Torment Me, But Don’t Abandon Me: Psychoanalysis of the Severe Neuroses in a New Key

343 Pages·2007·3.05 MB·English

by  Leon Wurmser

“Torment Me, but Don’t
Abandon Me”

“Torment Me, but Don’t
Abandon Me”
Psychoanalysis of the Severe
Neuroses in a New Key
Léon Wurmser
A JASON ARONSON BOOK
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.
Lanham•Boulder•New York •Toronto •Plymouth, UK
AJASON ARONSON BOOK
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.
Published in the United States of America
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Copyright © 2007 by Jason Aronson
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wurmser, Léon.
“Torment me, but don’t abandon me”: psychoanalysis of the severe
neuroses in a new key / Léon Wurmser.
p. cm.
“AJason Aronson book.”
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7657-0470-2 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-7657-0470-6 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-7657-0469-6 (pbk : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-7657-0469-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Neuroses. 2. Psychoanalysis. I. Title.
RC530.W882 2007
616.89'17—dc22 2006048034
Printed in the United States of America
(cid:2)
™
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Contents
Prologue 1
1 Sleeping Giant or Fossil? 15
2 “The Wall of Stone”—Broken Self and Broken Reality 43
3 Character Perversion 91
4 The Way from Ithaca to Golgatha—The Analysis of a
Masochistic Sexual and Character Perversion 109
5 Superego as Herald of Resentment 157
6 Tragic Character and the Devastating Power of Absoluteness 177
7 “The Envy of the All-Powerful Goddess” and Womb
Envy—Some Basic Equations 215
8 The Core Fantasies—“From Abyss to Abyss” 267
9 Technique and Relationship in the Treatment of the
Severe Neuroses 289
References 311
Index 325
About the Author 335
v

Prologue
The double title of this book implies an inner tension. The leading
quote, “Torment me, but don’t abandon me!”, coming from a patient,
expresses one specific meaning of all masochistic relationships, usually at
least secretly coupled with its counterpart, “I beat you, but do not aban-
don me!” The subtitle seems to be a grandiloquent generalization and
promise that refers to “the” severe neuroses comprising much of what
nowadays is looked at as “borderline” pathology. The bridge between the
two is formed by the centrally important phenomena of self-condemnation,
self-criticism, self-contempt, and self-sabotage, mostly centering around
intense feelings of guilt and shame and an injured sense of justice, as-
sumed for large parts of psychopathology of any kind.
In many other patients, these phenomena are covered over by their op-
posite: a seeming shamelessness and absence of guilt, an arrogant attitude
of transgressing all boundaries (known from Greek as “hubris”), a seem-
ing flight from everything that would mean limitation and conscience.
However such “flight from conscience” is complementary to the “sub-
mission to conscience” presented in this work and is the theme of a par-
allel book.
Yet still, this is surface. Behind it there is much hidden, though vehe-
mently denied, gain and excitement accompanying the overt suffering, al-
though such gain benefits only one small, but decisive part of the personal-
ity, a part that functions like a demon within the soul—an inner judge,
prosecutor, and executioner. Theoretically, we may speak of this part as the
archaic or sadistic superego. Many couch it in terms of inner objects or inner
persecutors, rightly observing both that these are often multiple versions of
1
2 Prologue
such a self-destructive agency within and that they perpetuate early rela-
tionships with important human beings. Yet to reduce this inner demonic
force to “inner objects” limits its understanding, since much more goes into
it than just the representation of “others,” and the term “objects” already
presupposes a spirit of “objectification” of self and others that may be in-
herently dehumanizing, although it is hard to avoid the term nowadays
since it has become so engrained.
We have to add the great importance of chronic traumatization. Al-
though usually part of “early object relations,” the traumata are by no
means restricted to them. Moreover, as we shall see throughout, trauma
and conflict intimately belong together. They always complement each
other, a little bit like the two ends of a rope or a ladder.
However, all this is hardly “a new key.”
There is something more, although that something by itself again does
not warrant such a proud claim: the very important role played by the
conflicts between opposite contents and intents of this demonic force, or
to put it now in technical terms, the “intrasystemic conflicts within the
superego.” This has been well known since the works of Hartmann and
Loewenstein (1962) and Sandler, Holder, and Meers (1963). Yet, I have
found that almost all the work I can observe through supervision and case
discussions has overlooked its practical significance: the opposition of in-
compatible ideals, obligations, and values; the shame-guilt-dilemma; the
loyalty conflicts within the person, and to a considerable extent on an un-
conscious level. The consistent attention to such antinomies of conscience
is at least one part of what I claim to be a new key.
Such consistent superego analysis requires a constant effort not to be
judgmental and authoritarian in the very core of approach. Paul Gray’s
recommendation (personal communication) “exploring instead of judg-
ing,” and its reverse: the persistent attention to the self-defensive attempt
on the patient’s side of “judging instead of exploring” serve as a light-
house shining its beacon through the fog.
The other part of this “new key” is emphasis on complementarity, in
addition to conflict. But for that I have to broaden the vista.
DIALECTIC
The treatment of patients suffering from various forms of severe neurosis
touches upon core questions of psychoanalysis and its central polarities:
reality of the relationship versus transference and “as-if” quality of expe-
rience, emotional spontaneity and self-disclosure on the side of the thera-
pist versus anonymity, gratification versus frustration and neutrality, in-
sight versus suggestion and psychagogy, defect versus conflict, and the
Prologue 3
often disregarded but important question of psychoanalysis versus psycho-
therapy. Also, the commonly and dogmatically held primacy of transfer-
ence interpretations and of working in the transference needs to be ques-
tioned: I continue to find also the focus on acute inner conflicts in regard
to events and relationships outside of the treatment enormously helpful.
The interpretive process may very well be seen like the three-legged chair
of the Pythia in the Delphian oracle: transference interpretation, extra-
transferential work on conflicts, and work on past traumatizations and
conflicts. Moreover, as already stated, trauma and conflict belong always
intimately together. There can never be an either/or of trauma and con-
flict.
When I select the major points that have emerged from the work pre-
sented here and from my extensive supervision, mostly in Europe, it has
to be kept in mind that they have to be seen as part of a dialectic. Titus,
Smith, and Nolan (1986) explain: “The dialectical process is a dialogue be-
tween opposing positions . . . the dialectic is the development of thought
through an interplay of ideas.” Hoffman (1994, p. 195) uses Ogden’s def-
inition: “Adialectic is a process in which each of two opposing concepts
creates, informs, preserves, and negates the other, each standing in a dy-
namic (ever changing) relationship with the other (p. 208).” He postulates
that “the relationship between psychoanalytic discipline and expressive
participation is dialectical in that sense” (Hoffman, ibid.). “Psychoanalytic
ideas are rooted in a belief in the dialectic,” says J. L. Kantrowitz (in
Greenberg, 2001, p. 404). However, this complementarity (I use this term
interchangeably with “dialectic”) “between the analyst’s personal emo-
tional presence and the analyst’s role-determined behavior” (Hoffman,
1994, p. 197) is but one among a number of such complementary oppo-
sites; some of the others I have just mentioned. Another relevant example
is the dialectic between consciousness and unconsciousness, between
drive and defense: “Each pole of the dialectic creates, preserves, and
negates the other. Each stands in dynamic, ever-changing relation to the
other” (Phillips, 2006, p. 150). “In general, a behavior is a defense in rela-
tion to a drive more primitive than itself, and a drive in relation to a de-
fense more advanced than itself” (Gill, 1963, p. 122–3).
Thus, the philosophy of conflict is complemented by the philosophy of
complementarity. The old alchemistic wisdom and Niels Bohr’s motto
Contraria sunt complementa (Holton, 1973), that is that the opposites com-
plement each other, seems particularly suitable for the progress of under-
standing in psychoanalysis.
Intrapsychic and interpersonal understanding, conflict analysis and re-
lational analysis complement each other in varying and subtle ways, but
consistently so—in the sense of a continually evolving “research pro-
gram,” as postulated by Lakatos and Musgrave (1970): “It is a succession of