Persecution Analysis PDF

persecution. He occasionally realized that his hatred had damaged his objects, but he usually argued that he had no need to feel guilt. With his chronic sense of grievance he was able to feel justified and in the right.In both patients problems became evident when they made moves to emerge from the...

persecution. He occasionally realized that his hatred had damaged his objects, but he usually argued that he had no need to feel guilt. With his chronic sense of grievance he was able to feel justified and in the right.In both patients problems became evident when they made moves to emerge from the retreat and to face their psychic reality. As they did so, they began to get a glimpse of the state their objects had been reduced to in their phantasy and they were filled with horror, and threatened with anxiety and guilt. For Mr D, such moments of contact predominantly gave rise to panic, which was chiefly associated with a time when he had been deeply depressed. He looked on the possibility of a recurrence with such dread that the slightest contact with depressive feelings sent him into a flight back to the protection of the organization. It seemed to me that the horrendous state of his objects was unconsciously felt to result from the vengeance acted out on his behalf with cruelty and ruthlessness by the organization, and also from the way he had denied any responsibility for the hatred and neglect of his objects while sheltering in the retreat. Here the pathological organization of the personality served as a protection from guilt, but as a result of its actions it also gave rise to guilt. Mr E was less terrified of his depression, and could sometimes allow contact with an experience of loss which followed occasions when he let go of some of his resentment and passivity and was able to attack his objects more openly and actively. Such attacks were possible because he had a more secure belief that a capacity to love would survive the expression of his hatred. This capacity gave rise to feelings of responsibility, remorse and regret, which in turn stimulated a wish to make reparation. The central issue for both patients as they attempted to free themselves from the domination of the organization was whether the guilt was bearable or not (see Steiner 1990a). If it was bearable, as was true occasionally in the case of Mr E, the patient felt able to risk a struggle for his independence from the organization, while if it was unbearable, as seemed to be the case with Mr D, the patient felt obliged to relinquish his freedom and return once more to the protection of the organization in the retreat. In these cases pathological organizations came to be deployed in an attempt to protect the object and to evade guilt, but, in fact, only served to convert the overt attack into a more hidden and chronic campaign. The fear of a violent and open expression of hatred and destructiveness leads to a chronic state in which the object is not destroyed, or allowed to die, but is tormented, disabled, and held onto in a half dead state. Revenge is neither openly enacted nor given up. The attempt to prevent unrestrained violence leads to an endless revenge in which there is a very intense tie to the object which must be kept alive in order that the process may continue. The patient has apparently deployed the organization to neutralize destructive elements, but the result has been only partially successful and the organization serves both to preserve the object and to enact the revenge. Once established, this type of retreat is very difficult to relinquish partly because the grievance provides a focus and purpose for the patient and partly because of other sources of gratification such as those related to triumph and to masochism. In some cases the patient appears to 'feed' or 'nurse' the grievance and gets gratification by 'keeping old wounds open'. These expressions suggest that the resentment may be linked to early experiences such as those of weaning, or the arrival of a new baby in the family, which involved loss in a setting where this seemed unfair and the patient felt betrayed and wronged. A wound results which may become so invested with narcissism that it is denied the opportunity for proper healing. In these cases the patient may come to believe that the objects which have wronged him are so totally bad that they can never be forgiven and his own hatred and his wish for revenge are felt to be so total that they are equally unforgivable. Subsequently, even if the loss seems bearable, the injury is nursed in order to keep the sense of injustice alive and to defend against any sense of responsibility. The pathological organization supports the patient and helps him to evade guilt which is felt to be appropriate for the object rather than the patient to feel. At the same time, the conviction that the guilt is unbearable leads to an extremely stuck situation where change is resisted and progress in the analysis is blocked. An important feature of these situations is that the patient appears to be preoccupied with the future. His current suffering is masochistically endured and he lives in hope that in the future right will be done and he will be avenged. The resentment, and with it the hope of redress, become a defence against current reality, especially against the experience of loss, and, as a result, it interferes with mourning and with development (Potamianou 1992). When a sense of grievance and hatred dominates, the psychic reality of the patient\'s internal relationships reflects the fact that destructive attacks have already taken place and continue to be enacted as long as the hatred and the wish for revenge remain alive. The very existence of hatred towards the object means that, in phantasy, attacks have been mounted and that the object has already been damaged. Evidence of these attacks may appear in dreams, fantasies and other material but, in the psychic retreat, either their existence or their significance is denied. As long as the hatred goes unacknowledged, attacks can continue without any sense of responsibility, guilt or conflict. Nevertheless, for brief periods, at least in some cases, the patient is able to emerge from the retreat so that the torturing becomes less prominent and his impulses towards the object are more open and direct. If he can retain sufficient contact with his psychic reality to acknowledge both his hatred, which leads to the wish to destroy the object, and his love, which makes him feel remorse and regret, then development can proceed. The contact with the reality of the state of his objects allows him to recognize the damage his hatred has accomplished, and he is able to struggle with those rich and painful experiences connected with loss which we associate with mourning. As mourning is worked through projective identification is reversed and the subject is able to regain parts of the self previously disowned (see Chapter 5). Feelings of remorse and guilt arise, and the capacity to endure, suffer and survive these experiences leads to a shift towards the depressive position in which loss is acknowledged and attempts at making reparation can begin to evolve. In other patients any contact with an object which has been damaged in phantasy leads to panic and an immediate return to the psychic retreat. Clinical material The first patient, Mr D, worked as a research fellow in a cut-throat academic climate where rivalry was at times deadly. He habitually entered new situations with a flourish and made a promising start which eventually led to disappointment. He became seriously depressed at university when he was first promoted and later sacked as an editor of a student newspaper, and he feared a recurrence of the depression and sought analysis chiefly to avert such an eventuality. In fact, the situation at his work was becoming increasingly precarious partly because he could not bear criticism, so that numerous clashes with his superiors led to a furious reaction which he had to suppress to ensure his survival. His personal involvement in the rivalry was denied, as too was his jealousy of an older sister who was not academic and was married with a young baby. He recognized the pleasure which his sister gave his parents but saw this as something which he would easily surpass as soon as he was able to bring off his research success and with its aid acquire the kind of wife his parents would approve of. A great deal of time was spent planning moves to different departments, to different countries and even to different fields of research, and although in fantasy these led to triumph over his colleagues and teachers, he did not see them as vengeful and he denied any hatred towards those who constantly appeared to overlook his importance and to prevent his advancement. He began a session by describing a meeting which took place in the office next door to his on the previous day. It was in the Senior Lecturer\'s room and he was not invited, which rubbed in the fact that he no longer had a place in the department. Later he had a serious talk with the Senior Lecturer who gave him advice about how to handle himself better. He was told that he made impulsive decisions which were not to be trusted, and the patient responded compliantly by agreeing that this was absolutely correct and by expressing gratitude for what the department had done for him. In fact, it was clear from his frequent disparaging remarks about this lecturer and about the department that he thought of himself as superior and that he was holding his tongue until he could show them all how he would succeed in a different setting. He went on to speak excitedly, but with some lack of conviction, about his new prospects and research plans, but he added that he thought I would be disappointed in him since I would view these as a repetition of a cycle and see him as 'back to square one'. He went on to say that he noticed that he did not tell me things any more, as if the analysis was also virtually over. For example, on Friday he had asked a particularly attractive new girl to go out with him but he added that he was a little disappointed in her lack of enthusiasm. He had broken off the relationship with his old girl-friend more than a year before but continued to phone her and discussed his new jobs and new girls with her in great detail. Now he complained that he had left a message for her and she had failed to phone him back. He wondered if it was because he had recently spoken about his masturbation, which had come up in the analysis. She had said, 'How disgusting', or was it 'How pathetic'? He said it was unlike her to be disgusted with another person\'s misery. I interpreted that he was afraid I was put off by the way he was discussing his plans to leave his job and also his analysis. His excitement with new jobs as well as his plans for new girls were spoken about in the session as if they did not involve me, just as the Senior Lecturer held meetings in his office without including him. Now he was afraid I was just like an ex-girl-friend and that he was back to square one. He had begun the analysis with enthusiasm but he now felt so hurt and wronged that it had become intolerable. His reaction was to say that he sees all that but he has to do it and he is sure that I understand. I interpreted that he hoped that I could see that he felt he had no choice, and that he was obliged to dismiss what I said to him as unimportant just as he was forced to turn to other departments, which meant the end of the analysis and felt like a return to square one. I suggested that the underlying situation which he could not bear was one in which the meeting held in the next-door office reminded him of my independent existence and of times when he was excluded. This was particularly acute when a holiday or weekend was impending as was now the case, since I had given him my holiday dates in the previous session. He said that he felt I hated it when he became arrogant and dismissive of me, and I think he sensed that I was affected and vulnerable. However, he added that when I spoke about things like holidays it had no effect on him and he assumed that he had a blind spot since he never understood why I took that up so often. He found that his mind turned to other things. He did not feel any hostility to me although he thought I was right and that he hated the Senior Lecturer, the Professor and also his father. I interpreted that, although he was staying calm and superior, he was upset when he felt I was disappointed in him. I think he saw me as someone who had to protect himself and that I became superior in turn and tried to make him feel dependent on the analysis. Although fantasies of a triumphant reversal of his dependence on his father, on his professors and on his girl-friend were quite conscious and he could recognize that this involved turning the tables on them, he did not admit that he felt any hatred and he did not connect these fantasies with a wish for revenge. Nor was he able to acknowledge his hatred of the analysis, which he consciously saw as something he valued and was simply forced to give up due to circumstances. That I persevered with interpretations about weekends and breaks was something he tolerantly put up with. The violence which an open revenge would involve was replaced by the cruelty of his withdrawal to a psychic retreat in which I was deemed too unimportant even to attack. He kept me imprisoned and obliged to listen while he described his plans for new relationships which would exclude me. He spoke as if I was tolerant and understanding, but I think he had at least a partial realization that I was often provoked to feel irritated and resentful. Two sessions later he began with a discussion of some entrepreneurial projects which involved selling some of his research ideas to a group of industrialists, and he then described an interview he had with a professor at a polytechnic who was thinking of offering him a job which turned out to be at a considerably lower level than he expected. He would not accept that level but he thought he would play them off against another department which he was more likely to join. He said that he did not want to burn his bridges as he had with a previous attempt to leave his post. He was also continuing the standoff relationship with his father after the incident with his sister\'s baby. At a family celebration he had given the baby a sip of champagne as a joke and his father had been angry, especially emphasizing that it was not his baby so that he had no right to decide what to give him. He had to suppress his anger but reacted by rejecting a dinner invitation from his mother. Through the thought of burning his bridges, he came closer to making contact with a fear that I would not want him back as he repeatedly destroyed my goodwill with his various triumphant plans. I thought this might have led to a momentary experience of loss which made him panic. After a second or two he returned to his previous mood with a description of how he and another girlfriend had laughed at the interview he had had at the polytechnic. The Head of Department was a typical 'poly' type, with narrow views. It would have been a job with a lot of teaching and almost no research, a 9--5 office job, with no excitement and no inventiveness. In this instance emergence from the retreat could not be tolerated and he returned to his triumphant mania. The second patient, Mr E, had, in many ways, made good use of his analysis and was successful in his work and increasingly contented in his marriage. In the analysis situations sometimes arose which provoked 'bad' thoughts, and in the past these had often made him feel that he was all bad, and that he could not be forgiven. As an infant he had, in fact, been left to cry for long periods when his mother was depressed, and I thought that he must have felt so full of badness and that he had created such worry and despair that he was convinced that his mother and now myself did not want him and would leave him to die. He usually dealt with the panic which resulted from this sort of situation by idealizing his logic and thinking and getting reassurance that he was wanted by having it valued and admired. If I did not agree to this he felt that I was denying his goodness and sentencing him to feel so bad that he could not believe I could want him at all. When I failed to provide reassurance through admiration it meant that I disliked him, blamed him for my depression and wished him dead. This used to fill him with hatred and led to further 'bad' thoughts. If I admired him, however, he felt that he had been able to enlist me to collude with in an organization which helped him to deny his aggression and destructiveness. In the retreat, the idealization and the grievance both appeared to be supported by the same organization, and the resentment came to be focused on my refusal to join in the idealization. There was a particular quality to his reaction to some of my failures and shortcomings. I had clearly done something bad which excluded him, and made him feel disliked and unwanted, but there was, in addition, a sense of betrayal which gave a particular edge to his indignation and outrage. I was made to feel that I had done something unpardonable which put me beyond the pale and disqualified me so that I became someone unfit to be a psychoanalyst. It was not that he found me to be a mixture of good and bad elements; I was all bad and had to be shown as such. These situations were very unpleasant and he often succeeded in undermining my confidence in my work and in my integrity, particularly when I had reason to feel bad about something I had done or failed to do. They were accompanied by an offer of a way out. If I would agree to a collusive and defensive idealization, everything would be put right. One day he began a session saying that he had felt a bit uncomfortable as he entered the building. The waiting room felt somewhat strange and he noticed that I sneezed as I came down to get him. He hoped I was not getting a cold and realized I had been under strain recently. I had in fact taken a week off which he knew was because of a bereavement a couple of weeks previously. He went on to say that he had a reasonably good week-end, most of which he spent at a party political congress, in his function as a political journalist. While restless on Saturday, he had many dreams but could only remember one fragment. He had placed a piece of faeces in a gift box as a present for someone. People were commenting on this and someone said it was a result of anxiety. Someone else said it was his wish to spoil and make a mess of things. He thought the dream had to do with the congress and he connected it with feelings of rivalry with colleagues. He then remembered his feelings of hurt in the session on Friday when I had interpreted his use of logic as an idealized production which disguised what he really felt. This had reminded him of previous occasions when he had felt extremely persecuted by me. At these times he felt that everything he tried to bring me was rebuffed, and he would panic that there was nothing he could talk about which I would find acceptable. He proceeded to go back to talk about the congress where he met a friend who told him that a Member of Parliament he had worked with had been dangerously ill. He had known nothing of the illness and had indeed repeatedly telephoned this man, putting pressure on him to provide him with some data which he needed for an article. His first thought was of anxiety and regret but this was quickly replaced by what he called a 'shitty' thought; namely, that the MP\'s illness served him right for refusing to help him. I thought he felt bad about his reaction to my recent week off, and not knowing any details made him feel excluded and demanding. The 'shitty' thought towards the MP had a parallel with the thought that, because I had excluded him, I deserved all that I got. However, he also saw that I had not quite recovered from my bereavement, and he was sorry and had enough good feeling to recognize the thought as 'shitty'. I interpreted that he still felt bad about his 'shitty' thought, but not so bad as he previously did because he also felt he had good feelings of regret and sorrow when he gave me a difficult time. This meant that he was not in the same panic as he used to get into, but he was still unsure if he could admit it as a bad thought or if he needed to wrap it up as something good. He still wanted me to reassure him that the hostile thought was not really a bad one because it was so well wrapped up and was anyhow a result of anxiety. This meant that he could not be blamed, and if I did not agree it could easily lead to my becoming the bad figure who hated him unjustly. I connected this with the uncertainty in the dream as to whether the faeces were brought out of anxiety, perhaps as an infantile gift to cure a depressed mother, or out of a wish to spoil. He responded by saying that he also felt rebuffed when he took so much trouble to do something for me which I then failed to appreciate. It seemed clear that when he felt so humiliated he was convinced that he would not be accepted and this led to anxiety even amounting to terror, because to be hated was equated with being cast out and left to die. Now the situation seemed to have changed, and it was no longer so clear that he could not bear these experiences. If he could admit the idea that he wanted to exact revenge and to do so by spoiling my work, it made guilt available and this in turn could lead to regret and a wish to make reparation. This wish to spoil was particularly intense when he felt that his efforts to put things right by bringing gifts was frustrated by my failure to recognize the good qualities mixed in with his hatred. Discussion Both of the patients I have discussed harboured resentments about wrongs which they felt were done to them and which continued to be done to them. Although the two patients were very different in terms of their mental make-up and the defences which they used, they both harboured grievances and could not free themselves from them to become conscious of their wish to damage their objects. In fact when they withdrew in grievance to the psychic retreat, their hatred, although perhaps less manifestly violent, remained extremely powerful as it slowly and more secretly poisoned their relationships and drew them towards self-destructive acts. Each made moves to emerge from their retreat and made at least transient contact with the psychic reality confronting them. In the case of Mr D I thought this occurred when he presumed I would view him as 'back to square one', and again when he became afraid that he had 'burnt his bridges'. These instances seemed to represent moments when the patient felt threatened by a loss and which led him to panic and to return abruptly to a manic superiority. It was as if he believed that any experience of loss would throw him into the depression he dreaded. Mr E was able to sustain the contact with loss for a longer period and could acknowledge his hatred for the Member of Parliament and his wish to get even with him. Moreover, he could make a connection with similar wishes towards his analyst and could recognize what he called 'shitty thoughts'. This enabled him to make some progress towards accepting loss and making reparation. However, even here the contact could not be prolonged and a constant movement between withdrawal to the retreat and an emergence from it continued. Both patients faced that critical point in the depressive position, described in Chapter 3, which arises when the task of relinquishing control over the object has to be faced. As long as they held onto their grievance the object was possessed and controlled, so that they remained stuck in the first phase of the depressive position in which loss is denied. This phase has to be overcome if the depressive position is to be worked through and the object is to be allowed its independence. Klein (1935) described the situation as fundamental for understanding 'the loss of the loved object'; namely, that situation when 'the ego becomes fully identified with its good internalised objects, and at the same time becomes aware of its own incapacity to protect and preserve them against the internalised persecuting objects and the id' (p. 265). Some patients are able to relinquish omnipotent control over their objects, to allow them to go, and to face the fact that in psychic reality this means to allow them to die. Others panic and return to the protection of the retreat. Winnicott (1969, 1971) discusses this problem when he differentiates between what he calls relating to an object and what he calls use of an object. In this particular meaning of 'relating to an object' the patient omnipotently possesses and controls the object through what Klein calls projective identification. In order to relinquish such control and to enable the object to be 'placed outside the area of subjective phenomena', Winnicott argues that the object has to be destroyed by the subject. Then, when the external object returns, having survived the attacks, a new type of relationship becomes possible---'the use of an object', namely, one in which the object is real and recognized to be outside the patient\'s omnipotent control (Winnicott 1971:90). Unfortunately, the reappearance of the object which has survived the attacks can also be used to deny the reality of the attacks and to reassure the patient that there is no need for remorse or guilt. When this happens, the object\'s survival has served to help the patient evade the psychic reality with which the patient had made transient contact. In other cases, the patient realizes that the object, even though it has survived the attacks, remains damaged in the patient\'s psychic reality, and its return does not remove the feet that there had been a wish to destroy it. At the same time the patient\'s omnipotent belief that the fate of his object lies entirely in his hands must also be relinquished as the reality of the object\'s independence is appreciated. Guilt has to be faced, and this must be appropriate to what has been lost. The loss has to be acknowledged and mourned, and this includes the loss of the patient\'s omnipotence. If the analyst can resist acting out, either through retaliation or through collusion, he can support the patient and help him to survive the situation in his internal world. In particular, he can help him get the events in proportion and in many circumstances can help him to locate positive feelings which can come to mitigate his hatred. It is these loving feelings, together with the acknowledgement of the destructive wishes, which enable reparation to be pursued. In this context reparation often takes the form of forgiveness, since for the relationship to be repaired the patient has to feel able to forgive and also to be forgiven. If he is to change and to allow development, he has ultimately to forgive his objects for the wrongs they have inflicted and he can only do this if he is convinced that he himself is forgiven for what he has done and for what he wished to do. Rey is one of the few analysts to discuss this aspect of reparation. He describes how his clinical experience has led him to consider that forgiveness is a key concept. \[F\]or nobody who has not forgiven can be expected to feel forgiven. This leads to desire of revenge towards the object to remain active and therefore the feeling that the object still seeks revenge and has not forgiven.... Only when the super-ego becomes less cruel, less demanding as well of perfection, is the ego capable of accepting an internal object which is not perfectly repaired, can accept compromise, forgive and be forgiven, and experience hope and gratitude. (Rey 1986:30) Forgiveness requires us to recognize the coexistence of good and bad feelings, sufficient badness to justify guilt, and sufficient goodness to deserve forgiveness. We need to believe this is true of ourselves and also of our objects. The wish to exact revenge must be recognized, and responsibility for the damage we have done to our objects has to be accepted. This means that to be forgiven, bad elements in our nature have to be accepted but sufficient good feeling must exist for us to feel regret and to wish to make reparation. In the cases I have described the central issue seemed to be that the patients felt that I had done something unforgivable, and this led me to the question of why it was that the patient could not forgive. I came to the conclusion that revenge is a complex phenomenon. It often appears to begin with a real or imagined wrong which provokes no more than a wish for justice and a reasonable compensation. The demand for revenge is particularly pressing when the injury and wrong has been done not only to the self but also to good internal objects which are represented by the family or group. The conscious aim of the revenge may then be to clear the good name of the injured object and to restore the family honour. Revenge here begins as an expression of the life instinct, and demands that we stand up against those who injure us and threaten our objects. In practice, justice is seldom able to intervene in an adequate way, and its failure to give satisfaction allows other motives to become attached to the initially just cause. Old hatreds, based on narcissistic wounds, greed, jealousy, Oedipal rivalries, and especially the primitive destructiveness rooted in envy, take over and give revenge its insatiable nature, with devastating consequences if it is not restrained. When the death instinct comes to dominate, revenge is not satisfied until the object and with it the self is totally destroyed. These characteristics make the open expression of revenge dangerous because it gives rise to a fear of retribution from a stronger object or a fear of guilt if the revenge were to be successfully and excessively carried through. The patient is trapped in a deadly internal situation where he feels wronged and unable to gain redress. His withdrawal to the psychic retreat has offered him the protection of a complex network of object relations often involving powerful and ruthlessly destructive objects functioning as a Mafia-like gang. Such gangs are expert in revenge and gain a hold over the patient by promising the eventual destruction of his enemies (Rosenfeld 1971a). The operation of the pathological organization takes place in a phantasy world, sometimes partly conscious but carefully prevented from being openly enacted. The external situation is carefully preserved, but in phantasy the attack leads to such devastation that its consequences are too horrible to be faced. The sense of guilt which this generates becomes unbearable, and is dealt with by projective identification so that it comes to reside in the object where it becomes indistinguishable from the object\'s own badness. The result is that the patient is confronted by an object which is so bad that it cannot be forgiven and which must not be let off the hook but must be punished or destroyed. It is important, however, to understand that from the patient\'s point of view it is the analyst who seems to be unable to admit his badness and to face his guilt. The patient experiences the situation as a repetitive one where badness is attributed to him by his objects, who demand that he accept it and put right what is felt to be the object\'s fault. It is sometimes crucial for the patient to see that the analyst is able to examine his contribution to the impasse and to face a guilt which is appropriate to what he has done. As with so many themes in psychoanalysis, the outcome of the conflict depends on the balance between life and death instincts, between love and hate, between good and evil. Ultimately it is the fear that hatred dominates which prevents the acknowledgements of guilt and which favours omnipotent solutions. My patient, Mr D, was not convinced that he had sufficient good feelings to risk the acknowledgement of his vengeful impulses and to protect his objects from the enactment of the revenge. His relationship to an internal source of goodness was insecure, and this led him to panic when he became aware of his hatred of his objects. He felt obliged to project the badness and have it denied by omnipotent, manic pseudo-reparation. Mr E had a greater belief in a source of internal goodness with which he could identify so that, for example, the gift of faeces could be recognized as one showing intense ambivalence. This led at least to a transient belief that he could be forgiven and lessened the need to deny his hatred and his destructive, 'shitty' thoughts. Such developments are always insecure, and further cycles of emergence from the retreat followed by a return to it inevitably recur. However, as these become repeatedly acted out in the relationship with the analyst, a greater capacity to recognize the damage done can arise and periods of contact with depressive feelings become increasingly possible.