Table Of ContentJACOB'S LADDER
S ON EXPERIENCES OF THE INEFF
IN THE CONTEXT OF CONTEMPORARY
PSYCHOTHERAPY
JOSEPHINE KLEIN
KARNAC
JACOB'S L A D D ER
JACOB'S LADDER
ESSAYS ON EXPERIENCES OF THE
INEFFABLE IN THE CONTEXT OF
CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOTHERAPY
Josephine Klein
K A R N AC
LONDON NEW YORK
First published in 2003 by
H. Karnac (Books) Ltd,
118 Finchley Road, London NW3 5HT
A subsidiary of Other Press LLC, New York
Copyright © 2003 Josephine Klein
The rights of Josephine Klein to be identified as the author of this work
have been asserted in accordance with §§ 77 and 78 of the Copyright Design and
Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CLP. for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 85575 936 7
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Edited, designed, and produced by The Studio Publishing Services Ltd,
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CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
Introduction—Bach and Handel, transparency and quiddity 1
Introduction 1
Definitions: the numinous, the mystic dimension,
spiritual realms 2
Ho w Bach and Handel use language 4
Ho w Bach and Handel relate to the shadow side 7
Ho w Bach and Handel match words and music 10
Transparency and quiddity, words and music 12
The concept of quiddity 13
Gerard Manley Hopkins 14
C. P. Snow, a contrast 17
Clinical considerations 19
CHAPTER TWO
Methodology, language, focus, limits, assumptions, method 25
The nature of theories 26
Definitions 27
Nouns and verbs, words for things and words for processes 29
Words for feelings: category affects and vitality affects 31
The scope of this investigation and its limits N 33
Western, Judeo-Christian assumptions 37
Problems of selecting from so many sources, and problems
of authenticity 39
v
Vi CONTENTS
CHAPTER THREE
To sing in the presence of a lion—to talk about the ineffable 43
Attempting a natural history of lions: monism and theism 45
My Lion? Yours? Ours? Positivism and other stances 50
What is a lion—really? A religious entity?
A collective representation? What? 52
Is the lion an animal? A symbol? Either? Both? 55
Ritual 57
Is the Lion for specialists? Via negativa and via positiva 57
CHAPTER FOUR
The experience of the Holy:'
Mysterium Tremendum et Fascinans 61
Mysterium tremendum and worship 64
Mysterium tremendum, quietism and holy living 67
Worship 73
Clinical considerations 75
CHAPTER FIVE
Unselfish love—some theories 79
Unselfish love 81
Psychoanalytic ideas 82
Beatrician moments 85
Recognition: I am known and can know 86
Kenneth Wright's contribution 87
Recognition and affect-attunement 90
Idealizing, and loving what is 93
Love, affect-regulation, and the reality of other people's rights 95
The role of the father in the development of unselfish loving
and living 96
The loving parental couple internalized 97
CHAPTER SIX
Love, some examples 103
Example: the sense of absence, of lack and of longing for love 104
Love and the life-cycle 106
Examples of exclusivity sometimes amounting to phobia 109
Example: a lack of claims secures a father's love 110
Examples of childishness, eager obedience, and
glad submission 111
Example: love as a (well-intentioned) persecutor,
the Hound of Heaven 113
Examples of fearful and trustful dependence 114
CONTENTS Vii
Examples of happiness in the presence of the loved one 116
Examples of the more mature forms of loving 118
Final examples: completion and repose 124
CHAPTER SEVEN
Blurred boundaries and bliss, union, communion and
projective processes 127
The bliss of breakthrough and mended splits 136
Nature mysticism 137
The mutual rapture of three united elements 140
Immanence, transcendence, union, communion, and
projective processes 143
CHAPTER EIGHT
Beyond between within above—spatial metaphors and
the intersect 149
Spatial metaphors when talking of people 151
I and you and we and us 152
"Us" , an intersect 153
Pencil marks within " I " 155
CHAPTER NINE
Processes in the intersect 159
Jungian, Freudian, and Kleinian traditions on common ground 161
Hinshelwood on projective identification 163
The contribution of mathematical set-theory 164
Jung's Archetypes; Charles Williams' Images 165
Williams on indwelling and coherence 167
Williams on exchange and substitution 169
Later Jungian examples of a sense of contact with
something greater 172
Experiences of contact with something greater,
accompanied by disagreeable loss of the sense of identity:
Grotstein, Grotstein's Bion, and Eigen 174
Bollas, Murray Krieger, and Donald Meltzer on aesthetic
moments and the apprehension of beauty—worship 178
Bootstrap theories of the apprehension of beauty:
Likierman and Mendoza 180
A Freudian post-scriptum on the bootstrap theory 184
Inspiration and creativity 184
Martin Buber on the intersects you-and-me and
I-and-whatever-else 186
Relatedness, a form answering to our subjectivity:
Harold Searles and Kenneth Wright 190
Viii CONTENTS
With Winnicott in the intersect 195
Ogden's intersubjectivity 199
In conclusion 201
CHAPTER TEN
Will and attention 203
William James, Shand, McDougall, Stout: contemporaries of
the young Freud 205
Fallacies about "The Will", and the function of self-regard 206
Will experienced as somehow independent of other aspects
of the self 209
Voice from the back of me hall: "What about the soul?" 210
Early Freudians and the moderation (regulation) of feelings:
ego-strength and ego-weakness 211
Theories from the field of learning: maps and models 215
Instruction versus introjection or internalization 216
Introjection (or internalization) 217
(Not) trunking about a rhinoceros 218
Paying attention. How and why we do it 220
Summing up so far, and more on Schore's contribution 223
What can a good (or bad) object do for a person? 226
Via negativa and ritual in psychoanalysis and religion 227
Keeping good objects in good health 229
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Narcissism—the mystics' remedy 233
Narcissism 235
Some developmental antecedents of adult narcissism 237
Via negativa and narcissism 239
The routmization of charisma 244
Holy silliness as an anti-bureaucratic anti-obsessional
remedy for narcissism 247
What remedies are there for narcissism? 248
Culture clashes
249
Via positiva is a remedy but...
250
Self-knowledge and self-forgetfulness
need each other 252
Dependence on a good object
254
Relationship as part of the remedy
256
Finally: recognition
260
REFERENCES
261
INDEX
273
JACOB'S LADDER
Jacob left Beer-Sheba and went toward Haran. And he
came to a certain place and stayed there that night,
because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the
place, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep.
And he dreamt that there was a ladder set up on the
earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and behold,
the angels of the Lord went up and down on it...
... Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, "Surely
the Lord was in this place and I knew it not."
Genesis, Chapter Twenty-Eight
... and upon thy so sore loss
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder
Pitched between Heaven and Charing Cross.
from "In No Strange Land"
by Francis Thompson, 1859-1907
