#death instinct

[beljar]

It was a great mistake, my being born a man, I would have been much more successful as a sea gull or a fish. As it is, I will always be a stranger who never feels at home, who does not really want and is not really wanted, who can never belong, who must always be a a little in love with death!

Eugene O'Neill, Long Day's Journey into Night, 2 February 1956

[bocekcicek]

L’instinct De Mort (2008), Jean-François Richet

[beljar]

To write, you have to want something to survive you. I don’t even have the desire to live, I’ve never had it strongly the way you have. If I could eliminate myself now, while we’re speaking, I’d be more than happy.

Elena Ferrante, from The Story of the Lost Child, 2014

[sataniccapitalist]

Donald Trump: The Symbol of the Decline and Fall of Just About Everything | Common Dreams

The reelection of Donald Trump seems to represent—explain it as you will—the enactment of a human death wish on a scale almost beyond imagin

The reelection of Donald Trump seems to represent—explain it as you will—the enactment of a human death wish on a scale almost beyond imagining.

[drjacquescoulardeau]

The Inquisition Genocide in Europe https://jacquescoulardeau.medium.com/the-inquisition-genocide-in-europe-6a33690b2861

I just published The Inquisition Genocide in Europe. 3 genocides were performed by the Catholic Church in Europe in the Middle Ages. The first one was against the heretics. The second one was against Jews. The third one was against the Moors in Spain. We more or less know about the Christian Genocide in the Americas, but we ignore, meaning we do not want to speak of, the Catholic genocides in Europe that started a lot earlier and lasted a lot more, and that was, after all, nothing but the continuation of the genocides performed by the Roman Empire, and others before them. And we may even forget the systematic killing of anyone and everyone in all the multiple and never-ending wars we had in Europe, and these wars seem to have become longer and more lethal since the Americans have been coming to Europe to impose their decisions, meaning forcing Europe not to compromise, and naturally to sell. their weapons. https://link.medium.com/nED6yNBoZyb

Éditions La Dondaine, Medium.com 2023

[klein-archive]

‘Every analyst has to find his own way’: further notes on technique

13th March 2023

This is the third in a series of blog posts addressing the subject of technique. In my previous two posts I shared material from file D.3 of the archive, called ‘Notes on interpretation, notes on defences’. Here, I share another handful of illuminating fragments from the same file. Again, Klein speaks about interpretation, the patient’s resistance or reaction to it, and of the ‘synthesising’ action of analytic work.

This wasn’t a term I was familiar with from Klein’s writing, nor one which is in regular usage these days, as far as I know. However, it does appear in a number of Klein’s later papers, including in ‘Notes on Some Schizoid Mechanisms’ (1946), and ‘On the Theory of Anxiety and Guilt’ (1948). In this latter paper Klein writes that, ‘the basis of depressive anxiety is the synthesis between destructive impulses and feelings of love towards one object’ (p.35). Klein gives an example of synthesis in the notes I reproduce below, and I have also included an excerpt from her work with Richard, from her 1961 Narrative of a Child Analysis, which illustrates it well.

Firstly though, returning to the matter of finding the right balance between interpreting and allowing material to flow, Klein writes that it takes,

…much experience and constant vigilance even later on not to err in this respect. We have to ask ourselves over and over again whether now is the right moment for interpretation, [or] whether what we have seen now as an important point should not be allowed to pass to gather more material. On the other hand, in doing so we might miss a juncture at which interpretation, by relieving anxiety, brings out further and more important material still. This is one of the many points in technique where every analyst has to find his own way; but none of them I think should not again and again retrace his steps and allow himself to try occasionally other possibilities. (PP/KLE/D.3; Image 5-7/85)

Demonstrating just this sort of vigilance in her own work, Klein reflects upon receiving criticism from colleagues. Somewhat amusingly, she insists that she has seriously considered this criticism, while simultaneously making it clear she feels it was wrong:

I have often made good use of criticism which, though it had missed the mark, made me try over and over again [to think about] whether certain things I was criticised for could not contain some truth. (Image 9/85)

Then, regarding the patient’s resistance to interpretation, she writes:

The patient might for unconscious reasons want to stop the analyst in speaking and thus not give him [an] opening [to interpret]… [In this case,] probably the most important thing is to find out why the patient must either talk so much or cannot bear the analyst’s interpretations. That means that besides the actual material he is dealing with and which he might interpret, [the analyst] must not lose sight of this general way of resistance. (Image 43/85)

Klein highlights one possible reason why a patient may experience an interpretation as an attack. She says that, on occasion,

…the content of the material presented is of such a nature that instant and dangerous punishment is awaited. The first feeling when the analyst opens his mouth is that now the scolding or the pronouncement of the judgement has come. (Image 46/85)

Klein turns next to ‘synthesis’, and she uses a vignette to illustrate this:

Synthesis is equated to bringing to life or fighting deadness. But the way it is done by interpretation is sometimes to collect parts of the personality which seem not to be there anymore and which we guess from this bit, and that bit…

Instance: the dream where the dreamer urgently wanted to see what was at the moment her best object [friend]. She [the friend] had a party and did not want to see the dreamer. And everything depended on her [the dreamer] being able at least for a little while to see that person before she undertook some essential thing which all amounted to trying to find herself again. The good object (the person giving the party) stood for one part of herself and she was desperately trying to bring herself together. If she could not find that part, she could not achieve her objective. [My] interpretation was that this [friend] was herself and this was the part [of her] she was struggling to find. Yet she was saying in the analysis that nothing of her was there, that nothing had any meaning, that interpretations had no meaning. But the particular person she chose as the best part of herself had all the qualities which she felt would help her both to re-integrate herself and a good relation with me. That person was not over ambitious, did her job well, was exactly the part of herself which she should find. (Image 49/85)

Further connecting the synthesising function of interpretation to the life instinct, Klein comments:

The analyst’s work in synthesising implies that in the struggle between [the] life and death instincts, which underlies all mental processes, he strengthens the life instinct, the expression of which is synthesis. Insofar as analytic procedure strengthens the derivatives, namely, libido, love and hope, it serves the purposes of the life instinct in its polarity with the death instinct. (Image 83/85)

In her 1961 Narrative of a Child Analysis, Klein discusses synthesis in relation to her child patient Richard. She writes:

It is an essential part of psychoanalytic therapy…that the patient should be enabled by the analyst’s interpretations to integrate the split-off and contrasting aspects of his self; this implies also the synthesis of the split-off aspects of other people and of situations. Such progress in synthesis and integration during an analysis, while giving relief, also brings up anxiety. For the patient is bound to experience the persecutory and depressive anxieties, which were largely responsible for the tendency to split, splitting being one of the fundamental defences against persecutory and depressive anxiety. (p.77)

Klein gives an example from Richard’s ninth session, illustrating her use of interpretation to help him integrate aspects of his mother. She records that,

Richard chose a country on the map to speak about; this time Germany. He said he wanted to whack Hitler and to attack Germany. Then he decided to ‘choose’ France instead. He spoke about France, which betrayed Britain but might not have been able to help it, and he was sorry for France.

Mrs K. pointed out that there were various kinds of Mummy in his mind: the bad Mummy, Germany, whom he wanted to attack in order to destroy Hitler inside her; the injured, and not-so-good Mummy whom he still loved, represented by France; when they came together in his mind, he could not bear to attack Germany, and rather turned to France for whom he could allow himself to feel sorry. (p.49)

Interpretation, which so often aims at the integration or synthesis of objects or the self, may produce guilt and depressive anxiety, Klein remarks in her notes to this session (ibid.). Indeed, she records that Richard soon begins to pick up books, ‘but without interest and seems lost in thought’ (ibid.)

-------------------

References:

Klein, M (1961) Narrative of a Child Analysis: The conduct of the psycho-analysis of children as seen in the treatment of a ten-year-old boy. Vintage.

Klein, M (1946) ‘Notes on Some Schizoid Mechanisms’. In Envy and Gratitude and other works 1946-1963 (1975/1997). Vintage.

Klein, M (1948) ‘On the Theory of Anxiety and Guilt’. In Envy and Gratitude and other works 1946-1963 (1975/1997). Vintage.

[lavideenrose]

The goal of all life is death

From Beyond the Pleasure Principle by Sigmund Freud

[nobodysfalls]

“It is in sadism, where the death instinct twists the erotic aim in its own sense and yet at the same time fully satisfies the erotic urge, that we succeed in obtaining the clearest insight into its nature and its relation to Eros [...] But even where it emerges without any sexual purpose, in the blindest fury of destructiveness, we cannot fail to recognize that the satisfaction of the instinct is accompanied by an extraordinary high degree of narcissistic enjoyment, owing to its presenting the ego with a fulfillment of the latter’s old wishes for omnipotence.”

--Sigmund Freud