Acting Out and Passage à l'acte

On Sept 10, 2016 the Tampa Bay Psychoanalytic Society hosted Donna Bentolila at its monthly, all day seminar where she presented two riveting cases. A native of Argentina and a Lacanian by self-report, Bentolila, despite the privileging of left brain (the Symbolic) over right, and despite her reluctance to locate herself squarely in the co-creation of the experience of her patients, nonetheless, worked closely and beautifully in the lives of these two patients and their analytic relationships with her. Due perhaps to the severity of their illnesses and to complicated issues in both cases, Bentolila found herself repeatedly having to bend the frame to fit both the needs of these two very disturbed people and the limits of her capacity to endure their demands. For confidentiality sake, I will give no details, but wish you all had been there to become wholly engrossed in the presentation.

Lacan, like Freud, chose phallocentric terms to explain human experience, and I was pleased to see Bentolila try to soften Lacan’s ideas as metaphor. For example, the ‘name of the father’, Bentolila claimed, is not necessarily the biological father, but the function that transcends him. Still, this function, in addition to “constraints and proscriptions,” is to “break the fusion between mother and child." [But the idea of ‘fusion’ (or merger or symbiosis) has been reassessed since the understanding by Stern (1985) -and Benjamin- of the normal development of a sense of separateness from a very early age.]

Bentolila explained Lacan’s  distinction between acting out and passage à l'acte: Acting out is done by a subject as an attempt to communicate something to the Other which could not be heard, or said, in words. Because it remains as an attempt at communication, it thus retains the Symbolic order. Passage à l'acte (passage to [into] action), on the other hand, exits from the Symbolic Order with behavior which is not meant to communicate to the Other (the Other does not enter into consideration in the act, sometimes because there has been a dissolution of connection to the Other) for even the subject is un-situated from the scene in a desperate and irreversible attempt to resolve some unbearable anxiety (this loss of self as subject sometimes heralds psychosis), such as in the case Bentolila described.

What a wonderful reminder, as her clinical examples depicted, of how being listened to about one’s impulses makes it less likely those impulses will be acted upon. Acting out is a message to the analyst: an appeal or demand for recognition from the analyst; an attempt to communicate what the analyst had heretofore been unable to hear; an unspoken and/or unconscious invitation to dialogue about a subject that could not find a place in their discourse, perhaps because it remained dissociated (or outside the Symbolic order per Lacanians). I suppose that were the analyst to disallow space for validation, or abdicate responsibility for her own location in the fray, the patient might feel so violated and destroyed as to abandon further attempts at communication and enter instead into the real passage à l'acte.

Comment about Homesickness and the Analytic Home

Brothers and Lewis write: “…the analyst finds ways to communicate over and over again to a patient: ‘Yes, you can come home again. No matter what happened between us during your last session, no matter how different or similar we found one another, I will be here waiting for you when it is time for us to meet again.’ "

Brothers, D., Lewis, J., (2012) Homesickness, Exile, and the Self-Psychological Language of Homecoming. International J. Psychoanalytic Self Psychol. 7:180-195.

btwHB

What is Lost

The French are terribly enamored of Lacan with his symbolic and imaginary and real, and the name of the father. Lacan leans a little too heavily on Freud for my tastes and extends the patriarchal view of things, deemphasizing contributions of our understanding of the importance of the early maternal-infant relationship. Like the homunculus, a fully formed tiny human, ‘seen’ through the microscope inside the human sperm (Hartsoeker and Leeuwenhoek), thereby giving full credit to the male of the species for the preformation of the next generation, so does Lacan disregard that it is the maternal caregiver who first imparts language and law (discipline and guidance) on the infant offspring, long before any oedipal taboos.

Donna Bentolila [who will be in Tampa on Sept 10, 2016] invokes Lacan and Freud in her paper on revisiting the Death Drive (1996). Here she notes the phenomenon that desire remains ultimately unfulfilled, thus the repetition to forever chase after what we cannot have (the lost Other) as part of the human condition. [Like Freud, I think of the death drive as partially biological as in the necessity of death to make room for new life and in the second law of thermodynamics where matter tends towards the lowest energy state—making life and any biological system a kind of miracle in its randomness and its opposition to entropy. And like Winnicott, I prefer to think of destruction as a necessary dialectic allowing the Other to come into being, and a necessity in creativity.]

But it is Bentolila’s nod to difference which brings a bittersweetness to mind. Juxtaposed with sameness— a sameness which obfuscates difference— she speaks of “Eros, the union of two beings into One." She goes on to write: “For Bataille the ultimate meaning of eroticism is a state of fusion between the partners which, insofar as it involves no separation, acts to suppress all boundaries while sustaining a perfect continuity.” Later she adds “a question of an impossible jouissance with an already lost object related to our impotence to retrieve the thing (das ding) in the real.”

Ah, the lost object. To quote Robert Frost again (Reluctance, 1913):

Ah, when to the heart of man

Was it ever less than a treason

To… bow and accept the end

Of a love, or a season?

López, D.B. (1996). The Enigma of the Death Drive: A Revisiting. Psychoanal. Contemp. Thought, 19:3-27.

Homesickness and Cheever

Home is the place where, when you have to go there,

                                       They have to take you in   - Robert Frost

We long for the certainty of unquestioned acceptance and welcome, a feeling of home, the place where we belong, but then come to “the realization that one’s longing for home can never be met.” Brothers and Lewis (2012) expand the idea of homesickness— in self-psychology language—as “a longing to recover (or gain for the first time) a sense of certainty that the selfobject experiences upon which selfhood depends are unquestionably available.” 

What do we do when we are confronted with the painful realization that we can never go home again, if home indeed ever was? What do we do when confronted with “this painful sense of unfulfilled and unfulfillable longing for home”? Brothers and Lewis intimate that a compensatory ‘home’ can be created by patient and analyst when they come to know one another in predictable, reliable ways and by building together a shared unique language. “In a healing analytic relationship…patient and analyst develop a shared language—partly verbal, partly nonverbal—by means of which excruciating experiences of sameness and difference become bearable.” [Here, sameness speaks to the need for twinship (see post of August 28, 2016), belonging as one does when ‘at home,’ and “the need to experience difference…to experience oneself as unique, special…”] Treatment additionally offers the opportunity for mourning what was lost, what one never had, and/or what one can never have.

Familiarity and belonging allow for the creation of meaning. But the sense of certainty and of familiarity are shattered by trauma. Trauma, in turn, can lead to exile “when trauma brings with it a desperate need to experience the clarity of difference.”

While Brothers and Lewis utilize the John Cheever quote ‘Fifty percent of people in the world are homesick all the time’ , their points about longing for what never was are also aptly illustrated in the Cheever short story Reunion (1962) where the son, meeting his father with heightened anticipation after years of estrangement, comes to the painful realization over lunch that he will never have the relationship with his father that he had always longed for; his longings for connection will remain unfulfilled; his efforts futile. Many of the works of Cheever speak to a kind of nostalgia or ‘homesickness’ for lost culture and community experienced in the isolating and alienating suburbs. There is a deep pathos in Cheever’s works. So, too, in ours.

                                    

Brothers, D., Lewis, J., (2012) Homesickness, Exile, and the Self-Psychological Language of Homecoming. International J. Psychoanalytic Self Psychol. 7:180-195.

Cheever, J., (1978) The Stories of John Cheever, New York: Alfred A. Knopf; story originally appeared in The New Yorker magazine, October 27, 1962.

Poem: Human Family by Maya Angelou

What better describes our need for sameness and difference, and for belonging, than this beautiful poem offered as an elaboration of yesterday’s post on Twinship.  

Poem: Human Family by Maya Angelou

I note the obvious differences
in the human family.

Some of us are serious,

some thrive on comedy.

Some declare their lives are lived
as true profundity,
and others claim they really live
the real reality.

The variety of our skin tones
can confuse, bemuse, delight,
brown and pink and beige and purple,
tan and blue and white.

I’ve sailed upon the seven seas

and stopped in every land,

I’ve seen the wonders of the world

not yet one common man.

I know ten thousand women
called Jane and Mary Jane,

but I’ve not seen any two
who really were the same.

Mirror twins are different
although their features jibe,

and lovers think quite different thoughts
while lying side by side.

We love and lose in China,
we weep on England's moors,
we laugh and moan in Guinea,
and thrive on Spanish shores.

We seek success in Finland,
are born and die in Maine.
In minor ways we differ,
in major ways the same.

I note the obvious differences
between each sort and type.

But we are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.

We are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.

We are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.

Twinship

Most psychoanalysts are familiar with Kohut’s mirroring and idealizing transferences. Togashi and Kottler (2012) write about the twinship transference and note Kohut’s “transformation from the psychology of the self to the psychology of being human” and from “the disorder of the self to… trauma-centered psychoanalysis.” They enumerate the many faces of twinship:

(1)    between merger and mirroring. Kohut originally conceived of the mirror transference in three forms: merger, twinship, and the narrowed mirror transference, their differences “based on the degree to which an individual” sees others as an extension of themselves or as a separate person.

(2)    as a process of mutual finding. This does not mean “recognizing…the other’s subjectivity” but rather that “two participants…regulate a sense of sameness and difference in their effort to match…their subjectivity” such as when the analyst finds aspects of herself and not-herself in her patient and the patient, likewise, can find aspects of himself and not-himself in his analyst, this mutual finding process, essential to the twinship experience.

(3)    as a sense of belonging. Later (1984), Kohut distinguished twinship from mirroring to a sense of belonging. Here twinship speaks to [authors quoting White and Weiner] ‘a similarity in interests and talents, along with the sense of being understood by someone like yourself” and [quoting Basch] ‘the need to belong and feel accepted by one’s cohort.’ [BTW, in this same volume, VanDerHyde writes a lovely paper on the importance of twinship, stating the need to belong precedes the need for mirroring or idealizing]

(4)    passing talents and skills to the next generation. Togashi and Kottler write: “For Kohut, an individual’s efforts to educate others is often based on her yearning for a person who[m] she can experience as essentially alike, or for a person in whom she can find herself.” The parent sees herself in the child and, reciprocally, the child sees himself in the parent. The child sees himself as the welcomed “successor” as the parent is “creating and finding oneself in the next generation.”

(5)    as silent communication. Twinship allows each “to share the feeling of connection without verbal communication –as with mother and infant; lovers; or analyst and patient—and to share in a “regulatory process to match (and not-match) one another.”

(6)    feeling human among other human beings. Kohut noted the necessity to feel human among other human beings. Narcissistic parents can treat the child as an extension of themselves or as a non-human thing, the latter causing the child to experience himself as non-human among non-humans.

(7)    in trauma. The authors cite Stolorow: “a need for twinship is a reaction to psychological trauma” [IMO, the authors decline to temper this statement by adding that we are hard-wired for a social network (a tribe), as well as that we can find joy in being understood and this not simply as secondary to trauma] and Brothers, noting that trauma destroys certainty and meaning. [and that we need relationship to restore the latter.]

Please see the next post for a poem by Angelou which beautifully illustrates humans’ need for a human family, same and different, but belonging.

Heritage

Cultural relics have been targeted by ISIS in northern Africa and the Middle East in alarming numbers. The first successful prosecution by the International Criminal Court for only the destruction of cultural heritage took place today at The Hague. Ahmad Al-Fagi Al-Mahdi took part in the destruction by Islamic militants of the 14^th century Holy Tombs of Timbuktu in his native Mali in 2012 and today he admitted and apologized, calling for an end to these acts.

The phrase destruction of cultural heritage got me thinking about our individual specific and pointed cultural heritage, that of each of our families, and how psychoanalysts navigate the change in perspective of our unique stories. Some people come to us hoping we will undo what they have had to endure, or hoping that the painful experiences of childhood will be eradicated. But our history is part of who we are, for better or worse, forever embedded in our neuro-circuitry [unless damage occurs, such as by a stroke or traumatic brain injury] and I encourage patients to respect what has transpired, give it its due, its voice, and give it a place beside all that has made them the courageous and resourceful enough person now before me who seeks psychotherapeutic treatment.

Some patients worry, as we empathize with the relational trauma of chronic misrecognition and misattunement or with the Trauma of physical and sexual abuse of their childhoods, that their newly welcomed and understandable anger will be insurmountable to finding their way back to loving and forgiving their families of origin. It does seem remarkable that, if we persevere with recognizing, naming, and accepting anger, we will find it can be more easily lived, lived alongside the more palatable emotions and memories that are human experience.  I don’t know how forgiveness for heinous acts comes about, but it seems partially linked to learning to forgive ourselves. I know I am grateful life-long for those who have forgiven me.

"the pleasures and perils" of technology

Tonight on the PBS NewsHour was aired an interview with German filmmaker Werner Herzog (Grizzly Man; The Cave of Forgotten Dreams) whose latest film, the documentary Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World was released today. He asks “What makes us human? How do we communicate?” Herzog, like myself, does not have a cell phone as a matter of culture. Like me, he wants to be involved with the person across the table with whom he shares a meal and not be available to everyone else all the time.

It is a danger if we teach our children, for example: when preoccupied with our cell phones, that they are uninteresting and unimportant. A parent, chronically disinterested in the experiences of a child, may seriously impede the development of that child’s ‘voice.’ Many years ago, when my younger daughter was in preschool, I observed a sad scene.

Another parent and I drove into the parking lot at the same time. She was on her cell phone. We parked alongside one another. We walked the sidewalk together, into the building together, down the hall, and out the door to the playground area. She was still on her cell phone. I dropped to my knees when I saw my daughter and opened my arms. My daughter ran into them. The other parent did not say ‘hi’ to the little boy she had come for, but took his hand and the four of us retraced our steps. My daughter is telling me of her morning experiences as I buckle her into her car seat. The woman next to me is still on her phone. Her son is silent.

What or who is it that is so compelling on the other end of a cell phone that is worth making the person right beside us feel second best?

One of the salubrious pleasures of the quiet consulting room is the intense attention paid to one another as we struggle to navigate intimacy in the here and now.

Resiliance

Actor George Takei, best known for his character Sulu in the original Star Trek,  makes his Broadway debut at the Longacre Theater in Allegiance, which opens tonight. Allegiance is a musical about the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and is partly based on Takei's own experience. When Takei was five years old his family was sent to an internment camp for almost four years. His childhood imprisonment taught him about gaman which means “to carry on.” Takei says of resilience that it includes “the ability to find joy — even under those harsh circumstances— and love.”

Takei recalls having chastised his own father with “you led us like sheep to slaughter.” His father agreed. Takei felt so guilty that he never apologized to his father. But now he says he can apologize nightly through his participation in this musical, the humanization of those injured by this protracted injustice in America’s history.

Rudnytsky and Milton’s “Paradise Lost”

The Tampa Bay Psychoanalytic Society, Inc hosted an unusual speaker last weekend at its monthly speaker program meeting. Peter Rudnytsky, UF professor, Shakespeare and Freud scholar, long time honorary American Psychoanalytic Association member, and long time, former editor of American Imago, explicated in his paper “Freud as Milton’s God…” the long running critical debate over an inherent contradiction in Milton’s Paradise Lost. The contradiction concerns whether humankind had free will to choose to disobey God or whether the Fall was predetermined, even put into motion by God’s actions, God in Milton’s poem failing intersubjectively to take responsibility for situating himself*  in the outcome. Quoting Rumrich’s take on the epic poem – “negotiations between narcissistic longings for perfect recognition and the recalcitrance of an unresponsive reality” – Rudnytsky adds that God is portrayed as a controlling and narcissistic parent, demanding obedience, which if not freely given will be exacted through punishment.

We now know that it is failure to provide sufficient response to longings for recognition which sets up narcissistic longings for perfection. The narcissistic parent has been unable to accept the imperfect child as good enough, and the child, humiliatingly aware of its deficiencies, grows up seeking to overcome or to hide what its parents made glaringly shameful, often requiring, as Milton’s God seems to, “an insatiable need for praise.” [But what if the injured God was also seeking healing or, naively, reconciliation?]

Rudnytsky notes that Freud, too, exacted loyalty, or else followers were extruded from his inner circle.Freud, in anointing Jung the ‘crown prince’ both elevated Jung above all his other followers and, at the same time, made Jung subordinate to himself. In subordinating another, rebellion is engendered, as is the Oedipal struggle and sibling rivalry.  God, too, in Milton’s poem, by anointing Christ, created Satan from a passed over Lucifer.

*While for Milton, and for many, God is the Father, an interesting discussion ensued about womb envy and the need for men to erect a male Creator in compensation for the fact that it is from women’s bodies that we come into this world; An interesting reversal of this fact is Eve springing from Adam’s rib; or Athena from Zeus’ head.