André Green 安德鲁·格林
自恋的死 (Green, 1983).
The consequence of the real death of the mother -especially when this is due to suicide -is extremely harmful to the child whom she leaves behind. One can immediately attach to this event the symptomatology to which it gives rise, even if the analysis reveals later that the catastrophe was only irreparable because of the mother-child relationship which existed prior to her death. In fact, in this case, one should even be able to describe modes of relationship which come close to those that I wish to expound here. But the reality of the loss, its final and irrevocable nature, will have changed the former relationship in a decisive way. So I shall not be referring to conflicts that relate to such a situation. Nor shall I take into account the analyses of patients who have sought help for a recognized depressive symptomatology.
Effectively, the reasons which motivated the analysands of whom I am going to speak to undertake an analysis barely touch on the characteristic aspects of depression, in the preliminary interviews. On the other hand, the analyst immediately perceives the narcissistic nature of the conflicts that are invoked, connected as they are with character neurosis and its consequences on the patient's love-life and professional activity.
Freud, Karl Abraham and Melanie Klein. But in particular the more recent studies of Winnicott (1971 b), Kohut (1g71), N. Abraham (1g78), Torok (1978) and Rosolato (1975) have set me on this path.
Here then is the statement on which I shall be concentrating:
The most widely shared psychoanalytic theory entertains two ideas. The first is that of objcct-loss as a fundamental moment in the structuring of the human psyche, at which time a new relation to reality is introduced. Henceforward the psyche is governed by the reality principle, which takes precedence over the pleasure principle which it also protects. This first idea is a theoretical concept and not the result of observation, for this shows that a gradual evolution, rather than a mutative leap, has taken place. The second generally accepted idea is that of a depressive position, but this is interpreted variously by different authors. This second idea combines observed fact and theoretical concept for both Melanie Klein and Winnicott. Both ideas, it should be noted, are linked to a general situation referring to an unavoidable event in the process of development. If previous disturbances in the mother- child relationship make its passage or its resolution more difficult, the absence of such disturbances and the good quality of maternal care cannot help the child to avoid living through this period, which plays a formative role in the organization of his psyche.
So the question I ask myself is this: 'What is the relation that one can establish between object-loss and the depressive position, as general given facts, and the singularity of the characteristics of this depressive configuration, which is central, but often submerged among other symptoms which more or less camouflage it? What are the processes that develop around this centre? What constitutes this centre in psychic reality?
Psychoanalytic theory, which is founded on the interpretation of Freudian thought, allots 分配 a major role to the concept of the dead father, whose fundamental function is the genesis of the superego, as outlined in Totem and Taboo (Freud, 191 2-1 3). When one considers the Oedipus complex as a structure, and not merely as a phase of libidinal development, this is a coherent (条理清楚的、一致的)point of view. Other concepts derive from this: the superego in classical theory, the Law and the Symbolic in Lacanian thought. This group of concepts is linked by the reference to castration and to sublimation as the fate of the instincts.
I do not intend to discuss in detail Freud's thinking on this point, because this would lead me away from my subject, but I should like to make one remark: with castration it is the same as with repression. First, Freud well knew that, concerning both, there exist as many other forms of anxiety as other varieties of repression and even other defence mechanisms. In both cases he considers the possibility of the existence of chronologically earlier forms, from which the one and the other derive.
This structural function implies a constitutive conception of the psychical order -that constitutes a symbolical organization -which is programmed by the primal fantasies. This path has not always been followed by Freud's successors. But globally it seems that French psychoanalytic thought, in spite of its divergences, has followed Freud on this point. On the one hand, reference to castration as a model has obliged authors to 'castratize', if I may express myself thus, all other forms of anxiety; one speaks of anal or narcissistic castration, for example. On the other hand, by giving an anthropological interpretation of Freudian theory, one relates all the varieties of anxiety to the concept of lack in Lacanian theory. Now, I believe that, in both cases, one is doing violence as much to experience as to theory to save the unity and generalization of a concept.
Castration anxiety can be legitimately described as subsuming the group of anxieties linked by the '"little one" detachable part of the body', whether it be penis, faeces or baby. What gives this class unity is that castration is always evoked in the context of a bodily wound associated with a bloody act. 1 attach more importance to the idea of 'red' anxiety than to its relation to a part-object.
On the contrary, whether referring to the concept of the loss of the breast, or of object-loss, and even of threats relative to the loss of the superego or its protection, and in a general manner, to all threats of abandonment, the context is never bloody. To be sure, all forms of anxiety are accompanied by destructiveness; castration too, because the wound is, of course, the result of a destruction. But this destructiveness has nothing to do with a bloody mutilation. It bears the colours of mourning: black or white.【1】 Black as in severe depression, or blank as in states of emptiness to which one now pays justified attention.
【1】 'Noir ou blanc'- in French blanc can mean either 'white' or 'blank'. In this chapter it has the latter meaning, 'empty', throughout. [Translator's note.]
Having already described negative hallucination and blank psychosis, I shall not return to what I have said on the subject, but I shall attach blank anxiety or blank mourning to this series.
The category of 'blankness' -negative hallucination, blank psychosis, blank mourning, all connected to what one might call the problem of emptiness, or of the negative, in our clinical practice -is the result of one of the components of primary repression: massive decathexis, both radical and temporary, which leaves traces in the unconscious in the form of 'psychical holes'. These will be filled in by re-cathexes, which are the expression of destructiveness which has thus been freed by the weakening of libidinal erotic cathexis. Manifestations of hatred and the following process of reparation are manifestations which are secondary to this central de-cathexis of the maternal primary object. One can understand that this view modifies even analytic technique, because to limit oneself to interpreting hatred in structures which take on depressive characteristics amounts to never approaching the primary core of this constellation.
The Oedipus complex should be maintained as the essential symbolic matrix to which it is always important to refer, even in cases of so-called pre-genital or pre-oedipal regression, which implies the reference to an axiomatic triangulation. However advanced the analysis of the decathexis of the primary object, may be, the fate of the human psyche is to have always two objects and never one alone, however far one goes back to try to understand the earliest psychical structure. This does not mean to say that one must adhere to a conception of a primitive Oedipus complex -phylogenetic- where the father as such would be present, in the form of his penis (I am thinking of Melanie Klein's conception of the early Oedipus complex: the father's penis in the mother's womb). The father
Why is this metaphorical(隐喻)? The recourse to metaphor, which holds good for every essential element of psychoanalytic theory, is particularly necessary here. In chapter 3, I pointed out that there are two Freudian versions of the loss of the breast. The first, which is theoretical and conceptual, is that to which Freud refers in his article 'Negation' (1g25h). Freud talks about it as though it implies a unique, instantaneous, basic event -decisive, it goes without saying, because its repercussion on the function of judgement is fundamental. In the second version, in An Outline of Psychoanalysis (1940a)in particular, he adopts a position which is less theoretical than descriptive, as though he were applying himself to infant-observation, so much in vogue today. He accounts for the phenomenon, not theoretically, but in a 'narrative' form, if I may so describe it, where one understands that this loss is a process of progressive evolution which advances step by step. Now, I believe that the theoretical and descriptive approaches are mutually exclusive, rather as perception and memory exclude each other in theory. The recourse to this comparison is not only analogical. In the 'theory' that the subject elaborates about himself, the mutative inter-pretation is always retrospective. It is in the aftermath that this theory of the lost object is formed, and acquires its unique, instantaneous, decisive, irrevocable and basic characteristic.
One may note in passing that we have no difficulty in reasoning in the same manner when we speak of loving sexual intercourse, in reducing the whole of a relationship, which is far more complex, to the pairing 'penis-vagina', and in relating its mishaps to castration anxiety.
From this one may understand that, by going more deeply into the problems relating to the dead mother, I refer to them as to a metaphor, independent of the bereavement of a real object.
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