Melitta
In this series, I covered the vast majority of Melanie Klein’s theories, but there was still a pattern not covered that appears again and again in all areas relating to work and ambition. Thankfully, Melanie’s actual life provided many of the answers, especially when her experiences compared with that of some of her family, her followers, and those in opposition to her. Certainly, Melanie’s desire to bring out the friendliness in people by being friendly to them was very important, but in certain situations friendliness doesn’t bring out friendliness in others. Also, in some cases, a person is not as friendly as they think they are, which is why it’s always important to watch oneself more than focus on what others are doing.
One of the risks that Melanie took was to analyze her own children, and there were even further risks when she brought in her daughter Melitta to join the British Psychoanalytical Society to provide contributions of her own. Certainly Melitta’s upbringing was strange and the consequences were disastrous. In many ways, these disasters were a mirror of Freud’s when he had to deal with his own critics. Rebellion is predictable, especially in professions where ambitions are high.
Melitta wasn’t only analyzed by her mother, but also Karen Horney, Ella Sharpe, and Edward Glover. Freedom from the influence of her mother allowed Melitta to escape Melanie’s interpretations of things. Phyllis Grosskurth recounted condescending statements made by Melanie about her daughter’s intellectual growth and backsliding, which betrayed a jealousy on her part and a fear that her daughter would supersede her. For example, Melitta was able to pass hard exams in a second language. She had a lot of potential and her intelligence was obvious. If one could be a fly on a wall and observe this mother and daughter duo, these slights were probably more common than exhibited in public light, and must have rankled Melitta. She did learn from her mother, but she also wanted to make contributions of her own. “The history of their relationship indicates that Melanie Klein was repeating the pattern of her own mother in attempting to confine the young woman to a state of emotional thralldom.”
These situations setup people so that they feel they need to prove themselves, and this is exacerbated by the fact that analysts are often trying to bring that transcendence and transformation out of their analysands, hence the expectations that people will divorce or try to rearrange their relationships onto a more equal footing. Psychoanalysis and rebellion are connected because repression is the main topic. In one letter to her mother, Melitta made it clear:
I hope you will therefore also allow me to give you some advice. You do not take it enough into consideration that I am very different from you. I already told you years ago that nothing causes a worse reaction in me than trying to force feelings into me—it is the surest way to kill all feelings. Unfortunately, you have a strong tendency towards trying to enforce your way of viewing, of feeling, your interests, your friends, etc. onto me. I am now grown up and must be independent; I have my own life, my husband; I must be allowed to have interests, friends, feelings and thoughts which are different or even contrary to yours. I do not think that the relationship with her mother, however good, should be the centre of her life for an adult woman. I hope you do not expect from my analysis that I shall again take an attitude towards you which is similar to the one I had until a few years ago. This was one of neurotic dependence. I certainly can, with your help, retain a good and friendly relationship with you, if you allow me enough freedom, independence, and dissimilarity, and if you try to be less sensitive about several things.
Also, don’t forget that through our shared profession a difficult situation is created; this could most certainly be solved if you treated me like another colleague and allowed me all the freedom of thinking and expression of opinion, as you do the others.
With love
yours
Melitta
Typical of early psychoanalysis, analysts could violate basic boundaries and try to take up arms on behalf of their analysands and get too involved, especially if there was a self-interest. “On a first reading, this may seem harsh; but perhaps harshness was the only way Melitta could make her point forcefully enough. She had been in analysis with Ella Sharpe, but had decided to transfer to Edward Glover—in itself a highly significant act. Glover must have been aware of the letter; indeed, he may have helped Melitta compose it, as he is known to have done with later ones she wrote…By late 1933 it was apparent to other members of the Society that Glover and his analysand had joined forces in what looked increasingly like a campaign to embarrass and discredit Melanie Klein. ‘Edward Glover and I had agreed to ally to fight,’ Melitta wrote later. At meeting after meeting Glover and Melitta began to attack Klein openly, and to this day members of the British Society continue to speculate as to the motives for this sudden virulence. Since the attacks coincided with the analysis, there is little question that it was connected either with the material that emerged during the analysis or with the transference and countertransference.”
There didn’t appear to be a sexual relationship between Glover and Melitta, but some kind of familial friendship developed. “Like two avenging furies, Melitta and Glover stalked Klein’s life…Fanny Wride recalled seeing Glover and Melitta openly holding hands at an international congress. Wride believed that Glover regarded Melitta as the daughter he should have had instead of his own [down-syndrome] child. Melitta’s behavior indicates that she had an unresolved father-fixation. Glover, in his deep resentment of Klein, exploited Melitta to wound her mother in the cruelest possible way.”
As things were turning to the negative, tragedy stuck the Klein family. “The depth of Melitta’s bitterness against her mother was illustrated in her reaction to the death of her brother Hans in April 1934. Hans was working in a paper factory originally founded by his grandfather not far from Ružomberok. He loved to walk in the Tatra Mountains, which had formed the background of his life as a small boy; but on one excursion, the path suddenly crumbled away beneath him and he plunged down the side of a precipice. The funeral was held in Budapest, where Erich was visiting his Aunt Jolan. Arthur Klein arrived from Berlin, but Melanie was so distraught that she was unable to leave London. Eric Clyne maintains that Hans’s death was a source of grief to her for the rest of her life. Melitta’s immediate reaction was that it had been suicide, and certainly many members of the British Society retain that impression. Eric Clyne categorically denies the possibility, considering the circumstances of Hans’s death, and the fact that shortly after he was killed his mother received a letter from a Czech woman who told her that she and Hans had planned to get married after she obtained a divorce.” This did not stop the harassment between daughter and mother. Klein missed several meetings and when she returned, the Melitta-Glover duo talked insensitively and dog-whistled about the topic of suicide for the day’s agenda.
Despite Melanie wanting her daughter to see her as a whole-person and get out of paranoia to achieve the depressive position, they were never able to see eye-to-eye again. With this disarray, the other camps, the Viennese and Independent camps jostled back and forth trying to expand their power or to at least not lose any. “For Willi Hoffer the papers [presented] seemed ‘centred always on criticism, merely on finding spots which one has overlooked, or where one has a blind spot. The positive side was not important any more. The main thing was that the difference was established.'” Most modalities have weaknesses, but if a critic is stuck in splitting, any weaknesses are fatal. Melitta also made criticism that could be applied to any psychoanalytic school. “They are brainwashed to believe that they are incapable of making any decisions or coping with life unless they have undergone ‘a thorough analysis.’ They are also led to believe that once they have been ‘fully analyzed’ they will, like the true believer, ‘be saved from hell and enjoy eternal bliss in the life after death.’ Analysis is regarded as an atonement, as a cleansing process, as a religious exercise; getting on in the analysis means doing one’s duty, obeying one’s parents, learning one’s prayers, defecating. The fully analyzed person is the ideally good child, free from all aggression, pregenital interests, or even the most minute symptom or difficulty. The patient is as intolerant of his symptoms as his parents were of his naughtiness, anxiety, bad habits and crying. The impatient wish to get rid of this neurosis may be a repetition of his parents’ impatience with his childhood helplessness or illnesses…Some analysts seem to assume as a matter of course that analyzed parents are also the best parents. This is definitely not the case. All we can legitimately expect is that a person who has been successfully analyzed will have a better relation to his child than before he was analyzed. But this improved attitude is not necessarily better and is in fact often less good than that of a genuinely good parent.'” Like in later modalities, Melitta believed that a follow up would be necessary to confirm if patients fared better in the long-term.
Anna Freud also felt snubbed in that published works, which were well received in America, were not published in Britain or delayed. “Melanie Klein’s great papers emerged out of her own deep personal suffering, but they should not blind us to the fact that she could be intensely partisan and in some respects highly insensitive.” Both Anna and Melanie would fall in the trap of having to explain their theories to others and provide insolent remarks towards people who didn’t understand or entertained new theories. Different followers would shift allegiances or break off on their own. “Alix Strachey, Melanie’s original supporter, seldom attended meetings. She and James tended to support Klein, but in 1941, in one of her rare papers, ‘A Note on the Use of the Word ‘Internal,’ Alix indicated uneasiness about the direction Klein’s thought was taking. Nina Searl had resigned, so the stalwarts comprised Clifford Scott, David Matthew, Joan Riviere, Susan Isaacs, Donald Winnicott, and, increasingly, Paula Heimann. After John Rickman’s return from his analysis with Ferenczi he had begun, in 1934, a seven-year analysis with Klein. For some years he regarded himself as a Kleinian, although Klein always suspected that he did not adhere passionately enough to her ideas, particularly as in the Preface to On the Bringing Up of Children (1936) he emphasized the importance of the father in the child’s life, even insisting that ‘in his fantasies the child gives about equal attention to the father and mother figures.’ John Bowlby, who was analyzed by Joan Riviere between 1933 and 1937, was beginning to be viewed with distrust. Bowlby says that until 1937 he might have been classified as a Kleinian because ‘the edges were so blunt,’ but after the war he was unmistakably an independent…The harassment of Klein by Melitta and Glover continued. Other figures who were overtly hostile to her were Marjorie Brierley, Barbara Low, Ella Sharpe (increasingly so, although she had been one of Klein’s earliest supporters), and Adrian and Karin Stephen. The only two truly independent figures at that time seemed to be Sylvia Payne and W. H. Gillespie.”
As the grueling battle continued on, Sylvia Payne, pointed out the obvious. “She spoke bluntly about the large part economic insecurity was playing in the discussions; and she pointed out that a meeting like this could not operate in the same unrestrained atmosphere as an analytic session where anything could be said. Restraint had to be exercised…It was not simply scientific differences, she declared, but the anxiety that people’s livelihoods were at stake. ‘When economic fear is added to difference of scientific outlook,’ she emphasized, ‘all tolerance is liable to disappear and the struggle becomes principally one for power.” Ambition and bias pollutes all group interactions, which makes a mockery of any pretentions towards science. Ernest Jones noted that “if they proceeded from scientific differences only they would not show qualities of personal animosity that they actually do.” Sylvia also wrote a letter to Klein about her impression of Glover, and how ambition can be unconscious. “I have known from the first day I met E.G. that he feared and defended himself against and was jealous of the successful intellectual, i.e., rival woman. He is afraid of power and expects to have it taken from him all the time, so he trusts no one.”
Example of how people change when they have power -> “…took power over American Society, then it was like we have something to protect.” 12:52 Glenn Greenwald and Tucker Carlson Interview: https://youtu.be/LT6kEK02_V4?si=5CxEM7Uckl8OE04J
Attempts to bridge the gap between object relations and ego psychology were attempted but were not thorough. Ironically, there were lots of resistances at play. “In Brierley’s opinion, Melanie Klein’s work suffered from lack of precise definition. She found the mixture of the language of phantasy with abstract terminology confusing. As an example she cited Klein’s expression ‘whole object,’ by which she distinguished a person-object from an organ- or part-object. She also used the term ‘whole’ to denote an undamaged or intact object which a child in a state of anxiety may fear is in shattered pieces. ‘Now it is quite possible,’ Brierley argues, ‘to think of a person being dismembered but it is not possible to conceive of a mental object being literally shattered—one cannot take a hammer to a mental object.'” Melanie wanted to explain to Brierley schizophrenic processes of fragmentation and how there is an inner world in each person, but it was a failure.
“Klein had great respect for Brierley, and at one point invited her to dinner to try to convince her of the validity of her views; but Brierley was not one to be influenced by cajolery, enthusiasm, or good food…Forty years after these events she talked to me in the house on an isolated Cumbrian fell where she had lived in retirement since 1954. She still believed that the concept of internal objects was the worst mistake Klein ever made: she preferred the term ‘incompatible identifications.’ Brierley approved of the fact that Klein had opened up the preoedipal stages, but was extremely doubtful about her conviction that the infant had an innate knowledge of sexual intercourse, although she regarded Klein’s views on weaning as highly important. Her own clinical practice had indicated that weaning urges the girl to the father and induces in her a certain hostility to her mother. Nevertheless, it depended very much on how it was done…As for Klein’s emphasis on the interpretation of the negative transference, in Brierley’s opinion she never fully analyzed the positive transference. ‘She liked it to stay there because she had this liking for control over people.’ She was convinced that Klein should have broken away and formed her own Society; and she said of Anna Freud, ‘She’s never written anything (apart from child reports) that questioned her father’s findings in any essential way. She developed some of his findings, but she never questioned their validity. The whole experience of the public debates was very unsettling for Anna so soon after Freud’s death and her settling in England. She was horrified to hear any criticism of Freud, but, of course, poor dear, she just had to get used to it.’ Brierley’s legalistic attitude was partly responsible for the cancellation of the seminars [intended to bridge these gaps between schools]. It might seem deeply regrettable that the two groups did not meet privately. If conciliatory efforts had been attempted at this point, it could be argued, the intense emotional atmosphere might have abated to some degree…Brierley’s mind and Klein’s could not have been more different: one rigid and analytic, the other intuitive and adventuresome. Never the twain could meet. There was an arrogance about Brierley, a trait Klein herself was later accused of.”
Paul Roazen, in Oedipus in Britain, researched those conflicts and found that everything depended on whether people showed up to meetings or not. This led to different factions taking control, especially Melitta and Edward. “Sylvia Payne told me in no uncertain terms that she thought Jones had been ‘a fool’ about Melitta and Glover. (In another connection, discussing a harsh and tactless letter from Jones to former Ambassador William C. Bullitt, someone who knew Bullitt observed of Jones: ‘The man is a fool!’) At the height of the Controversial Discussions Jones was technically still President of the Society, but at the worst of the quarrel over Klein’s ideas he was living in the country and Glover functioned as his deputy in leading the Society in its proceedings.”
Edward Glover eventually resigned, and in an act of projection or confession, his reason was that the society could not be scientific. “Glover’s resignation from the Society did not in any way deter his vendetta against Melanie Klein. In pamphlets, articles, reviews, letters, he seized every opportunity to denigrate her and her ideas. In 1945, in the first volume of The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child (of which he, Anna Freud, and Willi Hoffer were the English representatives on the editorial board), he published the tendentious ‘An Examination of the Klein System of Child Psychology,’ which he had published privately in pamphlet form the previous year. In a book, Freud or Jung (1950), he suggested that, with their mystical vaporizing, Kleinian and Jungian ideas had much in common…He also spread scurrilous stories about Klein. To Bluma Swerdloff he repeated an anecdote ‘a friend’ had repeated to him: Klein had allegedly announced to this person that after Jesus Christ she considered herself perhaps the most important person who had ever lived, and she regarded her theories on child development as so revolutionary that in future she would be placed among the prophets. Melanie Klein took herself very seriously indeed, but it is very doubtful that she ever made such an extravagant statement.”
Melitta also went on her own way. “Without Glover as an ally, there was no longer a place for Melitta in the British Society; and when she left for America she began to detach herself emotionally as well as geographically from psychoanalysis. In 1945 [she] moved to New York, where she became involved in work with adolescent delinquents until she returned to England in 1961. In 1950 she founded, with a group of other psychiatrists and social workers, the Association for the Psychiatric Treatment of Offenders (APTO) in New York, on the lines of the Institute for the Scientific Treatment of Delinquency…While in America, Melitta brought her stepsister, Kristina (the child of Arthur’s second marriage), from Sweden to live with her. It was an interesting continuation of the dominant mother role, for Melitta became extremely resentful when Kristina insisted on asserting her independence to live a life of her own.”
In New York, Melitta still ran into conflicts with others, including American psychiatrist Lawrence S. Kubie. “Let me say in passing…Nothing makes me madder than being taken in. I almost never recognize it when anybody is lying to me, but always assume that folk are being frank and truthful, and then I am surprised and mad as hell when I have to face the fact that someone has been pulling the wool over my eyes. When I talked to Schmideberg in London I asked her whether she really was interested in coming here in order to carry on studies in the field of criminology as she said, or whether she really wanted to come over here to live. I would have been ready to help her in either case; but the method of helping would have differed, and if the latter had been her acknowledged purpose I would not have spent a lot of time and energy writing and phoning and interviewing people about possible jobs and research opportunities. However, she was wide-eyed and disingenuous in her protests that she was not even thinking of staying here for more than two or three months, and that she was coming solely for the reason she had stated. So I believed her and spent quite a lot of time lining up jobs, all of which she turned down; and within ten days or two weeks of her arrival she was taking patients and telling people that she was preparing to stay. She has made a rather unfortunate impression on her colleagues here, from whom rather uncomplimentary reports filter back to me from time to time. When she came to see me recently, I told her quite frankly that I considered that she had behaved badly, that there had been no reason why she should not have been frank with me, and that I personally would have no further dealings with her. I am telling you all of this, just because I do not want a distorted version of it to go to you without correction. Other than that it makes no difference to me, and I am sure it will make none to her. The need for competent technicians is so great that she will get along perfectly well in spite of her quirks.”
Roazen recounted that “more than a couple of people who had known Melitta socially told me that they considered her paranoid; one professor at the London School of Economics said she was ‘straight out of a horror movie.’ The editors of The Freud-Klein Controversies maintain that ‘many of those present felt that Jones was unable to control Melitta,’ but it remains unclear to me what on earth he was supposed to do about her. I told Glover, when I next saw him, that I had interviewed Melitta; he cautiously asked me how it had went, and although perhaps disappointed did not seem at all surprised when I indicated that things had not gone well. If I were to sum her up now, the nicest way of putting it would be that she was mad as a hatter—which does not mean, of course, that some of what she said was not valid enough. (Oddly, she had once seen as a London patient, after he was first analyzed by Theodor Reik in Vienna, no less a personage than the great historian Sir Lewis Namier; it is a worrisome sign of the extent of the power of human vanity that analytic patients so often do not seem able to size up the nature of the analyst to whom they are confiding their most intimate troubles.) She seemed to me an extraordinarily difficult person. Her mother’s diagnosis of an ‘illness’ would seem to me more accurate than seeing in her merely ‘eccentric behavior.’ Melitta insisted on demanding from me an answer to her question of who would ultimately publish my material. (I may have underestimated how difficult a time she was having getting her own views in print.) She also rather angrily maintained that psychoanalysis had ‘horrible’ therapeutic results. Although she talked with me about many things, and gave me some of her recent papers before I left, I cannot get out of my mind the picture of a small woman sitting in a large chair in a room darkened by thick curtains, and the memory also stays that throughout the interview she was sucking on something in her mouth that [I think] caused a little white drool to come down one side of her chin. It was frightening to see someone in her state, as she referred to her mother throughout the interview as ‘Mrs. Klein.’ I do not believe I ever have had an anxiety attack like I experienced after interviewing her; I had absolutely no hostile or suspicious feelings toward her before our meeting, but she treated me in a verbally assaultive way.” One could conclude that Melitta’s need to call her mother Mrs. Klein, was a continued desire, as can be seen in her earlier letter, to be treated as an equal colleague in the profession. A need for respect from her and everyone around her.
Present and Absent Friends
Klein continued on her work and moved into 42 Clifton Hill House, which was nearby her rival Anna Freud’s house. She would remain there until she was 71. Typical of all popularizers of a theory, as they get on in age, their followers begin to stake their claim and make their moves. Paula Heimann was an example who was a loyal secretary, but she also published and was well liked by her analysands. As opposed to Melitta, Paula didn’t reject psychoanalysis altogether, but she started moving towards the Independent group. Both Paula and Melanie used each other’s work, but eventually there would be differences and Paula started publishing them. “Heimann’s paper was an act of independence, and she could have argued that she had as much right to produce original and creative work as Melanie Klein did, but this is certainly not the way Klein would have seen it. By 1949 Heimann was, at fifty, the colleague closest in age to Klein. She was determined to strike out on her own, just as Melitta had done. With the passing of the years Klein increasingly resembled Libussa in her inflexibility, her strength, and her drive to get her own way…There has always been a great deal of speculation about the break between the two women. Neither of them spoke at length to colleagues about their eventual rift, except for cryptic comments; Heimann’s unpublished reminiscences are even more bitter than Nelly Wolffheim’s memoir of Klein. Also, by 1974, when Pearl King interviewed Heimann, her memory was beginning to deteriorate. Nevertheless, all her comments were colored by resentment and envy, and whether justified or not, these emotions must be taken into consideration. The querulous tone is such that one wonders if there was an unconscious lesbian attachment between them.”
Certainly in this epoch of psychoanalysis, the transference and counter-transference between analysts analyzing each other spilled out into visible conflicts. Everyone is looking for surrogate parents and children, but eventually the “children” demand independence. “Paula Heimann was apparently just as ambitious and competitive as Melanie Klein. Although for years Klein was able to keep her under control by analysis, it was inevitable that the day would come when Heimann, like Melitta, would rebel and would hate herself for her subservience in a period when she says that Klein repeatedly stole ideas from her without acknowledgment. Heimann’s countertransference paper was of immense significance in that it was an area where Klein disagreed with her to such an extent that she could not borrow any of her ideas. Heimann shed the role of subservient daughter at Zurich…”
In power differentials, there’s always a threat of being treated with disrespect, both from the follower trying to replace the leader, and the leader trying to protect their turf. “Unlike Klein, Heimann was opposed to a great deal of interpretation. It was possible, Judith Fay contends, to criticize or quarrel with Heimann, who would have laughed, whereas she felt that with Klein one would always have felt in the wrong…A passionate person, [Paula] lived her interpretations, which she generally made in a summation at the end of a session. Every session had a theme. Margaret Tonnesmann, who went into training with her in 1959, experienced her as fragile, whereas men (like her analysand Harold Bridger) found her very tough. Tonnesmann, unlike Trist, says that she made many interventions and was extremely concise about verbalizing the negative transference. To her students, she never mentioned her quarrel with Klein, but she did not hide the contempt with which she regarded the envy concept. To those intimate friends whom she could trust, she expressed her anger, not only against Klein but against herself for her subservience over so many years. Her daughter insists that Heimann’s intellect was far superior to Mrs. Klein’s and, moreover, sees Klein’s influence on many people as ‘malevolent.’ Heimann’s sympathizers (mostly independents) felt that she had been badly treated. Dr. James Gammill, an American analysand of Heimann’s, [was] saddened that two such brilliant women should have parted in so painful a fashion. A number of Kleinian analysts speak regretfully about the fact that Heimann never again did any real creative work. At the Paris Congress in 1957 she gave a paper in which she attempted to integrate object relations with ego psychology. According to Margaret Tonnesmann, Anna Freud invited her to dinner with the Hoffers to discuss this paper. Anna Freud advised her to withdraw it from publication in the International Journal, although it appeared in German in Psyche in October 1959.”
In Melanie’s late period of her work, her placement next to other theories was still uneasy. “During the congress an old colleague from Budapest, Sándor Lorand, and his wife, Rhoda, invited Klein to join them and Enid and Michael Balint at the Dorchester for dinner. Klein spent the entire evening in a long diatribe against Anna Freud. Rhoda Lorand felt that she should bring these criticisms to an end by confessing that she was training at the Hampstead Clinic that summer. ‘But why aren’t you training with me?’ Klein demanded. The embarrassed young woman stammered something about learning the Anna Freud system first. When she got up to dance with Michael Balint, he expostulated, ‘You don’t tell the Queen that you are learning someone else’s system first!'”
Melanie’s relationship to Melitta was awkward until the end. “Betty Joseph recalls sitting on a bench outside Bedford College with Klein at the London Congress. Melitta passed them; and mother and daughter pretended not to notice each other. Miss Joseph remembers vividly the pain of the experience. In 1954 when Walter Schmideberg died in Switzerland of an ulcerous condition caused by his alcoholism, Klein wrote a consolatory letter to Melitta in New York, but never received a reply. Mother and daughter were never reconciled, although a photograph of Melitta as a young girl was beside Klein’s bed until she died.”
As Melanie became older she was diagnosed with cancer. She had an operation that was successful but she was still very weak. “Michael was distraught at the prospect of his beloved Gran dying. She told him that she was not afraid of death. The only thing that was immortal was what one had achieved; and her strength and courage lay in her belief that one’s ideas were carried forward by others.” Unfortunately, Melanie had a bad fall along with medical complications that would soon end her life. “But the abrasive Melanie was there to the end. She did not like her bossy night nurse—Libussa had also complained about hers!—and refused to allow her to stay in the room with her. She died on September 22. At the cremation ceremony at Golders Green a large group of analysts stood silent, tears streaming down their faces while Rosalyn Tureck, a recent and affectionate friend, played the Andante from Bach’s Sonata in D Minor. Melitta, unreconciled to the end, gave a lecture in London that day, wearing flamboyant red boots. Eric wrote to her in an attempt at reconciliation, but was ‘rebuffed.'” Yet Edward Glover somehow managed to say something positive about Melanie after all his aggressions. “Somehow, in the depths of his heart, Glover nourished a certain affection for Klein. After her death, he described her as a blend of humor and sadness, a remark suggesting that he did occasionally recognize her humanity.”
The Plight of Job
Despite resistance to Melanie’s concepts, especially the one about envy in Paula Heimann’s case, a lot of her resistance lays in the truth of that very topic. It’s something readily seen, yet not easily admitted to by ambitious people. It’s also ironic that a bunch of people who expose resistances in others couldn’t expose their own, and accept that they also have ambitions, to be authors and celebrated psychoanalysts, for example. One person who understood that as a specialty was René Girard who saw this clearly in literary works as well as in anthropology. Part of the reason why he converted to Christianity was because he saw that it also addressed the problem of ambition and envy, like in psychoanalysis. These are important emotions because of how much bloodshed has been inspired by them in human history. When an ambitious person enters a human hierarchy, what they don’t know about themselves and others, inevitably leads to conflict and rivalry, as it is described in the Book of Job.
The basis of being a leader of any group is proving your worth in your works so that the increased wealth you get is justified in the eyes of others. Leaders need popular support and without it, the knives are out. Insecurity in all human organizations, through and through, is about controlling stable resources so that addictive pursuits can’t be abruptly stopped, for fear of withdrawal symptoms. That’s why the motto “follow the money,” is so useful for people who love to solve mysteries and unmask ulterior motives. No matter how angelic and good natured a person is, when their position is threatened, the natural response is to attack rivals. The haste needed in order to rebuff up-and-comers, before they supersede you, leads to temptations to lie, slander, and accuse. The accuracy and truth that led to those initial accolades begins to slip. The same angelic people are also impatient with playing second fiddle, and whether they can judge themselves accurately or not, as being superior, there’s a desire to transcend all role models, which also comes with temptations to lie, slander, and accuse. There’s also an exhaustion that followers feel when they are experiencing insolence and disrespect from their leaders. The key to a clear conscience is, of course, to stick with the truth on the way up and on the way down, no matter how unpleasant.
In the beginning of life, we all start out consuming what our parents provide us, and they in turn instill the typical values of success and abundance that are regularly taught, if we are able to collect ourselves in determination and hard work. What is left out is always the draining politics you have to deal with. People focus too much on the rewards they want to experience. Like in the psychoanalytic metaphor of the instant gratification of the womb, “happiness consists of having as many possessions as possible without ever becoming ill, of enjoying an eternal frenzy of consumer pleasure. In [The Book of Job], on the other hand, the only thing that counts is Job’s relationship with the community.”
When Satan makes a pact with God to test Job, God agrees, and Job then loses everything except his life. Supposed friends arrive to share in his sorrows but eventually justifications are brought up as to why this happened to Job. What appears as God and the angel Satan causing misfortune starts to look much more influenced by humans. “Vox populi, vox dei / Voice of the people, voice of God.” If the rabble isn’t careful, their God becomes Satan due to their unconsciousness to their own ambitions.
Tucker Exposes Klaus Schwab and the Ruling Elite: https://youtu.be/3ptNhhUSOf0?si=U3mHZLFZhiN-962k
Job’s friends bring up stories of other ambitious people who were brought down. “Their destiny, like Job’s, is inevitably determined by the transformation of a crowd of worshippers into a crowd of persecutors.” How this transformation happens for Girard is based on the position of the leader, the positions of influential followers, and the high number of the rest who have lesser status and no individual decision making power over the leader. For Job, he’s was successful and celebrated for a time when he rose to power.
People listened to me expectantly,
waiting in silence for my counsel.
After I had spoken, they spoke no more;
my words fell gently on their ears.
They waited for me as for showers
and drank in my words as the spring rain.
When I smiled at them, they scarcely believed it;
the light of my face was precious to them.
I chose the way for them and sat as their chief;
I dwelt as a king among his troops;
I was like one who comforts mourners.
The result of all this flattery is a deep belief that the aggrandizement is always true and never ending, which leads to ego inflation and all the carelessness, contempt, and the taking of others for granted. The ego inflation turns people into tools for exploitation.
I thought, ‘I will die in my own house,
my days as numerous as the grains of sand.
My roots will reach to the water,
and the dew will lie all night on my branches.
My glory will not fade;
the bow will be ever new in my hand.’
Taking followers for granted leads to objectification and harsh speech against them, because power doesn’t appear to be threatened as of yet, and the leader feels that they are needed and irreplaceable. The people in the weakest positions cannot get redress and argue for their stake as consolidation of power for the leader grows, at their expense.
You have exacted needless pledges from your brothers,
and men go naked now through your despoiling;
you have grudged water to the thirsty man,
and refused bread to the hungry;
you have narrowed the lands of the poor man down to nothing
to set your crony in his place…
What isn’t seen are the rivals who have watched all the savoring displayed publicly by leaders like Job. Because they are closer to his power, hence why they are considered “friends,” they seek to take his place, even if it’s only subconscious at first. “For Job to have been the object of such extravagant flattery and veneration before becoming the scapegoat it was no doubt sufficient, given the fickleness of the society, for him to have had one early success that made him first among equals. The desires of the people of his class were polarized on that first difference, which they magnified out of all proportion. It was the elite who chose him, in the first place, for their model and flattered, venerated and imitated him slavishly. The rest of the people then followed, imitating his first imitators…The absence of social distance encourages reciprocal imitation among equals. Job becomes identified with his success, so that to desire the same success is to desire Job himself, the incomparable being [or being-in-savoring] of Job. This identification is eminently competitive, and therefore ambivalent from the outset. Among his own class, Job has only rivals who are trying to outstrip him. They all want to become the same sort of uncrowned king that he was…But royalty, by its very definition, cannot be shared. Job cannot possibly succeed in this way without provoking enormous jealousy around him. He is the obstacle model of mimetic theory.” He is the lone obstacle and bottleneck in their way to the position that can only be occupied by one person. “He stirs up Nietzschean resentment; the undertow of admiration [or idealization] always ends in a disastrous encounter with the obstacle which the model has become. Precisely because it is rooted in mimetic desire, the fascination roused by this too-fortunate rival has a tendency to become implacable hatred, a hatred [or devaluation] that it already contains within itself. The type of fascination, full of hatred, that is apparent in almost all the speeches of the ‘friends’ thrives among men who are social equals…Envy is merely the reciprocal borrowing of desires, under conditions of sufficient equality to ensure the development of mimetic rivalries.” This is why inspiration is more flattering because of its distance from the original inspiration, because there isn’t enough encroachment yet, and its acknowledgment and thankfulness for the author of that inspiration. Many who are embarrassed by their success often feel better when they acknowledge that they are “standing on the shoulders of giants.”
Girardian Primers:
Totem and Taboo – Sigmund Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gsmvn-totem-and-taboo-sigmund-freud.html
The Origin of Envy & Narcissism – René Girard: https://rumble.com/v1gsnwv-the-origin-of-envy-and-narcissism-ren-girard.html
Case Studies: Dora and Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gu2dt-case-studies-dora-and-freud.html
Stalking: World Narcissistic Abuse Awareness Day: https://rumble.com/v1gvhk1-stalking-world-narcissistic-abuse-awareness-day.html
Love – Freud and Beyond: https://rumble.com/v1gv5pd-love-freud-and-beyond.html
Psychoanalysis – Sigmund Freud and Beyond: https://rumble.com/v1gvgq7-psychoanalysis-sigmund-freud-and-beyond.html
Object Relations: Fear Of Success Pt. 2: https://rumble.com/v1gvuql-object-relations-fear-of-success-pt.-2.html
Object Relations: Fear Of Success Pt. 7: https://rumble.com/v3ub2sa-object-relations-fear-of-success-pt.-7.html
This is the horizontal transcendence that Girard equates to idol worship, whereas vertical transcendence comes from religious principles that protect the imitator from copying the corruption of the successful. The problem with imitating the successful is how their skills in one area makes you overlook their faults in others, which is idealization, and that is a poor copy for religious adoration of perfected principles that imperfect humans can only move closer to or farther away from. To be blunt, it’s hard to raise your standards in a gang war. Rivalries for Girard are like adult examples of children stuck in the Oedipus Complex that have to learn that they can’t really take the place of their parents and must move into open pastures. This requires some humility and creativity to pull off, but not everyone is humble AND creative.
Envy is usually covered by justifications of unfairness, and there are elements of unfairness throughout society, but the rub is that all people are imperfect, so there will always be some unfairness to tolerate. Certainly big blunders and damaging consequences for bad policies demand a change in leadership, but envy can still appear even when success is mostly justified. Even the best leaders will have controversies or mistakes that are outweighed by their successes. Good examples are politicians with excellent records, though imperfect, who have supporters in their ranks who are dying with impatience to take their place in the sun. They ask, “when is it my turn?” When you’re on the “hot seat” people are watching your every move. “After a period of positive imitation, there must have been, among Job’s ‘natural’ rivals, a hidden growth of envy that waited for direct expression until his first mistake, some incident that could be cleverly exploited to ruin Job’s popularity among the people. Watched on all sides, the idol runs the risk of being transformed into a scapegoat as a result of the slightest mistake. The mimesis of envy [to be] and hatred spreads as rapidly as the mimesis of admiration [to have and preserve.] It is the same mimesis that is transmuted when the model becomes obstacle, a mimesis scandalized by this metamorphosis.” I would also add that the near rivals are already partially successful and quite addicted to the euphoria and spoils of their current positions. This addiction drives their need to keep advancing against role models to increase euphoria and avoid boredom, emptiness, and self-hatred. It’s a vice. This Girard called an ontological, or being–disease.
Envy is difficult to admit, because it requires one to admit one’s plans for conquest. It has to be displaced into something righteous, and considering that tyrannical leaders practically cry out for replacement, even smaller misdemeanors can be built up to the same level of atrocity to disguise a prosecutor’s ambition. This then is brought to the rabble to request support, even if the new candidates are also guaranteed to be flawed human beings. “Job’s decline in public opinion had to have begun in his own social circle and then spread downwards. The untouchables would never dare attack Job as they do without the encouragement of the upper class. This is hardly conjecture: the friends’ speeches incite popular violence…Whenever opinion turns against a leader formerly elevated by the people’s favour, the community automatically attributes the change to the intervention of an absolute Justice. Thus a whole mythology of divine vengeance unfolds in the friends’ speeches…The crowd is always ready to lend God a hand when he decides to take action against the wicked. Other great men are immediately found to replace those who have fallen. God himself sets them up in their places, but it is the crowd that worships them—only to discover later, of course, that they were again wrongly chosen and were no better than their predecessors…Although the friends, like Job, evoke his past glory, it is not for the same reason but rather, spitefully and ironically, to teach him a lesson. They feed on the contrast between present and past. Their envy must have been enormous to continue to exist after their idol’s downfall. They remind Job of the change in his fortune with a somewhat obscene liveliness; in a way, they are confirming their own happiness.” Though I would translate Girard’s use of the word “happiness” as schadenfreude.
Since life demands a lifelong ability to consume, the first among equals begins to forget what made them successful in the first place. Leaders who want to stay in power must always be of service so that if there is slander, they can survive by being more virtuous than the rivals who want the spoils, but not the work. In ambitious circles, there is both bullying to keep power, and bullying to take power. The insolence of the leader has to match accurately the situation on the ground, or else the confidence will begin to look like hubris. Even if the mob becomes fickle and replaces the leader with a worse one, which happens all the time, there usually is a longing from the once spoiled populace to return the old leader, and jointly the prosperity that once was. “Great men are too popular to succumb immediately to the intrigues that proliferate around them. Mimetic rivalry broods a long time in the shadows. That, for me, is the significance of the ‘delay’ in divine vengeance. Opinion wearies of its idols; it ends in destroying what it adored, in the forgetting of its own adoration. This is the triumph of the ‘friends.” This can be seen in modern politics when good leaders maintain excellent finances only to have ambitious voters choose a profligate replacement who indulges in deficits and inflation, which can be seen in the micro economics of the electorate who feel restrained by virtue. The consequences eventually lead to reforms to bring back virtue to the body politic.
In extreme examples, societies allow envy and rivalry to completely efface virtue. Success that is justified is not always respected. Virtue itself is a reminder of the inadequacy of rivals. Insolence is projected onto him or her, even if the leader is aware of this danger and showers respect on everyone. “The chorus is indignant over the success of the arrogant, and there is a temptation to scepticism and impiety, inspired by divine action. Why serve the gods if hubris goes unpunished? Fortunately, hubris is always ultimately punished. The chorus celebrates its own mediocrity, which it considers a reassurance. Extraordinary fortunes attract divine punishment.”
What’s dangerous about the situation with Job is that there is a benefit in spreading blame onto scapegoats who can’t defend themselves. That benefit is enjoyed and celebrated in ritual and then successive generations develop a historical record in myth where the removal of the leader provided the opportunity for the next generation to gain a promotion. The mediocrity of the crowd is often ignored and readers are funneled into identification with them. Both royalty, or the court jester, are targets for this reason. Royalty is targeted because they were given the power and privilege to rule and they must heed the call for an abundant society, and even if they do so, they cannot rule for too long without political types, who are agitated with impatience, from trying to take their place. The court jester is in a situation of dependence and cannot fight back, so their nonconformity is treated as a mimetic disease influencing corruption in the body politic that must be eradicated. This usually means that the jester is mocking the leader and inciting the followers to replace him. Alliances are then created between the average, which relieves temporarily the pressure of rivalry within ranks, and this new cooperation is also celebrated in rituals. The once enemies and factions can join together temporarily by having a common enemy and scapegoat. The fulcrum of the mediocre is for protecting royalty against the jester or protecting the jester in revolution against royalty.
Scapegoats may be partially to blame, but in many cases, through the defense mechanism of conflation, they bear the blame for everyone’s guilt. These rituals eventually become imitated and create “principalities” [Ephesians 6:12] and modern institutions where political optics can be manipulated so that the game for the truly awakened is to gain power and to try to keep it for as long as possible by being indispensable, and failing that, employing the scapegoating mechanism with distraction. “The original scapegoat is imitated in religious ceremonies by those who have spontaneously benefited from him, and then by their descendants, and so becomes the origin of all rituals.”
Any failure of the leaders that can not be controlled, such as drought or invasion, leads to an inevitable loss of power. As people gain promotions, they often fall victim to the same temptations to corruption that they originally complained about or they lack the skill to deal with those same uncontrollable misfortunes and crises. The once great leader may be replaced by leaders who only promise, but cannot deliver. Rinse and repeat.
Nayib Bukele asks Attorney General to investigate every single official for bribery: https://rumble.com/v4shw4x-nayib-bukele-asks-attorney-general-to-investigate-every-single-official-for.html
Object Relations: Fear Of Success Pt. 7: https://rumble.com/v3ub2sa-object-relations-fear-of-success-pt.-7.html
What The Devil Wants Most… Filmmaker Mikki Willis Exposes The Fight For Your Soul – The Alex Jones Show: https://madmaxworld.tv/watch?id=66639af84a2b64210e6e560f
These themes are universal, no matter the modality. Klein’s method wants a positive transference to develop a good object in the mind to rely on for imitation of helpful behaviors, like a replacement parent that one my not have had, and most religions require a deity that can forgive and allow people in the evil column to cross the aisle to the side of good. Another cultural example is the Hawaiian spiritual practice of Ho’oponopono, which targets that part of the mind that can be wounded. This is also the felt experience of alcohol and drugs that directly numb the woundedness into denial. It can be a felt experience by the consumption of substances or with consistent meditation practices. That sharp spot can be numbed by ineffective methods or clicked off when denial is replaced by wisdom. People are stuck because they can’t accept responsibility, cannot follow the science, cannot accord fair play to others, cannot accept a loss of rank, and cannot accept their own imperfect humanity. Humans are not Gods. In this practice, one prays to the universe and says I am sorry, please forgive me. The expectation of mercilessness, and intolerance, leads to a desire for lying, gaslighting, and image management. There’s no room left for self-forgiveness. This is why one has to start with oneself and the conscious awareness of existence. Self-acceptance of one’s errors opens the door to the all important learning mentality that opens up our love to fuel a desire for adaptation to try again. Thank you. I love you.
The Basics of Ho’oponopono Understanding the Philosophy and Principles: https://youtu.be/AZQ68KnDSys?si=D_FyF-f3Ppmz5cBo
I healed my younger self with Ho’oponopono – Aaron Doughty: https://youtu.be/Fk6UtIwNjkg?si=is8pDhWnvSxSGReC
Don’t Tempt Me Frodo!: https://youtu.be/00Jjj6oI5fg?si=TBngRRyl6Erw_ot7
The Lord of the Rings – The Mirror of Galadriel: https://youtu.be/K3VOf3CBGvw?si=n-vjHc7Ah9X_XnYM
Fellowship of the Ring – Boromir tries to take the ring from Frodo: https://youtu.be/dHHaKtVdfa0?si=SXFfpmvk-QLSV96u
The Presocratics: Anaximander: https://rumble.com/v1gsppb-the-presocratics-anaximander.html
Surrender – U2: https://youtu.be/Lpok-nG8sw4?si=ubWeJTdRB-E_xAyS
Somebody Up There Likes You – Simple Minds: https://youtu.be/ujeghTd1g8c?si=vWXJwlMLSCAgsnP4
If you can’t accept imperfection in yourself you can’t accept it in others, therefore you cannot love others. This is a good protection when dealing with truly evil people who will hurt you again and again, but it’s over-vigilance for others with more potential. You may also have to suffer unrequited love because others are stuck for the same reasons, including insolent people you once idolized and worshipped. So, it’s difficult for many people to accept loss of rank, due to the up-and-comers insolence and disrespect, but that is their journey. The enlightened journey is one of mental peace. Many of the fights over different psychological modalities and religions is the inability of teachers, analysts, and gurus to explain enough and point to a phenomenological experience of self-forgiveness and adaptation. Over-intellectualization is always a stumbling block. If people can’t feel it they will continue their desperate search. This is why in Buddhism, many students actually need to start with a loving-kindness practice for oneself because that’s actually what they need more than any rapid insights into emptiness or spiritual bypassing into altered states of consciousness.
Guided Meditation: Embodied Metta, with Tara Brach: https://youtu.be/zhiHCU2CpB0?si=hsdrN_iMBYTRUzl9
Dhamma Short : How and Why to Practice Metta For Yourself: https://youtu.be/p04r7sTdM3A?si=pQl6eNfxLLfhh4Tw
Spiritual Bypassing and Inner Bonding: https://rumble.com/v1gpm57-spiritual-bypassing-and-inner-bonding.html
In the ending of Job, God admonishes his critics for their pride, and the lesson for the reader is to let go of their own pride, which is a pale imitation of the creator of the universe. Before one desires to slander, scapegoat, and project one’s own guilt, each individual has to look to their own imperfections and renounce false ambitions. Job may have been given back his riches, but in the modern world where we may not get those riches back, the real rewards are peace of mind and a clear conscience. Woundedness healed by inner wealth. This unperturbed state of surrender sees through the emptiness of riches, if they are only symbols for blood money, or in more benign situations, they are just impermanent experiences that always lead to boredom and tolerance, which are never worth the obsession. With less guilt, there’s less need to lie, gaslight, and scapegoat. Your soulfulness is saved. “Our old self was crucified so that our sinful body might be done away with, that we might no longer be in slavery to sin. For a dead person has been absolved from sin. If, then, we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him.” [Romans 6:6]
Melanie Klein: Her World and Her Work by Phyllis Grosskurth: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781568214450/
Psychology: https://psychreviews.org/category/psychology01/