On Private Madness

Andre Green

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780429917028
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

The author occupies a unique position in psychoanalysis today, and his work represents a synthesis of the traditions of Lacan, Winnicott and Bion. This volume collects fourteen of his papers together with a substantial introduction. The papers range widely across clinical and theoretical issues including borderline states, the true and false self, and narcissism. On Private Madness has achieved the status of a modern psychoanalytic classic, and this new impression will be welcomed by all those admirers of the author who wish to have these seminal papers collected together.

1
Psychoanalysis and Ordinary Modes of Thought

In an unfinished work written in London during the autumn of 1938, Freud wrote: ‘Psychoanalysis has little prospect of becoming liked or popular. It is not merely that much of what it has to say offends people’s feelings. Almost as much difficulty is created by the fact that our science involves a number of hypotheses – it is hard to say whether they should be regarded as postulates or as products of our researches – which are bound to seem very strange to ordinary modes of thought and which fundamentally contradict current views. But there is no help for it’ (Freud 1940b, p. 282). Freud is alluding here to the unconscious. He explains that the resistances to the unconscious are not only due to a moral censorship but to an intellectual one as well, as if its existence threatened reason and logic. In this opening chapter 1 will try to show that the progression of Freud’s work compelled him to recognize the existence of modes of thought even more extraordinary then he could have expected when he proposed his first hypothesis on the unconscious.

When we advise the analysand to avoid censuring his thoughts and to say all that comes to mind, the censure pertains to both moral and intellectual categories. The analysand’s use of free associations implies that he has accepted the surrender of all claim to the rational connection of thoughts, so that another type of connection can be established by means of the analyst’s freely floating attention. The relationships established by the analyst’s mind between different parts of the material communicated by the analysand’s free association, including some missing links which are implicitly active in silence, suggest that a certain form of logic is at work behind the scenes, which does not obey the rules of common reason. Would it not be the case that either there would be no latent content at all or, if such a content existed, it would not be intelligible?

I do not intend to resume the various stages which led to the demonstration of this other logic. I will simply make the point that this double logic was theorized by Freud in his classical opposition between primary and secondary processes. Although it is well known that secondary processes are the processes of traditional logical thought and obey the reality principle, it has not always been made clear that primary processes, which obey the pleasure–displeasure principle, also have an implicit logic. Its main characteristics are that it ignores time; it does not take negation into account; it operates by condensation and displacement; and it does not tolerate any expectation or delay. It succeeds in expressing itself by turning around the obstacles which would attempt to prevent it from making itself known; in other words, it permits our unconscious desires to experience a certain form of realization.

This is the point to note. In spite of the censorship, the repressed wishes succeed in finding satisfaction through a special mode of thought to ensure the victory of the pleasure principle. My feeling is that we have underestimated the healthy aspect of that achievement and overemphasized its pathological aspect.

The opposition between the primary and secondary processes should not be described in terms of the primary processes being irrational and the secondary processes rational. Rather, they are competitive and complementary processes which obey different types of reason. We can draw two important conclusions from this. First, the psychical unity of man is fallacious. The validity of the equation psychical–conscious was contested by the idea of the unconscious. The subject was no longer One but Two; or, put another way, the unity was that of a couple living in tolerable conflict or relative harmony. The second idea, proceeding from the first, is that the existence of two conflicting terms tends towards the creation of compromise formations which endeavour to build a bridge between them.

I feel that if Freud was so strongly attached to maintaining a dualist point of view concerning instinct theory, for example, it is because he had understood intuitively that the duality at the outset was the condition necessary for the production of something else born from the relationship between the two generic terms.

What I mean to say is not that the duality is primitive, but that the duality is the limit of the greatest possible reduction as far as intelligibility is concerned. The necessary and adequate condition for establishing a relationship is that there be two terms. This simple declaration has many implications. It sets up the pair as a theoretical reference which is more fruitful than all those which use unity as a base. If we reflect even further on the implications of this fundamental duality as the condition for the production of a third part, we find the basis of symbolic activity. In fact the creation of a symbol demands that two separate elements be reunited in order to form a third element which borrows its characteristics from the two others, but which will be different from the sum of these characters nonetheless.

All of this brings us to the analytic situation. In this situation the two parts which are its very essence are both brought together and kept apart. There is no physical contact between them. Contact can be established through the emotional climate of the silent session, but we know that silence can be experienced differently by each of the partners. A form of contact is also established through speech, indicating which part of himself the analysand wishes to place into contact with the analyst. Still, can we say that the discourse of the analysand is the analysand? Clearly we cannot, for rationalization and negation are at work. Nevertheless, if we did not believe that the analysand’s speech tries to tell us something about himself we would not have decided to prefer this particular form of relationship. Thus, we must say that the analysand’s discourse is and is not the analysand, and that it is produced by his symbolic activity which attempts to bring together that which is separated. Separation in fact becomes a new opportunity for another form of reunion.

That which is separated calls for a double separation. First of all, there is a separation between the analysand and the analyst. But this separation is reiterated by each of the partners, for each has an unconscious separated from his own conscious. The analysand’s discourse will result then from a double compromise. It will be the expression of a compromise between the unconscious and the conscious, as well as the expression of a compromise between the desire to be in contact with the analyst and the desire to avoid this contact with him.

In much the same way the analyst’s listening must work on all of these areas at the same time, for he must also acknowledge that what he hears is a compromise between what he deciphers with the help of his conscious and what he is able to understand by means of his unconscious. It would be wrong to say that the analyst does not share the desires of contact with the analysand, or is not similarly tempted to respond symmetrically to the movements by which the analysand attempts to break this contact. The interpretation strives to be the best possible compromise during these movements of come and go. The interpretation is expressed with paradoxical goals, for it must maintain the contact with the analysand while allowing the necessary distance so that this form of contact can lead to an insight. As for its content, the interpretation is also a compromise formation; it condenses the modes of reasoning which belong to both rational logical thought and to this form of logic which obeys another type of rationality. In fact our interpretations include statements which imply if, then, so, because, however, and so on. At the same time our interpretations also tell that this expressed hostility is a sign of love, this apparent love hides a lot of hate; that this indifference translates feelings of despair; that this wish to die actually wishes to have someone else die, or to merge with him eternally.

The situation I have just described implies that the ego can prove itself capable of recognizing the existence of the primary processes of subjective reason without withdrawing all claims to the secondary processes of objective reason. Above all it implies that the ego can go from one to the other without denying its psychic reality and without repudiating material reality. The ego must chiefly be able to establish flexible connections, which alternately are going to be done, forming temporary hypotheses and conclusions, and be undone, in order to leave room for others who give a better representation of the situation. I believe that it is useful to think that a third category of processes exists. I propose to call these instruments of liaison, or connections, tertiary processes. For, in opposition to what Freud thought, it is not so much a question of the secondary processes dominating the primary processes, but rather that the analysand can make the most creative use of their coexistence and do so in the most elaborate activities of the mind just as he does in everyday life. Perhaps this is asking a great deal.

As long as Freud had the feeling that he could call upon the ego to lead him towards an awareness of the unconscious through the return of the repressed, he could consider that he was in a position to solve the difficulties inherent in psychoanalytic treatment. But he came to the conclusion that a great part of the ego was itself unconscious, and this was, without doubt, a disappointing discovery for him. Until then, the unconscious gave itself away through the manifestations which proved its existence; slips of the tongue, parapraxes, fantasies, dreams, symptoms, transference, which, once analyzed, should have forced the ego to conclude that the unconscious was not a fiction. When Freud discovered that the ego is not only the seat of resistance but is unconscious of its resistances, and that its defence mechanisms remained opaque to himself, he relied upon signs that he could hear, but these signs remained silent for the analysand. Freud did not find the means at his disposal to analyze logically this non-repressed unconscious. He had made the ego’s integrity into a preliminary condition for the possibility of undertaking an analysis. In ‘Analysis terminable and interminable’ he was forced to admit the hard truth: ‘The ego, if we are to be able to make such a pact with it, must be a normal one. But a normal ego of this sort is, like normality in general, an ideal fiction. The abnormal ego, which is unserviceable for our purposes, is unfortunately no fiction. Every normal person, in fact, is only normal on the average. His ego approximates to that of the psychotic in some part or other and to a greater or lesser extent’ (Freud, 1937c, p. 235).

We may observe that Freud refers here to psychosis and not to neurosis. This means that he is obliged to admit that the normal ego includes a number of distortions in his relationship to reality which call in question its capacity of integration or its power of synthesis. We may add that this alteration of the ego is also responsible for the defection of the second ally: transference. Positive or even ambivalent transference was based on the idea that, with the help of the analyst, a better compromise could be found between the demands made by the id and the ego which must also take into consideration both the superego and the reality principle. The negative therapeutic reaction contradicts this presupposition.

‘No stronger impression arises from the resistances during the work of analysis than of there being a force which is defending itself by every possible means against recovery and which is absolutely resolved to hold on to illness and suffering. One portion of this force has been recognized by us, undoubtedly with justice, as the sense of guilt and need for punishment, and has been localized by us in the ego’s relation to the superego. But this is only the portion of it which is, as it were, psychically bound by the superego, and thus becomes recognizable; other quotas of the same force, whether bound or free, may be at work in other, unspecified places. If we take into consideration the total picture made up of the phenomena of masochism immanent in so many people, the negative therapeutic reaction and the sense of guilt found in so many neurotics, we shall no longer be able to adhere to the belief that mental events are exclusively governed by the desire for pleasure. These phenomena are unmistakable indications of the presence of a power in mental life which we call the instinct of aggression or of destruction according to its aims, and which we trace back to the original death instinct of living matter’ (ibid., pp. 242–3).

In this quotation Freud holds the destructive instincts responsible for this state of affairs. I shall not discuss here the concept of the death instinct, except to note that it is because the ego appears to have surrendered to this reversal of life values that the happy ending does not come about.

Two serious grounds pertaining to the ego and the instinct of aggression cause the analyst’s action to fail. But if we try to understand what Freud says about these two situations according to the perspective I have chosen, that is the existence of a different logic, perhaps it would be possible to go beyond the stage of mere declarations.

Let us go back to Freud’s quotation. What seems to take place with these analysands is that the pleasure-displeasure principle governing psychic activity has transposed the order of these terms. The search for pleasure has substituted itself for the search for displeasure, and the avoidance of displeasure has become avoidance of pleasure. It is as if the subject says ‘Yes’ to displeasure and ‘No’ to pleasure. In many cases the analyst thinks that the ‘No’ to pleasure is merely on the surface and that there are hidden satisfactions for this maintenance of suffering. But there are other cases where psychic pain is such that it appears difficult to believe that the subject receives any satisfaction from it at all. We can ask, what are the unconscious thoughts of these patients made out of? In short, what does their psychic reality look like, if we do not give up considering their manifest discourse as a cover-up discourse?

The psychic reality of these patients is not less complicated than the psychic reality in those cases where the pleasure principle dominates. Disguises use condensation and displacement here as well. Doubtless, the difference lies in the fact that the logic presiding over these operations is a logic of despair. Freud said that psychic reality is the only true reality. This applies in the case we are dealing with too. Melanie Klein showed us the importance of reparation processes in depression, and I believe that the cases Freud refers to are impregnated with depressive features. But there is even more. Winnicott showed that for certain patients the only reality is the reality of that which is not there, that which makes one suffer by its very absence. Absence leads not to hope but to despair. Here we can infer that the unconscious thought processes of the patients displaying the features described by Freud refer back to a psychic reality – the only true one for them – formed by objects which only exist through the disappointment or displeasure they create. The emptiness of the ego is more consistent than its achievements. All the self-hatred which dwells in these analysands reflects a compromise between the desire to carry out an unquenchable revenge and, coexisting with this, the desire to protect the object from these hostile wishes directed towards him. This revenge is born from a wound which hit their patients in their very being, which disabled their narcissism. Their failure to realize this stems in great part from the fact that their thoughts do not know how to distinguish between the harm they want to impose upon themselves – and of which they are often unconscious – and the harm they want to inflict upon their object. They do not forgive the object for its inability in valuing them, for its absence at the time when they most needed it, and the fact that this object has other sources of pleasure than themselves. This logic of despair has one constant goal: to produce evidence that the object is really bad, incomprehensive and rejecting because of the extent to which they entreat rejection by others. When they attain their goal they have proof not only that they are not able to instil love, but that the love of others is merely a superficial front behind which they hide their hatred. In short, love is always uncertain, hatred is always sure. Likewise, they make arrangements to perpetuate this form of sado-masochistic relationship which they have chosen for as long as possible, as long as they can find a partner who accepts the role they have assigned to him.

If analysis is based on the possibility of establishing new bonds in psychic activity with that which is separated by repression, we can declare that this ability to establish bonds is not destroyed here as in psychosis, but that these bonds always establish themselves in a way which confirms that the result of this bond is never positive. While the analytic work provides these patients with additional meaning, the result of an increase in meaning is always a reduction in being. Paradoxically these analysands only have the feeling of a ‘more-being’ (plus-être) in the lessening of their well-being (bien-être), which is always – in the end – an implicit accusation against those who brought them into the world, since they never asked to be born.

The answer to this situation tends to show the patient that his need to create despair in the analyst is necessary for him to be able to verify that the analyst can survive this hatred and continue to analyze what goes on in the patient’s psychic world. This is the best proof of love that the analyst can give. That is to help him, the patient, in recognizing that this self-hatred is a sacrifice, and that this hatred directed towards the object is perhaps, as Winnicott believes, a ruthless love. For the extreme ambivalence of these patients goes hand in hand with their extraordinary intolerance of ambivalence, just as their unconscious guilt feelings reflect a refusal to feel guilty and an extreme idealization of the image they have of themselves, symmetrical to the image of the ideal object they look for in vain on this earth.

The logic explained earlier, that of primary processes, as Freud defined it, was – in a way – a logic based on the idea of a couple of opposites formed by desire, on the one hand, and prohibition on the other. If the prohibition were suspended, we could presume that nothing would prevent a happy union with the object. In short, it was not conceivable that the object could not love the subject, or hate it. In this perspective, the logic of primary processes is a logic of hope; a case opposite to what I have called the logic of despair. Here the object is in the forefront, not the wish, not the prohibition. If the happy union is experienced as being impossible, it is because the subject cannot feel loved by the object or cannot love the object. It is a different logic, over the conflict between the wish and the prohibition, because the conflict between the ego and the object about love and hate prevails. Of course, when I speak of the object I refer to the internal object which is so profoundly internal that it is a narcissistic object shaped on the subject’s wounded narcissism.

The negative therapeutic action teaches us that the fixations on hatred are much more tenacious than the fixations on love. The first is the conviction of having been deprived of a love to which one has as much right as to the air one breathes. Under these conditions it is difficult to give up an object without wanting to obtain this love up until the end. The second reason is that hatred is accompanied by guilt. To give up the object is to give up hating; but to discover a possibility of love with another object not only means letting the primitive object of the fixation follow its own destiny, it also means making it literally disappear from the self and, in a way, abandoning it. There is guilt in hating the object, but there is just as much guilt if not more when the subject no longer hates the object in order to love another object. The solution then consists in perpetuating the internal bond with it, for it is better to have a bad internal object than to risk losing it forever. The correspondence between the relationship of the ego with the object and the ego with the superego is striking.

Let us return now to Freud’s assertion concerning the psychotic distortions of the ego. Up to this point we only had to deal with hope and despair within a mirror-like system – with two terms – opposite to and symmetrical with each other. We can understand that, contrary to what we have said before, no third term is created, no symbolization occurs effectively. Tertiary processes are missing.

When Freud spoke of the repression of reality in psychosis and of its transformation, he wrote the following in ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Psychoanalysis and ordinary modes of thought
• 2 The analyst, symbolization and absence in the analytic setting
• 3 The borderline concept
• 4 Projection
• 5 Aggression, femininity, paranoia and reality
• 6 Moral narcissism
• 7 The dead mother
• 8 Conceptions of affect
• 9 Passions and their vicissitudes
• 10 Negation and contradiction
• 11 Potential space in psychoanalysis
• 12 Surface analysis, deep analysis
• 13 The double and the absent
• 14 The unbinding process
• References
• Index