First I shall look at this topic from the point of view that somatising is a way of dealing with psychic pain. I shall try and explain why this happens, exploring what might have gone wrong in the early development of the individual to create this particular defence. I then look at what I think of a more creative way of dealing with psychic pain..

Early Development:

If early development has gone well, psyche and soma become involved in a process of mutual interrelation, the good psychological environment being a good physical one. (Winnicott, 1949) “The beginning of that part of the baby’s development, which I am calling personalisation, or which can be described as an in-dwelling of the psyche in the soma, is found in mother’s…ability to join up her emotional involvement, which originally is physical.” ( Winnicott, 1970:264) An infant’s earliest external reality is its mother’s unconscious in that this determines the quality of her presence and way of being. (McDougall, 1989) When the mother/infant relationship is good-enough, a progressive differentiation between their bodies develops, as the psychological becomes differentiated from the physical. A mother who does not unconsciously interfere with her infant’s tendency to both merge and differentiate, allows him to develop into a “somatic and psychic autonomy”.. (McDougall, 1989:34)

Infants move from the physical into the psychological, so that anxiety starts in the body, the skin binding the body together but also ‘holding’ parts of the personality, which have not yet become differentiated from parts of the body (Bick, 1968) thus serving as a physical as well as a psychological containing function. Infants can only integrate (and unintegrate) in a safe environment and part of this process is “a satisfactory working arrangement between psyche and soma. This starts prior to the time when it is necessary to add the concepts of intellect and verbalisation.” (Winnicott, 1970:270).

Skin, Containment and Identity Formation:

If the environment is not sufficiently safe, disintegration may occur as a defence. In a preverbal stage, mental functioning then replaces the good mother, the mind becoming opposed to the psyche-soma. (Winnicott, 1949) Lack of containment of an infant’s preverbal psychological needs as expressed through the body, can lead to a “‘second skin’ formation”. (Bick, 1968:485).

Infants learn quickly to distinguish between what brings mother closer and what is met with no response or rejection. Communication can thus break down early due to a lack of real emotional contact. When separation and difference are not experienced as positive, they become feared as they threaten self-image and psychic survival. (McDougall, 1989) It feels like a “psychosomatic explosion” (McDougall, 1989:21), as though there is only one body for two, it is uncomfortable to be in your own skin. There is a failure to create a separate identity, body and mind lose their connecting links so that there may be a withdrawal from the body to the mind in an attempt to deal with the difficulty of separation. (McDougall, 1974) The disavowal of certain body parts may take place, as well as the foreclosure of emotionally charged ideas, are undertaken. Ambivalence is made more difficult. (McDougall, 1989).

Somatisation and its Consequences:

When an infant is not shielded from traumatic overstimulation/engulfment or understimulation/deprivation, healthy differentiation and identity formation may not occur, because of a split between psyche and soma. Psychosomatic illness tries to reverse this process, “to draw the psyche from the mind back to the original intimate association with the soma.” (Winnicott, 1949:254).

This is obviously a very concrete way of dealing with psychic pain, because it is preverbal, not available to word or thought and therefore remains very unconscious. Illness thus becomes an unconscious attempt at giving external form to the internal “unformable”. (Perelberg, 1997:61) The body then contains the psychic pain. Henry Maudsley’s quote: “The sorrow that has no vent in tears makes other organs weep.” (McDougall, 1989:139) The body does its own ‘thinking’, taking over from the unthinking psyche so that symptoms are signs, rather than symbols and follow somatic laws, a regression to a more primitive relationship between body and mind..

When these neurotic or psychotic defences no longer cope, because psychic pain is not dealt with in the sense of being engaged with, psychic pain gets ‘pulverised’, (McDougall, 1974:24) discharged or dispersed, negative experiences never become psychic experiences. This is a defensive, self-destructive way of dealing with psychic pain, the body bearing the brunt..

An impoverishment of the capacity to symbolise means that instinctual energy bypasses the psyche, affecting the soma directly, with catastrophic results. Psychic pain is not dealt with/engaged with, but psychically bypassed and transformed into bodily complaints. The body is speaking, but the mind is not, because what has been pushed into the body has never been thought about and is therefore unthinkable, the mind using the body, rather than the body using the mind. Psychic pain thus stays in the body and in the deepest, darkest archaic unconscious. Feelings are not thought about or expressed. The body becomes a concrete signifier, the psychosomatic ego having choked the archaic elements of creative fantasy in their beginning and becoming split off from its instinctual roots. (McDougall, 1974) Lack of containment has created a lack of space to internalise good objects, so that there is a psychic gap, leading to projective identification and identity problems, the beginning of dysfunctional development. (Bick, 1968).

“Thing presentations”, rather than “word presentations” (McDougall, 1989:43) have not been configured. This is the blanking out of an ego function, which may lead to operational thinking, a pragmatic way of relating. (McDougall, 1989) The physically attacked body might be a way of attacking the internalised mother symbolically. (McDougall, 1989) There is a psychic gap where the good object should be, so that an addictive/concrete relationship with (m)other has developed, a total dependence on external objects. (McDougall, 1974).

Psychosomatic Issues in Therapy:

By acknowledging, interpreting symbolically and making meaning, the therapist serves as a container for somebody who feels himself to be in pieces. In analytic psychotherapy, which is an object relations therapy, in which the internal and external world is explored and the mother-infant relationship parallels the therapist-patient relationship, psychic pain can be dealt with in the sense of engaged with, as an interchange between fantasy and reality takes place. The analytic setting is like a healthy skin, containing and enabling engagement with internal psychic pain. Working through of “the primal dependence on the maternal object can strengthen this underlying fragility…the containing aspect of the analytic situation resides especially in the setting and is therefore an area where firmness of technique is crucial.” (Bick, 1968:486) The fear of not being heard or seen leads to the disappearance of the wish to communicate in case of another failed emotional contact. A voice has to be found..

Conclusion:

As the analytic process is creative, rather than (self)-destructive, it re-establishes separated links and makes new ones, which is the opposite of the psychosomatic process, which breaks links between mind and body. (McDougall, 1974) It is my observation that people who have had several years of analysis find they are in better health and more creative as there is a possibility to reconnect with split off archaic fantasies. This psychic growth helps patients to feel alive in new ways: “It is better to be mad than dead.” (McDougall, 1974:10) It is the therapist’s role to gain access to and transform that which is known but has never been thought about or verbalised. (Perelberg, 1997) These somatic communications must be listened to and rendered symbolic through language, if our patients are to move from a self-destructive way of dealing with psychic pain to a more constructive one by engaging with it..

Bibliography:

BICK, E. (1968) The Experience of the Skin in early Object-Relation. International Journal of Psychoanalysis 49:484-486.

MCDOUGAL, J. (1989) Theatres of the Body, Free Association Books, London..

MCDOUGAL, J. (1974) The Psyche Soma and the Psychoanalytic Process, International Review of Psychoanalysis 1:437.

PERELBERG, R.J. (1997) To be-or not to be-here in Female Experience, ed. By Joan Raphael-Leff and Rozine Jozef Perelberg. London, Routledge..

WINNICOTT, D.W. (1949) Mind and its Relation to the Psyche-Soma, in Through Paediatrics to Psychoanalysis, Karnac..

WINNICOTT, D.W. (1970) On the Basis of Self in the Body, in Psychoanalytic Explorations, ed. By Claire Winnicott, Ray Shepherd and Madeline Davis. Karnac, 1989..

Primary Envy:
There is conflict within us between the urge to love and hate. Freud had explored women’s envy of male attributes and Karen Horney the boy’s envy of femininity and child-bearing as an aspect of the negative Oedipus complex. (Segal, 1989:139) In 1957, when Klein published her book ‘Envy and Gratitude’ envy become a real, if controversial concept of primitive, powerful emotion, enlarged upon by Bion through his explorations of another Kleinian concept, projective identification..

Conflict begins at birth because of the death instinct, an urge to destroy the infant’s own life. For Freud, libido was opposed by the silent death instinct striving for dissolution. For Klein, there was visible, clinical evidence of the death instinct operating with destructiveness towards the self. (Hinshelwood, 1989:266) The infant feels destructiveness from within which he deflects into the outside world to make anxiety bearable. He therefore turns external reality bad through projection, while also projecting goodness from the life instinct as compensation. The inner and outer worlds are therefore recycled constantly and affect each other through projection and introjection..
Klein sees envy as innate destructiveness originating from the death instinct, manifesting itself as oral-sadistic and anal-sadistic impulses deflected into the external world, away from the infant, against the good object. Dependency is resented by the infant, and therefore goodness needs to be spoilt or destroyed. Envy is the tendency to establish hostile relations with the good object and is an attack upon object-relations per se in order to preserve omnipotence and self-idealisation. (Hinshelwood, 1991:174).

Introjecting the good object is a prerequisite for healthy development. Losing and regaining it reinforces destructiveness and generosity. (Klein, 1957:180) Gratification stirs in the infant two opposite reactions: gratitude, but also envy because he realises that the source of food and love lies outside himself and he wishes to be this perfect source. Primary envy is destructive because hatred is not directed against the withholding breast, but the nourishing breast, the feeding source of life, goodness itself. This seems to be a psycho-analytical explanation of original sin..
Klein distinguishes between envy, jealousy and greed: envy is most primitive and destructive. (Klein, 1957:181) Greed and jealousy are based on, and may cover up, envy. Gomez says that the innate destructiveness of the death instinct is clearly seen in greed, which is an introjection going beyond what the subject needs and the object can give, the phantasy being that the infant can take the whole breast and feed himself. (Gomez, 1997:39) Jealousy is based on envy, but is a later development as it is about a relationship of at least three people, belonging later in life, when objects are recognised and differentiated. (Segal, 1988:40).

Development:
Primary envy starts in the paranoid-schizoid position. Envy between mother and baby becomes internalised, resulting in a severe and envious super-ego, which attacks the individual’s creative abilities. It is this spoiling aspect of envy which is so damaging to development, since the very source of goodness is turned bad and a good object cannot be introjected, causing ego development to suffer. This lack of a good object increases envy of others who have one, and a vicious circle starts. However, envy may be split off early in development through violent projective identification, resulting in a depletion of the ego. (Hinshelwood, 1991:172).

These violent attacks are what Bion describes, when referring to Klein’s theories, saying: “the name she gives the mechanism by which parts of the personality are split off and projected into external objects.” (Bion, 1959: 93).

Envy begins at birth, when the infant relates to part-objects, but continues into whole-object relationships. In the depressive position, an envious attack on a loved object stimulated by its goodness causes guilt and interferes with reparation. (Segal, 1989:142) Envy is about envying what the other possesses and is, and spoiling that, rather than obtaining it. The infant may have phantasies of getting into the good object and destroying it from within, via projection; or the good object may be damaged in phantasy by tearing it to pieces and taking it inside the self, via introjection. The good object is spoilt through violent possession or control. This may lead to unsatisfied hunger as the internal state remains empty, the infant taking in damaged objects, each causing a greater hunger for a good object. (Hinshelwood, 1991:171).

Envy of the breast can get displaced onto the penis, which is less destructive, and can lead to a sense of healthy rivalry, as it is not guilt-ridden, (Segal, 1988:52) but if it happens too early may lead to premature sexualisation. (Segal, 1989:142) “Excessive envy interferes with adequate oral gratification and so acts as a stimulus towards the intensification of genital desires.” (Klein, 1957:195).

Defences:
Because envy causes anxiety defences, such as splitting and projective identification, are mobilised, as I will show later. However these defences adversely affect development and are therefore unsuccessful: in later life envy can prevent people from receiving anything. Whole areas of life may become restricted. Feeding, reading, learning, and a person’s sexual gratification may be negatively affected. Envious people cannot experience gratitude and their ability to love and enjoy life is limited. Envy will make a person insecure, which fuels envy of others who are more secure, which causes bad relations. Envious people experience difficulties at every stage of development, especially as they get older. They will find it difficult to make way for the next generation, while enjoying their own successes or regretting their failures with grace. (Joseph, 1989:186).
The envious person may envy the other’s quiet intelligence or peace of mind and sets about provoking them until they loose their cool. They cannot face another’s success, enjoyment or pleasure. They cannot bear that something good is given to them by another person. They will begrudge recognising its value and will be unable to experience gratitude. The envious person may become confused about whether a person is good or bad; this may counteract the guilt about having spoilt the primary object. They may want to stir up envy in others to give them a sense of superiority, but then also feel threatened. This can lead to underachievement, because of fear of others’ envy, but may really be a projection of their own. They may want to devalue the envied object as it then need not be envied. (Klein, 1957:217) If the analyst becomes dull and stupid he is not much use to them, but their envy is appeased, there is nothing left to envy and their mental balance is restored..

We sometimes stifle feelings of love and intensify feelings of hate as this is less painful than bearing the guilt from the mixture of feelings of love, hate and envy. (Klein, 1957:219) This may take on the appearance of indifference and will make helpful responses from the therapist particularly hard to bear: they may be heard as cold and patronising..

Envy may lead to a negative therapeutic reaction and interminable treatments. Klein believed that the analysis of split-off envy could lead to the overcoming of this reaction and make analysis more effective, by integrating it, thus freeing and enriching the therapeutic relationship and the whole personality. (Klein, 1957:233) However she thought that in certain cases envy was rooted in unalterable constitutional factors so powerful that no integration could be achieved..

Environment:
Klein is criticised for not taking the environment into consideration. Bion taking the concept of destructiveness further, showed that envy can be influenced by the environment: out of dread of annihilation by the death instinct, the infant projects fear of death into the mother. If the mother is able to contain these feelings, “and yet retain a balanced outlook” (Bion, 1959:104) they become modified before the infant receives them back in digestible form. If the mother cannot contain his feelings, the infant feels he is too much for the mother and internalises a bad sense of himself. This leaves him in a devalued position and he envies the superior position of the mother and later other people with happier dispositions..

Bion’s words describe it well: “The result is excessive projective identification by the patient and a deterioration of her developmental processes.” (Bion, 1959:105)
However, some infants are “overwhelmed with hatred and envy of the mother’s ability to retain a comfortable state of mind although experiencing the infant’s feelings.” (Bion, 1959:105) This may provoke envious attacks..

“Attacks on the link, therefore, are synonymous with attacks on the analyst’s, and originally the mother’s peace of mind. The capacity to introject is transformed by the patient’s envy and hate into greed devouring the patient’s psyche; similarly, peace of mind becomes hostile indifference.” (Bion, 1959:106) This is experienced by the infant as having taken his own value away. (O’Shaughnessy, 1992:92).

A mother who can receive the infant’s projective identifications plays a significant part in the acquiring a sense of curiosity and integrating learning. The subsequent introjection by the child of an object based on this capacity provides the infant with an internal object capable of knowing and informing, creating a capacity for self-knowledge and communication between different aspects of the personality. A helpful superego gets installed. (Britton, 1992:106).

If this process goes wrong, an “ego-destructive superego” (Bion, 1959: 107) gets installed, which goes against creative thinking. The infant then has an idea of a world which does not want to know him and does not want to be known. Curiosity gets stifled..

Bion says that “The disturbance of the impulse of curiosity on which all learning depends, and the denial of the mechanism by which it seeks expression, makes normal development impossible. (Bion, 1959:108) Therefore, “The patient appears to have no appreciation of causation and will complain of painful states of mind while persisting in courses of action calculated to produce them.” (Bion, 1959:108) It must be interpreted to the patient that he has no interest in causation. This may lead to some modification of conduct. (Bion, 1959:108).

Bion suggests that “On some occasions the destructive attacks on the link between patient and environment, or between different aspects of the patient’s personality, have their origin in the patient, in others in the mother. “ (Bion, 1959: 106).

Britton suggests a third influence, the father’s capacity to contain his wife’s anxieties enabling her to be more receptive and internally free to respond to her infant’s emotional states. (Britton, 1992:110) If this goes wrong, mother is represented as inadequate and restricted, a lifeless object, father as free and dangerous a picture of uncontained violence; this leads to the claustrophobic-agoraphobic dilemma, a deathly container, or exposure in a shattered world..

Learning Problems:
Bion talks about how the impulse to be curious and the integration of knowledge can be destroyed by envy. The conduct of emotional life then becomes a problem. (Bion, 1959:107) If the infant generally avoids difficult thoughts and feelings, this may later interfere with absorbing and integrating knowledge. This may run parallel with envy and jealousies of the coupling of ideas of mental intercourse against which destructive attacks are made. This may be envy of mental intercourse between two people or what takes place in someone else’s mind..

Bion describes projective identification as the first link between infant and mother. This can develop in a destructive or creative way and these early emotions affect the infant’s approach to his exploring or perceiving reality – which is the beginning of learning. (Riesenberg Malcolm, 1992:122) Thus Bion brings together emotion and cognition, and he says this always happens in a meaningful relationship between two people, be it infant and parent in infancy, or patient and analyst in analysis..

Gratitude:
While envy spoils the good and cannot allow it proper recognition, jealousy moves towards a state of mind in which appreciation grows stronger. This is a progression towards lessening destructiveness and strengthening generosity, leading from primitive destructiveness to hatred of external sources of life, to an eventual jealousy and finally to healthy competitiveness. The parallel process is a projective identification that is modified from violent expulsion to becoming an interpersonal form of communication and eventually a benign empathy. (Hinshelwood, 1994:143).

As internal and external objects become more integrated, the infant begins to experience absence as the loss of good, rather than an attack. A capacity for reparation develops and with it belief in his own goodness. This is the basis for experiencing generosity and gratitude, which fosters creativity..

If the individual has sufficient capacity for love and generosity, he will be able to counteract envy and yet to be aware of its existence so as to allow others to be worthy of it. This is what analysis does: it brings about insight into the depths of envy and it rediscovers and releases split-off or stifled love, gratitude and generosity. (Joseph, 1989:191) The ideal breast, introjected with love becomes part of the ego, which itself will contain more goodness. Envy lessens as gratification increases, allowing for more gratitude, which lessens envy. (Segal, 1988:52) We have a benign cycle, dominated by the life instinct when envious impulses are modified by jealousy, which brings about healthy aspiration..

Conclusion:
Klein’s courage led her to face destructiveness more directly than others. Her theories help us realise the extremes of our own and others’ hate. If we can bear the most dreadful parts of being human beings and acknowledge that in ourselves and others, we will be more emotionally free, love, gratitude and generosity may develop. Bion looks at the influence of primary envy and the environment on ego development and the effect these can have on learning. If things go well, creativity will develop..

Bibliography:

BOLLAS, C. (1987) The Shadow of the Object, Free Association Books..

BRITTON, R. (1989) The Missing Link, ed. D. Breen, The Gender Conundrum, The New Library of Psychoanalysis, Routledge 1993.

BRITTON, R. (1999) Getting in on the Act, Int. J. Psychoanalysis, Vol80.

CARPY, D. (1989) Tolerating the Countertransference: a Mutative Process, Int. J. Psychoanalysis, Vol70.

COOPER, J. (1993) Narcissism in the Emperors New Clothes, Journal of the British Association of Psychotherapists, No 25, Summer1993..

FREUD, S. (1914) On Narcissism: An Introduction, The Standard Edition of the Complete Works, Volume XIV, Vintage 2001.

GABBARD, G.O. (1995) Countertransference: the emerging Common Ground. Int. J. Psychoanalysis, Vol76 .

KERNBERG, O. F. (1970) Factors in the Treatment of Narcissistic Personalities, in Essential Papers on Narcissism, 1986. .

KLEIN, M. (1957) Envy and Gratitude, printed in Envy and Gratitude and Other Works, London, 1997, Vintage. .

KLEIN, M. (1935) A contribution to the Psychogenesis of Manic-Depressive States, printed in Love, Guilt and Reparation, London, 1998, Vintage..

KLEIN, M. (1940) Mourning and its Relation to Manic-Depressive States, printed in Love, Guilt and Repatation, London, 1998, Vintage. .

KOHUT, H. and WOLF, E. (1978) The Disorders of the Self and their Treatment: An Outline. Int. J. Psychoanalysis Vol59.

MOLLON, P. (1993) The Fragile Self. Whurr Publishers Ltd..

MOLLON, P. (2002) Shame and Jealousy. Karnac..

OGDEN, T. (1989) The Initial Analytic Meeting, The Primitive Edge of Experience, Jason Aronson..

ROSENFELD, H. (1987) Destructive Narcissism and the Death Instinct, in Impasse and Interpretation, Tavistock London..

STEINER, J. (1993) Psychic Retreats, London, Routledge..

SYMINGTON, N. (1983) The Analysyt’s Act of Freedom as Agent of Therapeutic Change, Int. Rev. Psychoanal. Vol 10 .

In this paper I shall explore aspects of depression which I feel are important, such as ambivalence, hopelessness, masochism, hostility and addictive relationships, and explain some of the dynamics behind these. I shall try and show how these feelings and their defences develop from childhood..

Ambivalence

Freud realised that unconscious, ambivalent feelings towards the object, which complicate the relationship with it “is a precondition for melancholia”. (Freud, 1917:251) We have unconscious struggles due to our ambivalent feelings because of traumatic experiences in connection with the object, but these remain in “the region of the memory traces of things”. (Freud, 1917:256) The object can thus be kept good..

Bibring touches on the concept of ambivalence when he talks about ‘depersonalisation’ which develops in place of an outburst of anger. This is a defence mechanism against overwhelming tensions within the ego, (Bibring, 1953:28) presumably because of ambivalent feelings towards the object, which cannot be expressed..

Fairbairn develops Freud’s ideas of ambivalence: the child internalises his bad objects because he wants to control them and needs them “for if they neglect him, his need for them is increased.” (Fairbairn, 1943:67) This is a chilling statement in terms of the development of ambivalence because of a strong fixation to the bad object in the small child. While the object is present, the internalised bad object is modified by its better qualities, but once the object is lost, the person is then left to the mercy of the internalised bad object; if he cannot embrace the healthy mourning process, he is then left objectless. (Fairbairn, 1943:70).

An ambivalent relationship with an object can be caused by the object’s own depression, silent hostility or withdrawal, “brutally transforming a living object, which was a source of vitality for the child, into a distant figure, toneless, practically inanimate.” (Green, 1986:142) This may cause a premature disillusionment, a loss of love and meaning. “The infant has the cruel experience of his dependence on the variations of the mother’s moods.” (Green, 1986:153) These memory traces remain in abeyance within the subject and “the child’s ambivalence is structured by the fear of the loss of the object” or the loss of its love. (Armstrong-Perlman, 1991:348).

Hopelessness and Helplessness

Freud touches on this theme when he writes about the fact that in depression, the subject finds it difficult to consciously perceive what he has lost, which presumably induces a nebulous feeling of defeat and low self-esteem. “In mourning it is the world which has become poor and empty; in melancholia it is the ego itself.” (Freud, 1917:246).

Bibring defines depression as “the emotional expression of a state of hopelessness and powerlessness of the ego” (Bibring, 1953:24), which leads to a “collapse of self-esteem of the ego.” (Bibring, 1953:26) In the oral stage, frustration can lead to a feeling of helplessness, in the anal stage, feelings of powerlessness and fear of punishment may be added which can lead to a sense of guilt, remorse and too much/lack of control over aggressive impulses. In the phallic stage the fear of being defeated, ridiculed and humiliated could be incurred. “…such traumatic experiences occur in early childhood and establish a fixation of the ego to the state of helplessness.” (Bibring, 1953:39) “A predisposition to depression may be created in early childhood due to a lowering of self-esteem because of weakness, defeat, lack of attention or respect.” (Bibring, 1953:42).

Against the shamefulness of these experiences, defences are erected. In terms of the child and his bad objects, “It is obviously preferable to be conditionally good than to be conditionally bad…it is preferable to be conditionally bad than unconditionally bad.” (Fairbairn, 1943:66) This is the defence of guilt, or the moral defence. The child attempts to repair the bad object, the ‘dead mother’ (Green, 1986) and feels “the measure of his impotence after having felt the loss of the mother’s love and the threat of the loss of the mother herself.” (Green, 1986:150) This leads to a general feeling of impotence “to love, to make the most of one’s talents” (Green, 1986:148). This can cause the feeling of emptiness, so characteristic of depression..

Hostility and Masochism

As these patients have learnt to be acutely perceptive and adaptive to the needs of others, they are not in touch with their own anger. This leads to unconscious hostility and possibly masochism. Patients treat themselves as objects, directing against themselves “the hostility which relates to an object.” (Freud, 1917:252) “The patients usually succeed…in taking revenge on the original object and tormenting their loved one through their illness, having resorted to it in order to avoid the need to express their hostility to him openly.” (Freud, 1917:251) This, I think, can be the self-righteousness of the moral defence: “The ego may enjoy in this the satisfaction of knowing itself as the better of the two, as superior to the object.” (Freud, 1917:257).

Fairbairn explains that the child, who experiences a relationship with a bad object as intolerably shameful, prefers to become bad himself, to make his objects good, “he is really taking upon himself the burden of badness which appears to reside in his objects.” (Fairbairn, 1943:65) This means that the child establishes some outer security at the cost of inner confidence, the ego being left at the mercy of internal persecutors. Defences are erected, such as repression, the bad objects are banished to the unconscious, the good objects become the superego, which causes the ego to feel inadequate and guilty, leading to the moral defence: “…it is better to be a sinner in a world ruled by God than to live in a world ruled by the Devil.” (Fairbairn, 1943:66) The child blames himself: “The subject attributes the responsibility to himself, his manner of being…it becomes forbidden for him to be.” (Green, 1986:151) The child would rather die than direct destructive hostility to the outside world, because of the fragility of the object..

Hostility and Addiction

Armstrong-Perlman writes about how the frustrating, shameful, humiliating and hated aspects of these addictive, perverse and masochistic relationships are denied. “The individual is fixated to a particular form of object choice.” (Armstrong-Perlman, 1991:346), i.e. an ambivalent object found to be both exciting and rejecting, like the original object, the mother with her “duality of aspects.” (Armstrong-Perlman, 1991:347).

Conclusion

This shows that when working with depressed patients it is important to get them to a stage where they can acknowledge the ambivalence towards the original object and therapist, so that the patient can begin to dissolve the cathexis to the exciting object and accept that their wish for the loving acceptance by the original object is hopeless. They need to feel that they can survive this trauma with sadness and mourn for that which they did not receive and that this no longer means that there is no hope for the self. As Fairbairn says, the appeal of the good object, the therapist, rather than the allure of the bad object, can promote the dissolution of the cathexis of the internalised bad object. (Faribairn, 1943:74) There will be anger and ambivalence towards the therapist, who will be consistent, but will also fail the patient. The patient hopefully replaces depression with some healthy aggression towards life..

Bibliography

ARMSTRONG-PERLMAN, E.M. (1991) The Allure of the Bad Object, Journal of the British Association of Psychotherapists, No 22.

BIBRING, M. D. (1953) The Mechanism of Depression, in Affective Disorders (1953) ed. P. Greenacre N.Y. International University Press..

FAIRBAIRN, R. (1943) The Repression and Return of Bad Objects (with Special Reference to the ‘War Neuroses’), in Psycho-Analytic Studies of the Personality, Routledge..

FREUD, S. (1917) Mourning and Melancholia, Standard Edition Vol XIV, Hogarth Press..

GREEN, A. (1986) On Private Madness, Chapter 7, Karnac Books, 1986..

Summary

This is an article about the concept of mirroring. I shall be looking at Winnicott’s paper ‘The Mirror Role of Mother and Family in Child Development’ primarily, but also at ‘Primary Maternal reoccupation’ and ‘Ego Distortions in Terms of True and False Self’ and see how these three papers link with each other when looking at mirroring. I shall also be taking Kohut’s ideas into account when exploring the areas of responsive, distorted and absent mirroring, how they will influence the growing child and what implications there may be for therapy..

Introduction

The root of the word ‘to mirror’ means ‘to look, to wonder’. (Pines, 1982, 1) and we often wonder how we are looked at. Other people’s eyes are like pools of water which reflect our image. Narcissus tried to find himself in the mirroring pond albeit in a narcissistically self-absorbed way, perhaps not having been sufficiently mirrored by an equally self-absorbed mother. (Pines, 1982,1) The very presence of a mirror in a room causes people to be more self-aware. (Pines, 1982, 9) The need to be seen is compelling; some children may provoke parental hate in order to have negative intimacy if their parents cannot provide mirroring. Others find their reflection in “intrasubjective dialogues” as a way of making up for the lack of interpersonal play. (Bollas, 1987, 143).

Responsive mirroring

In ‘The Mirror Role of Mother and Family in Child Development’ Winnicott writes about a stage of emotional development, when the infant still perceives mother as part of himself. Therefore, if the environmental mother performs her functions of holding and handling in a good-enough way, she also presents herself as an object in such a way which will respect “the infant’s legitimate experience of omnipotence.” (Winnicott, 1971, 112) If mother mirrors him, he sees himself in her face and gets to know himself. Mother’s mirroring gaze upon her infant is thus a founding experience as it establishes a template in the infant’s ego as a site for something good and confirms the infant’s place in the world; moreover, how we have been looked at in early life may determine what we see in other people later..

However Winnicott says that this good enough mothering “is too easily taken for granted.” (Winnicott, 1971, 112) In ‘Primary Maternal Preoccupation’ Winnicott seems to me to be saying that “this state of heightened sensitivity” (Winnicott, 1956, 302) is necessary for the mother to be able to mirror her baby. He also says that “a woman must be healthy in order to…develop this state” (Winnicott, 1971, 302) as it happens at a deeply unconscious level. He says that “…if the mother provides a good enough adaptation to need, the infant’s own line of life is disturbed very little by reactions to impingements.” (Winnicott, 1956, 302).

This reminds me of what he says in ‘Ego distortions in terms of True and False Self’ about how the True Self develops. This to me is a further clue as to how responsive mirroring happens naturally as the mother “meets this infantile omnipotence revealed in a gesture.” (Winnicott, 1956 145) I believe that this can only come from her own True Self. Therefore, I think that these three papers hang together in terms of giving us a sequence of how good mirroring happens: a mother who is in touch with who she is, is more likely to achieve Primary Maternal Preoccupation and thus in turn is more able to mirror her infant and encourage the infant’s True Self to emerge, and in turn this infant when becoming a mother will be more likely to achieve primary Maternal Preoccupation, which will continue the process for the next generation..

In Kohut’s thinking “the confirming/mirroring process” is also very important. (Klein, 1987, 208) For Kohut, mirroring is a two-way process: firstly accurate empathy, i.e. knowing and absorbing what the child is feeling and communicating back recognition and acceptance of this. Secondly doing something about it. (Klein, 1987, 211 ) The child will then develop into an autonomous self, as the self-object is the child’s experience of its own power and competence. The proud smile of the parents will enhance the child’s inner security and self-worth. The glint in the parent’s eye, the shared joy that mirrors the child’s grandiosity, will indeed say: ‘You are the fairest of them all!’ but can also curb the display by adopting a realistic attitude in regard to the child’s limitations. (Kohut & Wolf, 1986, 183) The child may then not need to find ways of “getting the mirror to notice and approve” (Winnicott 1960, 114) by living a life in complete reference to the parents.

Distored mirroring

Winnicott says that the mother with a depressed face will puzzle the infant, and he will get a distorted image of himself: “Many babies, …have a long experience of not getting back what they are giving. They look and they do not see themselves.” (Winnicott, 1971, 112) Apperception then becomes perception and these babies study the mother’s face “as we all study the weather.” (Winnicott, 1971, 112) The infant, in order to make sense of mother’s face learns to predict her moods. This leads to a sense that a mirror is something to be looked at rather than looked into; Winnicott draws a parallel with how later, young people look at themselves in the mirror, perhaps touching on Lacan’s idea of being image conscious, (Benvenuto & Kennedy, 1986) firstly in terms of their own appearance and secondly in terms of what they see when they fall in love. (Winnicott, 1971, 113) Winnicott describes the patient with a depressed mother who chose a depressed nurse so that she would not steal the children away with her liveliness. (Winnicott, 1971, 115) Winnicott argues that if such a distortion of development between mother and baby occurs, the parents may get caught up in spoiling or doing therapy, rather than parenting. (Winnicott, 1956, 203) Kohut argues that faulty mirroring hinders the development of an independent, vigorous self, because mother’s need, to keep the child dependent, is predominant. (Kohut & Wolf, 1986, 193) There is a mode of being with a child, which always imposes mother’s needs, perhaps because her fragile self feels threatened by the child’s innate grandiosity. There may then be little sense of liveliness about such people, presumably aggressive feelings have been suppressed..

Lack of mirroring

I think that lack of mirroring is perhaps what Winnicott calls, “worse still the rigidity of her own defences” (Winnicott, 1971, 112) as opposed to a depressed mother. Perhaps a mother with a rigid face gives the baby the sense of never having been seen at all. This lack of the other there may even be more damaging because it is a trauma of what did not happen and may be what Winnicott means when he says “the infant might be expected to die physically, because cathexis of external objects is not initiated.” (Winnicott, 1971, 146) The infant remains isolated and suffers the fear of annihilation. “The wound the baby suffers is thus not an external lack to which he could react, but a trauma, a brokenness, which runs throughout his subjectivity” (Gomez, 1997, 88) and “the primitive agony of not being able to communicate because there seems to be no way of connecting with anyone, even oneself.” (Gomez, 1997, 89.).

In the absence of a mirroring mother the “baby slips into compliance and identifies with the negative functioning of the mother”. (Symington, 1986, 313) The baby is filled with terror, and in order to deal with this void, it internalises “the bad False Self mother functioning”. (Symington, 1986, 313). The False Self is therefore composed of the hated non-responsive aspects of the mother. This adaptation creates a feeling of closeness to mother to compensate for her distance. (Symington, 1986, 316) In fact Kohut argues that the lonely unmirrored children later suffer from profound anxiety and a loss of the sense of the continuity of the self in time and of its cohesiveness in space. Apprehensive brooding concerning the fragments of the body, may express itself by worry about health. (Kohut & Wolf, 1986, 183)

Implications for therapy

Psychotherapy is “a long-term giving the patient back what the patient brings. It is a complex derivative of the face that reflects what is there to be seen.” (Winnicott, 1971, 117) If something has gone wrong at the mirroring stage, people have no strong self-image. It is as if the client’s image needs to be held for a while by the therapist, so that he will have the strength to hold it for himself. (Klein, 1987 366/7) A “mirror transference” (Kohut, 1986, 186) will develop, which will give the client that feeling of omnipotence which he has missed out on in early life..

Just as it is more important what the parents are, rather than what they do, so essentially a therapist needs to be able to respond from his True Self.

Conclusion

In this paper I have tried to show that for an infant to develop optimally, he needs the foundational experience of a authentically mirroring mother. Socialisation occurs “through mutual interactions with the sensitive mother.” (Zinkin, 1978, 4) However Zinkin also argues that giving babies interesting things to look at, will cause babies to focus, but including them in a social environment, helps them to relax and be more open: “…the individual emerges, always incompletely, from a matrix of communality, which is also held within the self.” (Gomez, 1997, 87) A well-mirrored child can “react to stimulus without trauma because the stimulus has a counterpart in the individual’s inner psychic reality.” (Winnicott, 1960, 147) Even Winnicott’s title of his paper on mirroring suggests that the family as a whole is an important mirroring component, in saying to the new baby: ‘You are the fairest of them all!’

Bibliography

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KLEIN, J. (1987) Our Need for Others and its Roots in Infancy, London, Routledge.

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WINNICOTT, D.W. (1960) Ego Distortions in Terms of True and False Self, reprinted in The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment, London, Hogarth (1965)

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