummy, and Richard.” As internal objects became enemies or switched to allies, the colors could change as well as the level of internal help or internal sabotage could increase or decrease his well-being. Helpful objects ultimately are trustworthy and rely on those external objects to be role models of trustworthiness; to have helpful behaviors that can be imitated. The colors began to solidify the identities inside him. “From these sessions onwards, black referred to the father, light blue for his mother and Mrs. K., and red for himself.” Part of the reason for domination of one color or another was how it communicated the internal cooperation or competition happening inside Richard. It also meant that he was either taking in a lot of influence from a helpful role model or he was feeling surrounded and persecuted.
“…He was also happy because the light blue—the good Mummy—and Mrs K., who had recently been wearing a light-blue cardigan, was felt to spread over the empire. The empire…represented himself swallowing everybody: he would get more and more of the good Mummy into himself, because she was spread over the empire, but she would not resent this if she were the good Mummy who would wish to be inside him and protect him there against the bad father and against his own greed and hatred.” Good internal objects need to be trustworthy and cooperative. So in this case the mother became the light-blue cooperative and hopeful part of himself. Wanting cooperation externally is also like wanting cooperation inside the mind with the objects working together in the mind. Ideally, there is a relief and a saving of energy when the internal and external worlds are working together. For Richard, he was worried about his hatred and anger towards obstacles and how that didn’t preserve the internal mother inside him. Therapy helped him to release the anxiety so the could touch that hope for future experiences of happiness. Those future forms of happiness would be connecting the good inside him and negotiate with the good in others; to not resort to aggression or avoidance when the independence of others was uncooperative. “…He also hoped to keep the helpful light-blue Mummy who was to protect him against the bad parents and the bad part of himself.”
Reparation
By this time Richard was becoming more aware of his jealousy and temper and began asking Melanie for help, because he didn’t know what to do about it. Yet this was a sign of improvement because it was evidence of his desire for reparation. At least he knew that reparation had the potential to relieve his anxiety. Expectations of endless cooperation are always doomed to failure, and the skills that people can develop to negotiate with the independence of others requires empathy and motivation for reparation. “I pointed out that the infant’s desire for an inexhaustible and ever-present breast—to which I had often referred in the past—has another and very important element besides the wish for food: the breast should do away with or control the infant’s destructive impulses and in this way protect the infant’s good object as well as safeguard him against persecutory anxieties. This actually means that the baby even at a very early stage experiences the need for a protective and helpful super-ego.” So when the children get what they want, their anger is expected to go down, but as they get older, the parent’s need for the child to unburden them by being more self-sufficient has to develop so that there is more reciprocity between parents and children. In fact, Richard’s mother reported back that he was still aggressive, but more friendly, less tense, and easier to get on with. Richard was realizing that to get what he wanted, others also want to get some of what they wanted as well. Symbolically, you want the family at the dinner table to all have their own plate. It’s important to be honest about desires, no matter how greedy, but it’s equally important to be honest about consequences when dealing with the independence and well-being of others. Desires can include a sense of peace when they compliment well with the desires of others.
Suo Gan ( Lullaby ) – Lyrics – Anthony Way and St. Paul’s Cathedral Choir: https://youtu.be/FB63gJkBE3c?si=XqJ3HAnj340vUisj
Melanie felt that he was beginning to internalize an attitude that could be taken out of therapy and applied to object choices outside of the family. “Mrs K. interpreted, referring to the empire drawing, that this meant that he had the good light-blue Mummy inside himself, and that she would help him to put his genital right. Then he could give her babies, revive her, and protect her against the bad Hitler Daddy…His greatest wish was to keep Mummy light-blue and good, and reliable.” That kind of cooperation with others furthers the sense of potency, and conversely persecutory anxieties lead to impotence. This happens when the external or internal objects begin to show contempt, betrayal or rejection. “He didn’t want the wicked brute-mother united with the Hitler-father and deserting him.” Melanie also liked to layer complex interpretations that acknowledged that she understood the layers of pressure Richard was under. Each color harbored a potential ambivalence in that they could cooperate or disappoint at any time. The child then has to realize that they should not to be compared with adults because there are a lot of skills yet to be developed before they can handle the layered relationship pressures that adults are expected to carry. Looking forward to developing new skills provides hope. “If the hope to grow up enters, the feeling of impotence in comparison to adults diminishes, which alleviates anxiety and feelings of being inferior and useless.”
Accepting his need to grow up was also a way for him to accept imperfection in himself and others. “…A person can be good without being perfect. This would imply that he himself could be dirty to some extent and yet useful, helpful, and valuable. Greater tolerance towards others was bound up with greater tolerance towards himself and therefore a diminution of guilt.” These feelings create more opportunities for relationships, but envy and jealousy is the worst when all opportunities appear to be locked up and inaccessible for all time. “One fundamental element in paranoid jealousy in my view is that the strongest jealousy refers to the internalized father who, even after his actual death, might still be felt to be permanently inside the mother and would influence her against the son.” The child has to grow up with the belief that it can rekindle beautiful and loving experiences and not feel that it will just be taken away or that they are not worthy of those experiences. “The fact that he so strongly expressed his desire to have the good breast forever was an essential indication underlying this change. The hope that the breast is uninjured and can be kept relatively safely as an internal object I found to be a pre-condition for dealing more successfully with destructive impulses and ensuing anxiety.”
Some of this search elsewhere for object-love appeared with his desire for a bus conductress, who also was relieved of the pressure to be perfect. “Mrs K. interpreted that he liked her, although she was not altogether ‘light blue’ like the ‘good’ Mummy…Richard repeated that she was very pretty and added, with amusement, no, she was not ‘light blue’, she was ‘dark blue’. Her uniform was actually dark blue…Then he added that he knew what Mrs K. meant about her not being altogether ‘light blue’. It meant that she was not quite good and not quite bad…He said repeatedly that she was very pretty and that he enjoyed looking at her.”
The light-blue connected with his love of blue skies, but he also began to accept imperfections so that other weather patterns could be tolerated. “Richard had begun to like clouds, whereas formerly he had only liked a cloudless sky. I attach particular significance to the fact that his idealization—the light-blue Mummy, the cloudless sky—had diminished and that he was more able to recognize both in his mother and in nature features which were not only pleasant.” Despite the improvements, the analysis would have to end at some point and there was still a little worry about Richard not processing his splitting enough yet and still being dependent on Melanie or his mother. “He was always looking out for protective women and, as mentioned before, he always managed to find them. No doubt the fear of injuring his mother and me, which he had experienced strongly during this session, increased his need for a friendly woman—the good conductress.”
Ego strength
Despite the inevitable idealization of his mother, Melanie felt it was an important part of the process to begin creating stability in the nascent mind of a child. “The good breast as the core of the ego I take to be a fundamental precondition for ego development. Richard had always maintained his belief in the light-blue Mummy. The idealized mother co-existed with the persecutory and suspect one. Nevertheless, idealization was based on a feeling of having internalized the good primal object to some extent, and this was the mainstay of all his anxieties. In the present stage of the analysis, Richard’s capacity to integrate the ego and to synthesize the contrasting aspects of his objects had clearly increased and he had become more able, in phantasy, to improve the bad objects and to revive and re-create the dead ones; this, in turn, linked with hate mitigated by love. In the dream, Richard could also bring the two parents together in a harmonious way.”
In a dream about an island, Richard could experience this internal object stability creating a strength in him to explore the dark uncertain world. “He said the island was on a river. On the bank of the river the sky was quite black, the trees were black, there was sand which was sand-coloured, but the people were also black. There were all sorts of creatures, birds, animals, scorpions, all black; and all of them, people and creatures, were quite still. It was terrifying…Richard said the island was not quite black, but the water and sky around were. There was a patch of green on the island and the sky over the island showed a little blue. The stillness was terrible. Suddenly Richard called out, ‘Ahoy there,’ and at that moment everybody and everything became alive. He had broken a spell. They must have been enchanted. People began to sing; the scorpions and other creatures jumped back into the water, everybody was overjoyed, everything turned light, the sky became all blue.” Richard’s details that conform to the patch of blue and green was a symbol of his belief that he could connect the good in himself with others. If he could achieve that, the world would be more open to him. “Mrs K. referred to the dream in the previous session and pointed out that the patch of green on the island and the bit of blue sky meant that he kept some of the good Mummy and the good breast inside him alive. She reminded him of the empire drawings, with the light blue in the centre, and that he had once said that the light blue was spreading and gaining more countries in the empire, which stood for his inside and Mummy’s. Such hopes were the reason why the dream had made him so happy.”
Towards the final sessions, Richard was naturally feeling some anxiety and there were more searches for symbols that represented what could be kept inside him and nurture his growth when the analysis was to end. “Richard had during the last few minutes played with Mrs K.’s umbrella, which he had opened. He made it spin round and said he liked it. Then he used it as a parachute with which he was supposed to float down. He looked at the trademark and stated with satisfaction that it was British made. Then, again holding it open, he turned round and round with it and said that he was dizzy, he did not know where it was taking him. He also said over and over again that ‘the whole world is turning round’. Then he let the umbrella drop gently; he once more said it was a parachute and that he was not sure whether it would go down the right way. He told Mrs K. that he had completely wrecked Mummy’s best umbrella when he used it as a parachute on a windy day. She had been ‘speechless with rage’…Mrs K. interpreted the umbrella as her breast; that it was British made meant it was a good breast, and that Mummy’s breast was good too. She referred to his doubts about what Mrs K. contained—a good or a bad Mr K. [Melanie’s deceased husband]. The open umbrella stood for the breast, but the stick in it stood for Mr K.’s genital. Richard did not know whether he could trust this breast when he took it in because it was mixed with Mr K.’s genital, just as in his mind his parents and their genitals were mixed inside him. The question where the umbrella would take him expressed his uncertainty whether they were controlling him inside or not. The world which was turning round was the whole world he had taken into himself when he took in the breast—or rather Mummy mixed with Daddy, and her children, and all she contained. He felt the internalized powerful Daddy penis—the secret weapon—as something which made him powerful if he used it against an external enemy. But it became dangerous if it attacked and controlled him internally. Nevertheless, he trusted Mummy and Daddy—the umbrella—more than previously, both as external people and inside him. That was also why he now treated Mrs K.’s umbrella more carefully than he had formerly treated Mummy’s…During the present session, Richard had hardly paid any attention to people on the road. He was deeply concentrated on an internal situation and in that respect he felt more secure than formerly. This more secure internal situation included a stronger belief in the good protective breast, expressed by the parachute which would help him in an emergency. Although it soon appeared that the good breast was mixed in his mind with the penis, nevertheless it seemed more reliable than on former occasions. His distrust of Mr K.’s genital inside Mrs K., and of Daddy’s genital inside Mummy, persisted, but it was less strong because he had more faith in the goodness of the father. More recently Richard had become able to direct his aggressiveness more consistently against the bad, the Hitler-father, and to unite with the good mother and help her to defend herself. Instead of quickly turning his aggression against the breast when anxiety came up, he could in a relatively more stable way maintain his trust in the breast and in the mother, and face the fight with the father. (This change in attitude was the result of his aggression being canalized in a more ‘ego-syntonic’ way.) This increased belief in the good internal mother, and the good internal father, had arisen gradually. In the previous session the depression about being left by Mrs K., and the fear of loneliness reviving his early fears of being deserted by his parents, were expressed much more strongly than in the present session. At the same time, in the previous session, too, he had shown a stronger belief in both parents and their good relation, as was indicated, for instance, in the drawing in which they were sitting together in the bus. The change from stronger depression in the previous session to greater security in the present one was also due to a manic element in his mood. He used the stronger belief in the good internal Mrs K. and mother, and the good father, to ward off the fear of parting and his depression.”
Even with these positive changes, Richard was still increasingly acting more desperate. He was trying to make friends with the conductress as a replacement for losing Mrs. K. “Richard’s mood during this session was on the whole much like that of the Ninetieth Session, with much unhappiness and tension. His increased desire to be cuddled showed repeatedly in his touching Mrs K., and he dropped things so as to be able to touch her legs when picking them up.” He was also for the first time referring to his Daddy with light-blue as a replacement for Melanie. “Mrs K. interpreted that if he could not have the good breast, he now wanted to take in the good penis of the father…Richard played a good deal with the clock during this session. He caressed it, handled it, opened and closed it, wound it, and was deeply engrossed in these activities. When he set the alarm, he said: ‘Mrs K. is broadcasting to the world. She is saying, ‘I shall give the right kind of peace to everybody.’ Then he added a little shyly, ‘And Richard is a very nice boy, I like him…'”
Follow up
Melanie did do some follow up to determine the results of the short therapy and she based it on how behavior changed in Richard. If resources are unlimited, analysis theoretically could go on for years depending on how much unintegrated material remains. For Richard, “the result of [his] analysis was, as I expected, only a partial one, but it had in fact an influence on his further development. He was able to go to school for a time; later on he was taught privately and eventually went successfully through a University Course. His relation to his contemporaries improved and his dependence on his mother diminished. He has developed scientific interests and there are some real possibilities of a career for him. I have seen him on several occasions since the end of the war, but there has been no chance so far of continuing his analysis.”
Luckily, Phyllis Grosskurth in her biography of Melanie Klein, caught up with Richard and provided some insights into his longer term results. At first she didn’t know if she had found the right person, but he remembered the bus conductress. She described him as a “man in his fifties, well educated and in comfortable circumstances, he had no idea that he was the subject of a book or that he had been discussed in so many learned articles and lectures. Quite simply, his life does not touch the analytic world at any point. He travels widely, usually to remote places covered most of the year in snow, under which lie extinct volcanoes.”
He began recalling his memories of Melanie. “I remember her as short, dumpy, with big floppy feet. I hope it’s not out of context to tell you an anecdote about that subject. My aunt said to my mother that Melanie had bad feet. My mother, I hasten to add the least anti-Semitic of people, made the sardonic comment in reply, ‘Well, if you had been walking in the wilderness for forty years, you would have bad feet too.’ Melanie had a rather loose lower lip, I can remember that. It always seemed to hang a bit, and her mouth never seemed to be closed. She had a strong accent. She was always sympathetic.”
Richard recalled that he was sent to therapy because he had “a certain amount of aggressiveness…I think I’m still a fairly aggressive kind of person.” He was afraid that other children “would hurt me, or hit me. That’s what I feared. The odd thing is, they never did hurt or hit me…I was always frightened of being hit.” When looking back at himself he recalled that “I think I was a pretty appalling sort of kid. I’d cuff his ear if I could get hold of him…I always had quite a temper. I think I’m still somewhat like this. I flew into a panic several days ago at the office about something very trivial. Tiny things do rattle me. That’s my nature. I’ve always been very impatient.”
Richard continued to suffer from depression and returned to Melanie when he was 16 years old. “I had the feeling that she was brushing me off, in a very polite sort of way. She wasn’t prepared to do anything for me. Perhaps that was my feeling about it, but it was the feeling I had at the time. Looking back on the episode, I suppose she was getting to be an old and tired woman, and didn’t wish to become involved.” Despite leaving the toys and drawings behind “he still has in his possession the maps prominent in the Narrative; and he showed me how he had effaced the border of Russia because the lines of advance and retreat changed frequently. He is still deeply interested in international affairs, and is greatly concerned about the prospect of a nuclear holocaust.” Phyllis stirred up the remaining transference in him with a copy she brought of Melanie’s book “which he had never seen before. He gazed at the photograph of Melanie Klein on the back cover. ‘Dear old Melanie,’ he murmured. Then he suddenly put the photograph to his lips and kissed it affectionately.”
A year later Phyllis asked him about his impressions of the book. Certain memories stood out more than others. “Fears were reawakened: an imbecile on a tricycle who made animal-like noises, and the occasion on which he heard of the invasion of Russia while in his parents’ bedroom about a month before his father’s heart attack. Reading through the book, he believes that the circumcision performed on him in his parents’ bedroom had a profound effect upon him. He was terrified of ether, and felt deceived because his mother had failed to prepare him for this horrifying experience. He also clearly remembers finding his father lying on the bathroom floor, tea dribbling from his mouth. ‘I can see it now.'” He still had a “‘tremendous passion’ for landscape.” There still was a change in him after his sessions with Melanie. “He was not really unhappy, he believes, but becoming the ‘sociable solitary,’ never lonely, which is how he describes himself. Incidentally, his passion for red has altered to a preference for blue and orange.” Even more dramatically, he said of the child version of himself that “the Adagietto from Mahler’s Fifth Symphony more perfectly than any words I could use sums up the complete truth of my feelings at that time.”
Even when Richard had to move on from the therapy, an important contact for Melanie was his mother who kept her abreast of the situation, especially since the analysis had to end prematurely. “Klein encouraged these letters to a degree, and on two occasions sent her questionnaires to fill out about Richard’s progress. At first the mother was filled with gratitude for Richard’s improvement, but soon a querulous note begins to intrude, she hints that Klein hadn’t got to the root of his real problems (e.g., the effects of the circumcision), and asserts defiantly that what the boy needs is a ‘disciplined life…’ His mother continued to find him deceitful, lazy, disobedient, irritable, and at times violently aggressive, especially to animals. Moreover, his fear of other boys had been reactivated. Nevertheless, she conceded that she did not think Klein’s efforts had been ‘entirely wasted’ because the boy had begun to gain insight into himself.” Melanie found the increased aggressiveness as not entirely a bad sign, and continually emphasized the need for a longer analysis. She also insisted on the value of believing in the good aspects of her son; to be a good object for the son to introject. “I can only say one thing: as long as you maintain your belief in him, in his gifts and good qualities, which are present alongside the obvious flaws, this will be a great support to him and as I know has been until now the greatest support…I am quite sure that though this [aggressiveness] might perhaps be unpleasant for his environment it is kind of a safety valve in him, and in itself a good sign, if only one could have followed up all this through further analytic work.” In some ways, the mother had to begin seeing her son without so much splitting and integrate her image of him more. “By January 1942 Richard’s mother began to accept that she must cope with the situation day by day and not expect instant solutions. She was beginning to see her son as a whole person in his own right, and not the ‘normal’ image she had wanted to impose upon him.”
The “Hitler Father”
The fallout of WWII led to a lot of soul searching for Germans and Austrians in particular, and the obsession with Hitler and identification became a worry that filtered into psychoanalytic sessions. What do you do if you love your father, but he was a NAZI in the past? Like with Martin Heidegger, he admitted that he made a stupid move and then moved more towards a psychology that was critical of Friedrich Nietzsche, who defined the ideal of the self-overcoming man, the Übermensch. For Heidegger, and other former NAZIS, this was part and parcel of the neurosis found in people who struggled with their real limitations and repeatedly failed to improve themselves. It’s one thing to have an ego-ideal, but it’s quite another to put in the work to self-overcome. Yet there is a great desire in people to feel successful and well loved by the community. This is a universal pressure that exists outside of the context of WWII. Because outward success is not something easily achievable for many people, it can be a source of narcissistic wounding for long periods of time where the ego-reality is so far away from the ego-ideal, that internal conflict becomes indefinitely maintained. The mind can attack itself with sadomasochism, and as René Girard pointed out, via Freud, and so much so that the need to vent goes outwards towards sadism against a scapegoat. This most often happens when self-preoccupation, rumination, self-loathing and masochism becomes too exhausting to endure, or suicide is rejected as an option by the subject.
Case Studies: Dora and Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gu2dt-case-studies-dora-and-freud.html
Psychoanalysis – Sigmund Freud and Beyond: https://rumble.com/v1gvgq7-psychoanalysis-sigmund-freud-and-beyond.html
Narcissistic Supply – Freud and Beyond: https://rumble.com/v1gveop-narcissistic-supply-freud-and-beyond-wnaad.html
The False Self – Various Authors: https://rumble.com/v1gth6h-the-false-self-various-authors-narcissism-2-of-4.html
Götz Aly, of Why the Germans, Why the Jews?, equated this to envy. “What are the sources of envy? They include weakness, timidity, lack of self-confidence, self-perceived inferiority, and [conversely an] excessive ambition.” He also noticed a fear of personal freedom, because freedom doesn’t guarantee success like an entitlement does. “The mortal sin of envy—together with a belief in collective happiness, modern science, and specific techniques of political rule—is what made the systematic mass murder of European Jews possible. There is no way around the pessimistic conclusion that evil can never be quarantined once and for all in a way that would rule out such horrors. Another event structurally similar to the Holocaust could still occur. Those who want to reduce the danger of its happening should work to understand the complex human preconditions of the Holocaust. And they should not kid themselves into thinking that the anti-Semites of the past were completely different from who we are today.“
Matching with social psychology, Aly points repeatedly to successful competition, and a regressed section of the population who sometimes cannot keep up, or at least they feel that they can’t keep up. There’s a double edged sword here, because there are victims and there are people who are disadvantaged and exploited, but alongside that there are people who put more effort than others. This is how these attitudes can harden in any culture and it’s not exclusively about those two cultures. It can happen anywhere. Aly provided an example from the 19th century on how certain ambitious types of behavior can trigger others. “No matter what experts saw as the root cause of Jews’ educational advantage, non-Jews sensed the difference and reacted with displeasure. In 1880, liberal Reichstag deputy Ludwig Bamberger noted Jews’ ‘unusual thirst for learning’ and ‘obvious haste’ to catch up on what had long been forbidden to them and concluded: ‘It is certain that the revival of hateful behavior toward them is closely connected to these things.'” This points to ambitious people who are willing to make the “haste” and work to develop themselves. In any human hierarchy, social mobility is a source of panic and it’s common in organizational behavior for entrenched interests to play politics against any potential role reversals, even if it’s done legitimately by being outworked or through demonstrations of skill. There’s also a difference between someone who loves their job, feels well-being while taking on challenges, versus the more common situation where jobs are a means to an end, and therefore a complete and total grind. When a worker is listless, or what people call today a “quiet quitter,” it is more likely they will feel envy and resentment towards someone who is loving their workday, being chipper, and making progress. Conversely, history shows situations where the workplace is a monopolistic master and slave situation where the worker is to be paid as little as possible, leading more justifiable conclusions that one cannot change one’s lot without political revolution. These two forces of envy and shame operate in the world of abundance and scarcity, and both abundance and scarcity are often confused with each other, because they are subjective and are based on comparison with a target group. It excludes any wisdom or appreciation for improvements over time, or a healthy comparison with one’s past self. It makes one take a second look at one’s own ambition and how it may affect others. As you try to improve your lot in an environment where other people can watch your every move, it’s clear why rivalries follow ambition like a shadow. The lines blur as mutual claims and grievances arise with the onset of ambition. Obstacles to one’s ambition can trigger again the Oedipus Complex, but now transferred to a new authority figure that is in the way. This desire for vengeance potentially extends to the entire adult world, including projections towards political leaders who are an obstacle to one’s personal ambitions. Entire ethnic groups that are ascendant can also appear to be a threat.
Once a person with a grievance exacts a revenge, or even just imagines a revenge, towards someone who is blameless, a Kleinian guilt can arise. “How do I feel about myself when I want to hurt an innocent person?” If you have a loved family member who became a NAZI, for example, how does that label tarnish the family name? How does one live with that kind of family history as a pathological secret? Can one love a parent while at the same time accept that they were morally reprehensible? Chasseguet-Smirgel was categorical. “What is one to do with a Nazi father? Apparently, the only solution is to reject him. If you speak of the need to integrate your identifications with that father, you are immediately treated as a Nazi yourself. But in the absence of identification, where there is only counter-identification, there can be no genuine choice between acceptance and rejection, and sublimation becomes totally impossible. In order to become a human being in the full sense of the term, we have to be able to discover, confront and own the Hitler in us, otherwise the repressed will return and the disavowed will come back in various guises.” I think this is a good example of how one could turn into the monster one hates unconsciously if the pattern of grievance and vengeance is not seen to be universal. Though I think too much splitting remains in the example, because one could like legitimate skills from a parent while having totally different political attitudes. Even further, no child can choose their parents. If they were a parent that raised you with love before the war started, you wouldn’t discount all of that, because one thing doesn’t connect with another. As Klein pointed out, the super-ego can have conflicting and compartmentalized personalities that are unintegrated. I think my view has less contradiction because in psychoanalysis, whether you symbolize targets of hatred as a “Hitler-Daddy,” Satanic, a descendent of a slave-holder, or just treat them as all-bad in the transference, you are probably still stuck in splitting, unless they were 100% all bad in actuality. The danger of judging a person who is 90% bad and 10% good, is that you might detect those very same 10% good behaviors in others and do a 100% negative transference on that blameless behavior. It’s how conflicts can escalate from small disagreements and misunderstandings. Carl Jung also talked about this as well when people disliked different personality types that he categorized. For example, many people who are into emotion cannot identify with someone who is mostly about cold logic, and vice versa. People can also overuse their best aspects and skills with a detrimental result in the environment, for example, a NAZI who was good at engineering, but morally bankrupt in their personal goals on how they were going to use those skills. Engineering skills can build residential housing, and there’s nothing that says that those skills must only be used for concentration camps. Ultimately, the real danger is when a patient has no good objects in the mind, or core positive memories, which leaves the therapy in the difficult situation of starting from scratch to create a first time good object in an older child or an adult. A dark inner world will find any reason to setup a dyad of grievance and vengeance. This is why any institutions, including ones that are aiming at peace and happiness, could easily harbor individuals with this mentality. All institutions, governmental, corporate, or even smaller groups of people, have ego conflicts as each individual jockeys up the success and responsibility ladder. Institutions start off usually very well, but then they gradually become hypocritical, corrupt and have to be dismantled, moved, and rebuilt again and again. It’s a problem that has never been solved, only mitigated and reformed. Revolutions and reforms endlessly circle around.
Simple Minds – Waterfront: https://youtu.be/vxXfu-Kbtbc?si=E91lAJcTY9KAcxai
The Who – Won’t Get Fooled Again: https://youtu.be/UDfAdHBtK_Q?si=_94vpM6ON10w8U1H
For Melanie, if the internal problems aren’t seen clearly and resolved, a manic attitude may appear in the external world as a form of escape from oneself. “…A process by which anxieties connecting with the unknown and dangerous internal situations may be alleviated when a definite external-danger situation becomes operative. As is well known, this can be carried to extremes, and the mechanism of seeking external dangers in order to relieve internal ones, is characteristic of a manic attitude.” In mild situations, children may want to escape their internal conflict by playing with toys, or adults may watch movies or TV programs to get away. In more extreme situations, people escape into dangerous political associations, or cults, in an effort to scapegoat others to solve the internal conflict. This manifests especially when a Fatherland or Motherland is identified with a leader, along with projections of idealism from the populace, leading to denials of wrong-doing, with wrong-doing usually being thrown into a psychological shadow and then supported by gaslighting. Wrong-doing piles up, along with internal shame and conflict, leading to the need for more addictive manic pursuits to numb internal pain externally. The way to avoid developing an inner Hitler requires a realistic assessment of oneself and ones capabilities. The past is the past and it cannot be perfected anymore. One can only learn and move on by building new positive experiences repeatedly.
Narrative of a Child Analysis by Melanie Klein: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780029184509/
The Kleinian Development – Donald Meltzer: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781855756786/
Melanie Klein: Her World and Her Work by Phyllis Grosskurth: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781568214450/
Essential Readings from the Melanie Klein Archives – Jane Milton: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780367337902/
Why the Germans, Why the Jews by Götz Aly: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781250062642/
Laubender, C. Empires of mind: postcolonial cartographies of ‘The Empire’ in Melanie Klein’s Narrative of a Child Analysis. Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society 26, 323–344 (2021).
Psychology: https://psychreviews.org/category/psychology01/