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The poetry of countertransference
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THEPOETRYOFCOUNTERTRANSFERENCE
MANYA
BEAN,
erful ally to the psychoanalytic treatment. This is understandable from the developmental point of view, psychoanalysis being a fairly young discipline. One way to look at the historical defense of psychoanalysis against the countertransference phenomenon is by utilizing a metaphor from physics, whereby “macroscopic events fix the ‘arrow of time’ in the direction that increases disorder” (Kaku & Trainer, 1987, p. 207). This relates to the second law of thermodynamics and the concept of entropy, which is another word for disorder, or inevitable decay. The inevitability of disorder becomes undeniable when one considers that entropy is almost synonymous with “the arrow of time”; that is, if entropy increases, one knows that the arrow of time is moving in the same direction. As K. C. Cole stated in two of her publications:
What you get out of me, you will have to pick out of chaos. D. W. Winnicott (194911975) Countertransference
PhD, NCPsyA*
and Its Vicissitudes
A brief history of countertransference and its vicissitudes indicates that circa 1950 there was an outpouring of psychoanalytic writing on countertransference around the world, with Racker (1953) in Argentina, P. Heimann (1950). Little (195 I) and Winnicott (1949) in England, and Fromm-Reichmann (1950). Thompson, Crowley, and Tauber (1952) in the United States. The taboo of the analyst having feelings was thus broken. Then, there was comparative silence for the next 20 years, until the 70s when interest in the countertransference was again evident. Bion. Grinberg, Langs, Ogden, Searles, Spotnitz and many others have been writing through the 70s and the 80s. An important volume on countertransference. edited by Epstein and Feiner, was published in 1979 and reprinted in 1983. In the 80s entire issues of psychoanalytic journals were devoted to studies of countertransference. There has been a gradual but constant interest in this phenomenon. The view that countertransference is “a hindrance” to the psychoanalytic process, something to be exorcised or at least analyzed and be rid of as quickly as possible has been changing with the years. It has taken some time for it to gain the same acceptance as transference and to be designated as a “universal phenomenon” (Bird, 197 I) and a most pow-
You don’t need a clock to tell you which way the hands are turning as paint peels off a house, a face ages, heels wear down (1988. p. 76) . . . . To live is to be in constant battle with the Second Law of Thermodynamics. . . . There is only one possible way for Humpty Dumpty to remain a recognizable whole, but there are an infinite number of ways for him to fall apart. (1985, p. 3234) If an analyst is coming from the outside into a given subsystem, say the patient’s, it is possible to order it and thereby decrease its entropy, but then the analyst’s entropy has to increase in order to decrease the other. Furthermore, entropy increases rapidly in
*Manya Bean is a psychoanalyst in private practice in New Jersey and Philadelphia, PA. She is also a puet working for the New Jersey Council in the Arts.
347
MANYA BEAN complicated situations. As analysts increase their degree of freedom, their entropy increases. In view of this. it is understandable that analysts may wish to defend against such increases. They may already feel impinged upon by their patients’ intense transferential feelings and may wish to ward off the added burden of countertransferential or induced affects. Definirion
Counte~ra~sference is defined as the analyst’s “living response” (Racker’s phrase) to the totality of the patient’s emotional state at any given moment. In addition to thoughts and Feelings, this response may include fantasies, images, altered states of consciousness. acting out, acting in, experiencing heat, cold, hunger, drowsiness, and so on. Somatizing, and/or bodily experiences in the analyst. such as headaches. uterine contractions, rashes, earaches, viewed as emotional communications from the patient to the analyst, are also reported (e.g., S. Waddell’s 1983 unpublished thesis which includes interviews with Searles and Spotnitz). This denotes a very wide range of responses. Just as “the potential For transference meanings is limitless, Fostered by the vicissitudes of early maturational history” (Margolis. 1979, p. 13I ), so is the potential of countcrtransfercntial rcsponscs to the transference equally limitless. Discussion
The goal is that analysts must bc open to expcriencing ull feelings. They must receive and tolerate induced feelings and their own limitless countertransferential responses and not ward them off. Like the ancient shamans, they may take on their patients’ illnesses For a time, suffering from a countemansference neurosis, a countertransference psychosis (Little, 1981) or from a narcissistic countertransference (Margolis, p. 16) while involving thcmselves in a process of continuous contamination and decon~mination. If we were to return once again to the paradigm from physics, we would observe that an experiencing of countertransference feelings would result in an increase in entropy that is associated with the transfer of heat. Heat, in turn. is associated with agitation or vibratory motion. Thus, an analyst (or anyone else) who is suffering from an increase in entropy is in need of a “cooling off.” The most widely used method to “take the heat
off” and obtain the “cooling off’ effect is what Love has termed “the hot potato syndrome,” whereby if some feelings are too hot to handle and one does not want them. one simply passes them on to someone else. like a hot potato, and one does not have them anymore (1984, private communication). This is a method used extensively in alcoholic and other dysFunctional families in which members live with burdens of strong unexpressed feelings that they pass on to one another, often silently. Analysts. on the other hand, talk. They talk to other analysts and they write. Beginning analysts, where “flooding” is most likely to occur, get relief in supervision and sometimes use their supervisor as the recipient of the “hot” and unmanageable induced feelings, subsequently returning to these feelings so that they may be analyzed and understood. They talk to their own analyst within the training analysis modality or within the structure of a peer group process. To receive and study countertransference feelings, they may use their body, their psyche, their intellect, and their capacity to fantasize. In a 1983 paper Ripin stated that “Rage. as it occurs in the analytic situation, is a communicable disease, and it is unlikely that any analyst, however experienced, well-trained and analyzed, is immune to it” (p. 67). Writing and the Countertransference When analysts produce writings with a theoretical content, they use the creation of theory as a construct that will order the diverse agitation they may have experienced in their clinical practice. Here, the intellect is heavily relied upon and intellectualization is employed as an excellent means to deal with increased entropy and to “solidify one’s defenses” against too much Feeling (Epstein, 1988). Theoreticians of all persuasions are prone to experience strong feelings of power, even grandiosity; they succeed in synthesizing order out of the chaos of raw or seemingly convicting data. And who is to deny them the thrill of understanding? They then know something in a way that no one else has known before. In addition to theory-building, talking, somatizing, fantasizing, and creating imagery to contain and organize the enormous range of countertransference responses, certain analysts venture to put countettransference feelings into poetry. The analyst as poet may conceivably stand alongside the analyst as theoretician, case historian, and note taker.
POETRY OF COUNTERTRANSFERENCE In this paper the poetry of cou~te~sfe~nce will be presented along with some theoretical underpinnings for its raison d’etre. A justification will be proposed with an aim to place it alongside the mainstream of psychoanalytic theoretical constructs. I will then offer a number of poems with specific and various connections to my concerns with psycho~alysis as a student and clinician. The poems spring, for the most part, from unconscious and preconscious communication between analyst and analysand and are followed by a commentary that explores, investigates, analyzes, or witnesses the countertransference feelings generated within this field. The Analyst as Poet To paraphrase the poet Yehuda Amichai (1986). we may say that analysts/poets belong to the “combat troops” of art and psychoanalysis, whereas novelists and metapsychologists “enjoy a loftier view behind the front as generals.” Amichai often sees a metaphorical equivalence between war and life. I might add that psychoanalysis (at least in some phases of treatment) is marked by its own terrors, its necessities for courage and heroic persistence. This is because we are all engaged in the rclcntlcss fmntline warfare of living vulnerable lives. and poetic metaphor is an indispensable weapon in our hand-to-hand struggle with reality. Poetry, after all, is the language of feelings capable of containing complex, sometimes oppositional constellations of affect (cf. Freud, 1910). in lending itself to the use of symbolic language, it is close to primary process and, like the dream, it can better convey the rapidity, the delicacy or the intensity of experience. Impressions rendered in a few lines achieve condensation similar to dream-thought and dream-imagery, reversals, puns, word-play, and atmospheric effects. In contrast to linear or sequential presentation that may be too lengthy or cumbersome, Poetry is the most expeditious way of expressing the inner and outer worlds and what lies concealed in them. My own relationship to poetry has been a long and intimate one. I have been reading poems in various languages from my youth and I began to write and publish poems for a number of years prior to my psychoanalytic studies. When I found myself enmeshed in induced feelings, which was a new way of experiencing the world. I naturally turned to a poetic idiom. It was a language both available and familiar
to me and had occasionally served me as a lifeline in the past. My own poems had been like stepping stones, giving me something to stand on. in dealing with countertransference feeling material, the writing of poems filled a number of additional functions. It worked: (a) as a way to document my countertransference feelings, fb) as a holding environment or container, fc) as a ~nsitional object or artifact, (d) as a means to organize. understand, and integrate new cognitive and affective learning from lectures and seminars, and (e) at times. as a diagnostic tool. For the sake of exposition. I shall attempt to describe the above functions in a sequential manner, though it will be unde~t~ that a strict and orderly delineation is impossible for a number of reasons. First. these functions often occur simultaneously; second, some almost always overlap-one leading and blending into another. For example. the conceptual act of documenting and recording also serves the function of discharge; all occur at once. Discharge, however, leads to holding. which in turn becomes transitional object, poem, artifact. Finally, poetry itself is a transrational language inimical to classification,
Writing poetry can function as a way of documcnting countemitnsfcrence feelings in a process similar to the one of recording and analyzing dreams. Since countcrtransfcrence often deals with unconscious, preconscious, and/or prcverbai material. the poetry of it can be another “royal road to the unconscious,” in that the poem, like the dream, realizes “a knowing’* that did not exist before its occurrence. A poem does not know what it is going to say until it says it, so that it is discovered by its own writing. Here enters the ekment of surprise, which is, of course, inherent in discovery. In examining my own writing process I should explain that I never wrote during a session with a patient, but only afterwards. Usually, 1 functioned during the session as a container, just taking things in, and did not get hit with the full force of the induced feelings until afterwards. At that moment, I suffered from a heavy dose of a countertransference neurosis, a countertransference psychosis or a narcissistic countertransference, as the case may have been. In all instances, however, I found myself in a regressed and chaotic state. That is when I would begin to write. As I wrote the poem, 1 did not passively observe the
MANYA chaos. suffer it or masochistically submit to it. Instead. the act of writing forced me to actively live it, order it, and give it meaning. Out of the chaos, I chose or let myself be chosen by one constellation of feelings, a situation or image that took on the idea of priority and that I explored in the poem. In articulating a feeling, I documented and made sense of it; therefore. ordered it. As the writing progressed. I sought to uncover what was underneath that feeling and its meaning, understand that. then say that. The process involved feeling. understanding. articulation/ documentation. Then. looking further. discovering more or new feeling. understanding each new discovand documenting theseery. articulating theoretically, ad infinitum. Ordering of chaos became associated with a quest for more and more authenticity of feeling (cf. Guntrip’s writing, 1969; the wtitings of Alice Miller, 1981-1984; Winnicott’s “true and false self.” 1960). The poem, then, in its persistent exploration turned into a vehicle for documenting regression in the service of countertransference exploration. The idea of the quest for authenticity coupled with the pcrsistencc of the poet ties into the obsessive quality of writing that, I think, matches well with analysts’ dcsirc to satisfy the epistcmophilic instinct, as well as with the striving to explore. analyze, and perhaps cure. In Kavafy’s “Darius” (1920/1958). the pact Femazis is writing his epic poem about Darius:
. . . But hcrc philosophy is needed. He must analyze the feelings Darius would have perhaps grandiosity and drunkenness but no-rather an understanding of the vanity of grandeur. The poet thinks on this matter deeply. Femazis is interrupted by his servant who announces that war with the Romans has been declared. The poet ruminates, worries about the war effort, prays, then becomes impatient with the interruption to his work: But in the middle of all his anxiety and trouble the poetic idea persistently comes and goesthe most probable is. of course, grandiosity and drunkenness grandiosity and drunkenness would be what Darius felt. (Ka66+rt, flol+paTa. 1958. p. 116. Translation mine).
BEAN As the poet strives to find meaning and to order his Darius. so do analysts compulsively return to their metier, that is. the scrutiny of feelings-their patients’. their own, their own vis a vis the patients, and so on . . . otherwise they would not be writing. The Poem
as Holding
Environment
Aside from its archaeological aspect of digging, unearthing, bringing to light, documenting, ordering, and understanding, the poetry of countertransference can be seen as a container and a holding environment. My view of this process parallels the one between mother and infant, as exemplified by Winnicott. When the baby suffers excitation (e.g.. hunger, extreme cold, heat, sickness, pain. loneliness, wanting tactile contact or to feel mother’s heart beating next to his). the deprivation or overstimulation creates internal chaos. This chaotic and fragmented state induces motility, thrashing about wildly, screaming. Later, the baby may spit, pull mother’s hair, scratch, bite. “The good enough mother” provides a holding environment in which the baby can discharge safely without damaging himself or her. If hc urinates or vomits on the mother, she dots not reject, punish or abandon him. She dots not directly retaliate. nor does she act out her annoyance. hostility or hatred. She just cleans up. changes her clothing, and picks the baby up again. In treatment. our patients bring in their prcscnting problems, which may be headaches. ulcers, chest pains, all manner of somatizing; other symptoms may be there as well, such as depression, deadness, suicidal feelings. extreme distress, and psychic pain; in other words, chaos. The patient may be thrashing about verbally, projecting, blaming, crying, spitting up old introjects. and so on. Just as the mother and the analyst provide the proper holding environment for safe discharge, so does the analyst/poet use the blank paper as a holding environment for his or her countertransference feelings. And the poem, like the theory, may become, if one is lucky, both a functional and an elegant container of chaos. Plato in Timueus. speaks of the “chora” (xcjpa) and the “ypodocheon” (ulroSoxeiow), “chora” meaning “space,” “land,” “country.” and “ypodocheon” meaning “receptacle” or “containing underneath.” These meanings are presented as “an invisible and formless being that receives all things” and is maternally connoted (Plato, p. 5 I). The blank paper can be, once again, the poet/analyst’s chora-a space
POETRY
OF COUNTERTRANSFERENCE
defined by its own dimensions and boundaries, but also a motherland vast and open enough to receive all things, its formlessness lending itself to the creation of whatever environment is needed. Thus, it may not always function as a container of abreaction, of aggressive or libidinal discharges, but may be a silent landscape devoid of dramatic intensity. The concept of chora, as a female space that holds and contains, functions similarly in the developmental process, the treatment process, and the writing process.
The Poem as Transitional Object or Artifact Since Winnicott, much has been written about the holding environment and its various implications in the treatment. As Arnold Model1 pointed out:
. . . the analytic process itself was invested with the qualities of a transitional object, apart from the person of the analyst. Although the qualities of the holding environment are generated by the analyst’s technique, they may bccome separated from the analyst and take on a life of their own. The analytic process is not infrequently observed in dreams as a more or less protective container, such as a house or an automobile. (1976. p. 293) The analytic process then occurs in a space created by the analyst and the analysand and may become a transitional object or artifact fashioned by and belonging to both participants. Here, one is reminded of Ferenczi’s (191411956) and Roheim’s view that civilization. culture. money, and art are transitional phenomena, or “defense systems against anxiety . . . the colossal efforts made by a baby who is afraid to be left alone in the dark” (Roheim, 1943, pp. 81-100). A personal recollection of my first infant is, I think, pertinent here. At around fourteen months, this baby went through a phase when he would wake up in the middle of the night and repeat to himself animal sounds (such as moo, miaow. woof woof, pip pip, etc.) that I had made to him during the day when I was showing him a book of animals. His recital was a fine and comforting story/ poem he was telling himself and very entertaining (to both of us) behind his closed door. Analysts, like babies and patients, may find themselves alone in the dark and holding the bag, so to speak, whether the patient is present or not. They,
then. may proceed to create a fantasy, a formula, an hypothesis, a poem. or what have you. Though the analysts/poets may have begun in utter loneliness, talking to themselves, so as to get the discomposed self out of its jam or, for practical purposes, because it was a familiar medium of expression, as the writing progresses, as the blank paper begins to hold them they find themselves in a space that is becoming numenous-ordered and taking on meaning. Echolalia and false starts are replaced by a clearly focused goal: to say what they mean. This leads into a concern with language, with the poet reaching the developmental stage of “couth.” What is said must be said not only precisely, but also uniquely, in a language that is fresh, and containing the flavor of the panicular feeling and the particular person who felt it. Yet, the language must not be personal and idiosyncratic to the point of being cryptic, but must be accessible to others. In the continuum between the uniquely individual and the universal, the freshly imagined and the stale cliche. the personal symbol and the archetype. disclosure must occur each time in a newfound voice and the story told in ways that are comprehensible. The desire to be understood shifts the focus toward communication, while the initial aim of discharge has bccomc obsolete. This new reality needs to be shared. And now the poet wishes for a human ear, and so will speak with another, address a Thou, create an audience, write TO someone. The poet wants to be heard, understood, accepted, validated, affirmed, congratulated for being alive. Ruth Miller (1988) developed the thesis that for Emily Dickinson, because she did not receive any acceptance or recognition during her lifetime, her work became the link between herself and generations to follow:
. . . [her] fascicles were for the poet the transitional object designed to link herself and posterity. And I suggest further that these were for the poet the transitional object designed to forge the link between Emily Dickinson and immortality. . . . Her intuition of her value, of her ability, and of her excellence as a poet was confirmed by posterity. (1988, pp. 464-467) One may discern certain links between the poetry writing process and some aspects of the psychoanalytic process in relation to the transference. When the talking that goes on in the treatment occurs within a narcissistic transference, patients, like the poet in the
MANYA early stages of writing, are almost talking to themselves. hardly aware that there is another person in the room. Later, with the development of “couth,” the patient discovers the analyst as other, and the transference shifts to an object transference. This shift corresponds to the writer’s desire to traverse the interior distance, but also reach out to an (illusory) audience. Within this dynamic and sometimes oscillating transference, the patient/analyst dyad, like the poet/poem dyad co-create something that did not exist before, a new artifact, the poem or the treatment. If one adds to the above the countettransference component, one can see how the poetry of countertransference serves as a transitional object for the analystpoet and becomes an exegetic artifact standing alongside the treatment and. like the treatment, taking on a life of its own. Following are four poems involving experience in transrational expression and providing the phenomenological data from which theory and comment spring. The first one is then brought under scrutiny and analyzed within the framework of the treatment, whereas the remaining are followed by relatively brief commentaries witnessing a variety of countcrtransference feeling responses. The Pact Unveiling
a Threat
I have a love affair with the garbage yearn for the contours of the wastebasket. the can that’s always hungry and lives to be filled by me. We’re in luck in fulfillment of profound need which is a good thing or else the world’d be overrun by bad poetry the rooms stuffed up with words fragmented afterthoughts, trash. If it were where abortions, ancient threadbare broken
not for receptacles to deposit failures, outworn stuff, heroism, crock, junk?
And so you my work in progress
BEAN my flame. my blond and buxom transport my new untied catamaran take care and do no longer elude me but sail to me with a simple sail and settle in my calm or else you may end up in sacrifice to that other hungry and steadfast muse. This poem involves Pamela whom I had been seeing for nearly two years at the time of its writing. Pamela was a 2%year-old, Irish Catholic. She was a tall, blond. buxom, attractive young woman with a good job. The transference had been by and large an idealizing transference without much variation of movement. For over a year a stable countertransference was in evidence. I hardly ever thought about this patient between sessions. She would ring the bell, enter my office. and she was in my life. Her session would end. she would leave, and she was out of my life. Sometimes. I would forget her name. I never brought her into supervision, as I did not see any need to do so. She was one of a few patients who did not complain about my taking a whole month’s vacation in August to go to Europe. I thought that she induced neglect .
Then, while I was in Greece, toward the latter part of August, I had the following dream about her: I hear my office (which is in my house) doorbell ring and realize that it is Pamela, that I had forgotten about her, and that the door is locked. As I hurry to unlock the door I see that the doors of the closet in my waiting room are wide open. I do not want to make Pamela wait any longer by taking the time to close the closet doors; besides, I see the doorknob turn as she is trying to enter the office. I admit her, apologize, close the closet doors, and, as I turn into my office, I see a woman with a young boy sitting on the couch. I feel mortified, in distress again. Who is this woman? What do I do now? Did I schedule two patients for the same hour? Then I realize that the woman is a visitor, not a patient. I apologize to Pamela again as I escort the woman out of the office. telling her that I will
POETRY
OF COUNTERTRANSFERENCE
be right back. I run into my husband who tells me that I must go with him. I say, ‘No. I’m busy. 1 have a patient. I can’t leave her.’ He insists. Next, 1 am sitting in a car with my husband. driving through the narrow streets of an island I had visited. 1 have left Pamela. I am furious with myself for having let him do this and reproach him. He says, ‘Relax, relax. . . .’ in a phony sounding way, like a relaxation tape. He wants to teach me not to care about my patients so much; he thinks my concern for them is exaggerated. I wake up very angry with him. . . . The affects of the dream were: anger, frustration. professional inadequacy, a certain feeling of blockage. stupidity, and a vague sexuality. When Pamela and I resumed treatment in September. some changes were evident in her behavior toward me. She took conscious risks in disclosing new material. she was warmer and more spontaneous. and the level of intimacy between us shifted. I began to think about her. In November I decided to present her case. I wanted to talk about her; I thought of writing a poem about her calling her “my work in progress.” I brought her into supervision in preparation for writing up the case, and I also brought in the above dream. At the time, I had two supervisors, a male and a female, whom I saw on alternate weeks. My malt supervisor pointed out repressed homosexual feelings (e.g., I am opening up all my doors to her. whereas my husband wants me to leave her, and takes me away from her). My subjective countertransference toward patients during that time was that “patients” equal “children” and children come first. Their needs come before those of adults who know how to wait. However, I took in my supervisor’s interpretation of repressed homosexual feelings, went home, and wrote the poem. In the process of acknowledging and feeling these repressed homosexual feelings, I began to feel certain other sexual feelings about the patient. Those seemed to be much more primitive than homosexual feelings; they were preoedipal, preverbal, somehow buried in the body. I stayed with these, trying to follow where they led “in the body” and experienced a strange sensation located in my breasts. That. in turn. led me to connect or remember the primitive sexual feelings of a lactating mother. I was puzzled about those feelings and also about
the overt aggression in my poem. The poem had surprised me in that it came out much differently than I had originally envisioned. When I first thought of Pamela as “my work in progress.” 1 was very pleased with the changes in the treatment and was full of positive feelings toward her. The sadistic stance of the poet who threatens to put the “work in progress” in the garbage if it (she) does not comply was not in my consciousness before I began writing. 1 brought these concerns to my next supervisory session with the female supervisor. She pointed out that projective identification is a commonplace occurrence during breastfeeding. The baby may fantasize a lot and the mother may also project into the baby during this symbiotic act of nurture. Pamela’s mother, who came from an “old. proper, English family with money,” had been “a perpetual teenager” and a bungler all her life. She had been married and divorced three times (Pamela said that she had been to all of her mother’s weddings. the first time inside her mother’s belly), still had no career, was continually in fmancial straits. lived from handto-mouth. and called her daughter to the rescue. Pamela’s father owned a substantial business and her sccond husband was a millionaire; yet. Pamela’s mother blamed her for everything. For example if Pamela had not been conceived. mother would not have had to marry Pamela’s father (a Catholic), therefore would not have been ousted by her family, but would have gone to college instead. Pamela’s mother gave birth to a boy a year and a half after Pamela’s birth, then divorced their father when Pamela was about three. Herself a child, Pamela essentially raised her brother and a stepsister born during the mother’s second marriage, as the mother was too busy working or partying. In the dream, the therdpist was whisked away by a man, leaving the patient stranded just as Pamela’s mother was taken away by all her various men while the little girl was left to care for her mother’s children. In the poem, the poet is an adult responsible for the poem’s conception and in control of its future. The poet can decide whether the “work in progress” lives or gets put in the trash. Pamela had to function as a receptacle for her mother, getting her mother’s “garbage,” absorbing her mother’s projections. It was either that or nothing-that is. neglect, getting thrown away, given the message that she does not or should not exist. Furthermore. all the males in Pamela’s life, with the exception of a grandfather who died, used her as a
receptacle. dumping into her and acting out violent and sadistic feelings. She was raped by one of her mother’s friends. threatened and blackmailed by one stepfather. and thrown out by the third. Her biological father had neither spoken to her nor answered her letters for seven years because he disapproved of her boyfriend. while her beloved younger brother. groomed by the father to take over the business, had embezzled money and disappeared. not letting anyone know his whereabouts. At age seventeen. Pamela had a nervous collapse, could not sleep, and was suicidal. She went into treatment with a psychologist who had an experimental clinic in California. She saw him five days a week. and was taught body control, how to relax. slow down her pulse, and so forth. (Hence. the analyst’s husband repeating. “relax. relax” in the dream, like a relaxation tape). The psychologist did not explore her feelings. The countcrtransfercnce feelings with which I came in touch through both the dream and the poem were of great assistance to mc in understanding this patient and in managing the treatment. The following two poems constitute a feminist poIcmic. The first one. “Archaeology.” rcfcrs to Sheila who came to mc bragging that she had already hccn in therapy for 12 years. She had also been raising her 12-year-old son by hcrsclf. Archaeology You, with your twelve years of digging up your bones of contentions sometimes buried in soil that was loamy and soft easy to get to so near the surface and sometimes stuck deep inside the ground that was hard and frozen over breaking your back . . You, with your twelve years of motherhood, singlehanded. single-minded an O’Malley with Irish solutions to every malfunction you, who were neither my sister nor a friend but a persona. the female part of a lock, disappointed,
relentless . . . you. who once said “Uppity Women Unite” who once cried once got shrill you with your soft hair now cropped short blond and becoming you’re still digging with devotion unearthing bones. shards, obscure old instruments their use unrecorded centuries and centuries of our history denied. still unredeemed. Sheila induced many strong feelings. some of which resonated in such a way as to cause powerful identifications. On one hand, there was admiration and respect for all she had learned and accomplished. On the other. there was a hopelessness (though not openly admitted) relating to the following: “No mattcr how much I learn or progress, I still find myself in the same place, as if the digging can never end. There is a usefulness to the activity and to the tool finding, but thcrc is no hope for resolution, for getting to the bottom of it all, as thcrc is too much resistance in the cnvironmcnt” (e.g.. the ground is frozen). A mapping of the poem revealed 30 o’s, the cumulative effect of which is a sustained moan or wail. One may associate this to an lrish wake, with its loud mourning. drinking, perhaps boasting and part celebration. Conversely, the 10 repetitions of you and your have an aggressive thrust to them that convey a suspicion of derision, a disguised “Boo!,” as if this woman had never been taken seriously. Rather she (as women in a patriarchal society) had been put down. as in “Down. girl,” dismissed, devalued, mocked, humiliated. Yet, she neither submitted nor fully colludrd with her victimization, but persisted in her digging for a self and an identity that was buried way down somewhere. The poem, product of a mixed subjective and objective countertransference, was in itself a tool for me. It functioned as a key to an individual personality, but also presented an idiosyncratic interpretation of the archaeological aspect of psychoanalysis. “On the Grinding of Axes” refers to a white lesbian woman I was treating who was a militant feminist.
POETRY OF COUNTERTRANSFERENCE provided a safe place (an appropriate holding environment) where 1 could transfer the discomfort and agitation I was experiencing in relation to my being overfed, that is, stuffed with too much feeling. The poem delineates all the activities I could think of that people (including myself) may use as defenses against rage. In my mind, the dynamic inherent in all these activities is that of the narcissistic defense (e.g., self-attack and self-hate). (Spotnitz has written extensively on this from 1969 to 1983.) In the first stanza “lament,” “sorrow,” and “whining” indicate a depressive reaction (see also Clevans. 1976. p. 139) that is rage turned inside attacking the personality. In the second stanza, “migraines” stand for psychosomatic symptoms or somatization-aggression against the body. As for “tobacco and gin.” these two words fit the rhythm of the writing better than overeating, marijuana, cocaine, alcohol. It is well-known that these addictions often function as self-medicating procedures producing the anaesthesia required so that people will not feel their feelings, especially their aggressive ones. Conclusion According to Bloomfield (1988. Private communication), in the 1920s Gijdel (Hofstadter, 1980) upset the mathematical world by proving rigorously that one cannot create a deductive system, self-contained, and self-consistent, in which everything becomes generalized and definable and expect to fully understand it, if one is within it. One must step outside that system and check it out with the universe or some confirmed reality before one can comment on it. For example, we cannot fully observe a language (e.g., English), which is a system of active meanings, unless we go outside and learn French or Latin. In the treatment, analysts offer patients the opportunity to slowly step out from inside, observe and study their own axiomatic definitions, and begin to comprehend themselves differently through the analytic interaction. The same holds true for family systems and even nations if we are to look toward international peace. Another analogy one can make on the basis of Gadel’s principle is to say that poetry is to psychoanalysis what French is to English. Thus, and more specifically, the poetry of countertransference may be seen as a widening of the avenue of perception between analyst and analysand. as it, like the dream
offers another language-visual. imagistic, mythopoeic, and transrational-with which to explore and interpret the countertransferences and its nuances. It does not follow that all analysts should become poets. Yet, there is a usefulness to the impulse of employing one’s self as a tool for heuristic research. The extra bonus may involve a corrective experience encompassing continuous integration and personal growth. Compared to this, traditional methodology begins to seem reductionist. In conclusion, I stand in wholehearted accord with Racker’s admonition (1968. p. 173) that “Much more experience and study of the countertransference needs to be recorded.” My work has been offered in this paper as both an experiential and cognitive record of emotional induction and the variety of countertransference. It will, I hope, be viewed as another chart for a terrain not yet fully explored. Refercnccs Amichai.
Y. (1986,
June 29). New York rimes Ma,qu:inc. p. 24.
Bion. W. (1970). Arrenrion and inrcrprerarion. London: Tavistock. Reprinted in Seven servanrs. (1977). New York: Jason Aronson. Bird, B. ( 197 I ). Notes on transference: Universal phenomenon and hardest part of analysis. lournul o/ rhe American Psyrhwnulyric Associarion. 20. 267. Clevans. E. (1976). ysis. 1. 139.
The depressive reaction. Modern Psychwnal-
Cole. K. (1985). Sympurheric vibrurions: Rejecrion o/physics (IS a wuy o/life. New York: William Morrow. Cole, K. (1988).
Emropy. Leor’s. 4. 76.
Epstein, L.. & Feiner. A. (1983). Counrerrrunsf~rencr: The rherupisr’s conrriburion ro rhe anulyric siruurion. New York: Jason Aronson. (Original work published 1979) Epstein. L. (1988). Spring Conference ofrhe Nurionuf Associurion for rhe Advoncemenr of Psychwnulysis: Opening Remurks. Ferenczi. S. (1956). The ontogenesis of imerest in money. In Sex in psychounufysis. New York: Dover. (Original work published 1914) Freud, S. (1905). Fragment of analysis of a case of hysteria. The srundurd edirion of rhe complere psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 7. p. 112). Freud, S. (1910). The antithetical meaning of primal words. The srandard edirion of rhe complere psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. I I. p. 153). Freud. S. (1912). Totem and taboo. The srundurd edirion of rhc complere psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 13). Fromm-Reichmann. F. (1950). Principles of inrcnsivc psychorherapy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Grinbcrg. L. (1983). Countertransference and projective counteridenrification. In L. Epstein & A. Feiner (Eds.), Counrcrrransference. New York: Jason Aronson.
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CkWrip. H. (1969) &hi;oid phenomew: Object rclurionr and the self. New York; Internatiooal Universities Press. Heimann. P. (1950). On counterttansference. InrernarionuI Jour~1 of Psycho-Analysis.
32. 81-84.
D. R. (1980). G&l. Escher. Each: An eter~l gokien braid. New Y& Vintage Books. Kaku. M.. & Trainer. J. (1987). Beyond Einsrcin. New York: Bantam Books. Kavafy. K. (1958). .Iapios in flor+uxa~a (p. 116). Athens: Hofstadter,
IkarOS.
Notes on some schizoid mechanisms. InrcrMriOM1 JourMl of Psychoanalysis. 27. 99. Langs. R. (1976). The rhcrclpcuric inrcracrion (Vol. 2). New York; Jason Aronson. Little, M. (1951). Countettransfctencc and the patient’s response to it. lnremarional Journal of fsychoanalysis. 32. 32-40. Linle. M. (1981). Transfcrcnce neurosis and rransferencc psychosis. New York: Jason Aronson. Margolis, 8. (1979). Narcissistic transference: The product of overlapping self and object fields. Modern fsychoanalysis IV. 2. 131. Miller. A. (1981). Prisoners of childhood. New York: Basic Books. Miller, A. (1983). For your own go&. New York: Farrar. Stmus & Giroux. Miller. A. (1984). Thou shalr nor be aware. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Miller. R. (1988). Poetry as a transitional object. In S. A. Grolnick & L. Barkin (Eds.) in collaboration with W. Muenstcrberger, Bcrwrcn realiry undfanrusy. London: Jason Aronson. Modcll. A. (1976). The holding environment and the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis. Journal of rhc Amrricun PsychoanuKlein. M. (1946).
lyric Associarion. 24. 293. T. ( 1982). Projecrive idcnrificurion niyue. New York: Jason Aronson.
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Plato. (1949). Timarus. (Jowett. Trans.) Indianapolis: Bobbs/ Merrill. (Original work circa 335 B.C.) Racker. H. (1953). The countertransference neurosis. InrcrmrioMl Journal off sycho-Analysis. 34. 3 13-324. Reprinted in Transference and counrerrransferencc (1968). New York: Intemational Universities Ptess. Racker, H. (1968). Transference and counrerrransference. New York: International Universities Press. Ripin. H. (1983). Fantasy in the countertransference. Mo&rn Psy &analysis.
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Roheim. G. (1943). The origin andfuncrion ofculrure. New York: Nervous and Mental Disease Monographs. Searles, H. (1978). Psychoanalytic therapy with the borderline adult. In J. Masterson (Ed.), New perspccrivcs on psychorhcrupy with rhe borderline adulr. New York: BrunnedMazel. Spotnitz, H. (1969). Modern psychoanalysis of rhe schizophrenic parienr. New York: Grune & Stratton. Spotnitz, H. (1976). Prcocdipal condirions. New York: Jason Aronson. Spotnitz. H., & Meadow, P. (1976). Trearmenr of rhr narcissistic neuroses. New York: Manhattan Center for Advanced Psychoanalytic Studies. Thompson, C.. Crowley. R.. & Tauber, E. (1952). Symposium on countertransference. Sam&a. 6. 205-228. Waddcll, S. (1983). Counrerrrunsferencc: Emotional communicarion ro rhe puricnr bv rhe analysr through rhe unalysr’s experiences. Unpublished doctoral thesis.
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Winnicott. D. (1960). Ego distortion in terms of true and false self. In The marururionul process and rhe faciliruring cnvironmenr. New York: International Universities Press. Winnicott. D. (1975). Hate in the countertransference. In Through pediarrics ro psychoanalysis (pp. 194-203). New York: Basic Books. Reprinted from lnrernarionul Journal of PsychoAnalysis, 30. 6%75. (Original work published 1949)
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Printed in the USA. All rights reserved.
THEPOETRYOFCOUNTERTRANSFERENCE
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BEAN,
erful ally to the psychoanalytic treatment. This is understandable from the developmental point of view, psychoanalysis being a fairly young discipline. One way to look at the historical defense of psychoanalysis against the countertransference phenomenon is by utilizing a metaphor from physics, whereby “macroscopic events fix the ‘arrow of time’ in the direction that increases disorder” (Kaku & Trainer, 1987, p. 207). This relates to the second law of thermodynamics and the concept of entropy, which is another word for disorder, or inevitable decay. The inevitability of disorder becomes undeniable when one considers that entropy is almost synonymous with “the arrow of time”; that is, if entropy increases, one knows that the arrow of time is moving in the same direction. As K. C. Cole stated in two of her publications:
What you get out of me, you will have to pick out of chaos. D. W. Winnicott (194911975) Countertransference
PhD, NCPsyA*
and Its Vicissitudes
A brief history of countertransference and its vicissitudes indicates that circa 1950 there was an outpouring of psychoanalytic writing on countertransference around the world, with Racker (1953) in Argentina, P. Heimann (1950). Little (195 I) and Winnicott (1949) in England, and Fromm-Reichmann (1950). Thompson, Crowley, and Tauber (1952) in the United States. The taboo of the analyst having feelings was thus broken. Then, there was comparative silence for the next 20 years, until the 70s when interest in the countertransference was again evident. Bion. Grinberg, Langs, Ogden, Searles, Spotnitz and many others have been writing through the 70s and the 80s. An important volume on countertransference. edited by Epstein and Feiner, was published in 1979 and reprinted in 1983. In the 80s entire issues of psychoanalytic journals were devoted to studies of countertransference. There has been a gradual but constant interest in this phenomenon. The view that countertransference is “a hindrance” to the psychoanalytic process, something to be exorcised or at least analyzed and be rid of as quickly as possible has been changing with the years. It has taken some time for it to gain the same acceptance as transference and to be designated as a “universal phenomenon” (Bird, 197 I) and a most pow-
You don’t need a clock to tell you which way the hands are turning as paint peels off a house, a face ages, heels wear down (1988. p. 76) . . . . To live is to be in constant battle with the Second Law of Thermodynamics. . . . There is only one possible way for Humpty Dumpty to remain a recognizable whole, but there are an infinite number of ways for him to fall apart. (1985, p. 3234) If an analyst is coming from the outside into a given subsystem, say the patient’s, it is possible to order it and thereby decrease its entropy, but then the analyst’s entropy has to increase in order to decrease the other. Furthermore, entropy increases rapidly in
*Manya Bean is a psychoanalyst in private practice in New Jersey and Philadelphia, PA. She is also a puet working for the New Jersey Council in the Arts.
347
MANYA BEAN complicated situations. As analysts increase their degree of freedom, their entropy increases. In view of this. it is understandable that analysts may wish to defend against such increases. They may already feel impinged upon by their patients’ intense transferential feelings and may wish to ward off the added burden of countertransferential or induced affects. Definirion
Counte~ra~sference is defined as the analyst’s “living response” (Racker’s phrase) to the totality of the patient’s emotional state at any given moment. In addition to thoughts and Feelings, this response may include fantasies, images, altered states of consciousness. acting out, acting in, experiencing heat, cold, hunger, drowsiness, and so on. Somatizing, and/or bodily experiences in the analyst. such as headaches. uterine contractions, rashes, earaches, viewed as emotional communications from the patient to the analyst, are also reported (e.g., S. Waddell’s 1983 unpublished thesis which includes interviews with Searles and Spotnitz). This denotes a very wide range of responses. Just as “the potential For transference meanings is limitless, Fostered by the vicissitudes of early maturational history” (Margolis. 1979, p. 13I ), so is the potential of countcrtransfercntial rcsponscs to the transference equally limitless. Discussion
The goal is that analysts must bc open to expcriencing ull feelings. They must receive and tolerate induced feelings and their own limitless countertransferential responses and not ward them off. Like the ancient shamans, they may take on their patients’ illnesses For a time, suffering from a countemansference neurosis, a countertransference psychosis (Little, 1981) or from a narcissistic countertransference (Margolis, p. 16) while involving thcmselves in a process of continuous contamination and decon~mination. If we were to return once again to the paradigm from physics, we would observe that an experiencing of countertransference feelings would result in an increase in entropy that is associated with the transfer of heat. Heat, in turn. is associated with agitation or vibratory motion. Thus, an analyst (or anyone else) who is suffering from an increase in entropy is in need of a “cooling off.” The most widely used method to “take the heat
off” and obtain the “cooling off’ effect is what Love has termed “the hot potato syndrome,” whereby if some feelings are too hot to handle and one does not want them. one simply passes them on to someone else. like a hot potato, and one does not have them anymore (1984, private communication). This is a method used extensively in alcoholic and other dysFunctional families in which members live with burdens of strong unexpressed feelings that they pass on to one another, often silently. Analysts. on the other hand, talk. They talk to other analysts and they write. Beginning analysts, where “flooding” is most likely to occur, get relief in supervision and sometimes use their supervisor as the recipient of the “hot” and unmanageable induced feelings, subsequently returning to these feelings so that they may be analyzed and understood. They talk to their own analyst within the training analysis modality or within the structure of a peer group process. To receive and study countertransference feelings, they may use their body, their psyche, their intellect, and their capacity to fantasize. In a 1983 paper Ripin stated that “Rage. as it occurs in the analytic situation, is a communicable disease, and it is unlikely that any analyst, however experienced, well-trained and analyzed, is immune to it” (p. 67). Writing and the Countertransference When analysts produce writings with a theoretical content, they use the creation of theory as a construct that will order the diverse agitation they may have experienced in their clinical practice. Here, the intellect is heavily relied upon and intellectualization is employed as an excellent means to deal with increased entropy and to “solidify one’s defenses” against too much Feeling (Epstein, 1988). Theoreticians of all persuasions are prone to experience strong feelings of power, even grandiosity; they succeed in synthesizing order out of the chaos of raw or seemingly convicting data. And who is to deny them the thrill of understanding? They then know something in a way that no one else has known before. In addition to theory-building, talking, somatizing, fantasizing, and creating imagery to contain and organize the enormous range of countertransference responses, certain analysts venture to put countettransference feelings into poetry. The analyst as poet may conceivably stand alongside the analyst as theoretician, case historian, and note taker.
POETRY OF COUNTERTRANSFERENCE In this paper the poetry of cou~te~sfe~nce will be presented along with some theoretical underpinnings for its raison d’etre. A justification will be proposed with an aim to place it alongside the mainstream of psychoanalytic theoretical constructs. I will then offer a number of poems with specific and various connections to my concerns with psycho~alysis as a student and clinician. The poems spring, for the most part, from unconscious and preconscious communication between analyst and analysand and are followed by a commentary that explores, investigates, analyzes, or witnesses the countertransference feelings generated within this field. The Analyst as Poet To paraphrase the poet Yehuda Amichai (1986). we may say that analysts/poets belong to the “combat troops” of art and psychoanalysis, whereas novelists and metapsychologists “enjoy a loftier view behind the front as generals.” Amichai often sees a metaphorical equivalence between war and life. I might add that psychoanalysis (at least in some phases of treatment) is marked by its own terrors, its necessities for courage and heroic persistence. This is because we are all engaged in the rclcntlcss fmntline warfare of living vulnerable lives. and poetic metaphor is an indispensable weapon in our hand-to-hand struggle with reality. Poetry, after all, is the language of feelings capable of containing complex, sometimes oppositional constellations of affect (cf. Freud, 1910). in lending itself to the use of symbolic language, it is close to primary process and, like the dream, it can better convey the rapidity, the delicacy or the intensity of experience. Impressions rendered in a few lines achieve condensation similar to dream-thought and dream-imagery, reversals, puns, word-play, and atmospheric effects. In contrast to linear or sequential presentation that may be too lengthy or cumbersome, Poetry is the most expeditious way of expressing the inner and outer worlds and what lies concealed in them. My own relationship to poetry has been a long and intimate one. I have been reading poems in various languages from my youth and I began to write and publish poems for a number of years prior to my psychoanalytic studies. When I found myself enmeshed in induced feelings, which was a new way of experiencing the world. I naturally turned to a poetic idiom. It was a language both available and familiar
to me and had occasionally served me as a lifeline in the past. My own poems had been like stepping stones, giving me something to stand on. in dealing with countertransference feeling material, the writing of poems filled a number of additional functions. It worked: (a) as a way to document my countertransference feelings, fb) as a holding environment or container, fc) as a ~nsitional object or artifact, (d) as a means to organize. understand, and integrate new cognitive and affective learning from lectures and seminars, and (e) at times. as a diagnostic tool. For the sake of exposition. I shall attempt to describe the above functions in a sequential manner, though it will be unde~t~ that a strict and orderly delineation is impossible for a number of reasons. First. these functions often occur simultaneously; second, some almost always overlap-one leading and blending into another. For example. the conceptual act of documenting and recording also serves the function of discharge; all occur at once. Discharge, however, leads to holding. which in turn becomes transitional object, poem, artifact. Finally, poetry itself is a transrational language inimical to classification,
Writing poetry can function as a way of documcnting countemitnsfcrence feelings in a process similar to the one of recording and analyzing dreams. Since countcrtransfcrence often deals with unconscious, preconscious, and/or prcverbai material. the poetry of it can be another “royal road to the unconscious,” in that the poem, like the dream, realizes “a knowing’* that did not exist before its occurrence. A poem does not know what it is going to say until it says it, so that it is discovered by its own writing. Here enters the ekment of surprise, which is, of course, inherent in discovery. In examining my own writing process I should explain that I never wrote during a session with a patient, but only afterwards. Usually, 1 functioned during the session as a container, just taking things in, and did not get hit with the full force of the induced feelings until afterwards. At that moment, I suffered from a heavy dose of a countertransference neurosis, a countertransference psychosis or a narcissistic countertransference, as the case may have been. In all instances, however, I found myself in a regressed and chaotic state. That is when I would begin to write. As I wrote the poem, 1 did not passively observe the
MANYA chaos. suffer it or masochistically submit to it. Instead. the act of writing forced me to actively live it, order it, and give it meaning. Out of the chaos, I chose or let myself be chosen by one constellation of feelings, a situation or image that took on the idea of priority and that I explored in the poem. In articulating a feeling, I documented and made sense of it; therefore. ordered it. As the writing progressed. I sought to uncover what was underneath that feeling and its meaning, understand that. then say that. The process involved feeling. understanding. articulation/ documentation. Then. looking further. discovering more or new feeling. understanding each new discovand documenting theseery. articulating theoretically, ad infinitum. Ordering of chaos became associated with a quest for more and more authenticity of feeling (cf. Guntrip’s writing, 1969; the wtitings of Alice Miller, 1981-1984; Winnicott’s “true and false self.” 1960). The poem, then, in its persistent exploration turned into a vehicle for documenting regression in the service of countertransference exploration. The idea of the quest for authenticity coupled with the pcrsistencc of the poet ties into the obsessive quality of writing that, I think, matches well with analysts’ dcsirc to satisfy the epistcmophilic instinct, as well as with the striving to explore. analyze, and perhaps cure. In Kavafy’s “Darius” (1920/1958). the pact Femazis is writing his epic poem about Darius:
. . . But hcrc philosophy is needed. He must analyze the feelings Darius would have perhaps grandiosity and drunkenness but no-rather an understanding of the vanity of grandeur. The poet thinks on this matter deeply. Femazis is interrupted by his servant who announces that war with the Romans has been declared. The poet ruminates, worries about the war effort, prays, then becomes impatient with the interruption to his work: But in the middle of all his anxiety and trouble the poetic idea persistently comes and goesthe most probable is. of course, grandiosity and drunkenness grandiosity and drunkenness would be what Darius felt. (Ka66+rt, flol+paTa. 1958. p. 116. Translation mine).
BEAN As the poet strives to find meaning and to order his Darius. so do analysts compulsively return to their metier, that is. the scrutiny of feelings-their patients’. their own, their own vis a vis the patients, and so on . . . otherwise they would not be writing. The Poem
as Holding
Environment
Aside from its archaeological aspect of digging, unearthing, bringing to light, documenting, ordering, and understanding, the poetry of countertransference can be seen as a container and a holding environment. My view of this process parallels the one between mother and infant, as exemplified by Winnicott. When the baby suffers excitation (e.g.. hunger, extreme cold, heat, sickness, pain. loneliness, wanting tactile contact or to feel mother’s heart beating next to his). the deprivation or overstimulation creates internal chaos. This chaotic and fragmented state induces motility, thrashing about wildly, screaming. Later, the baby may spit, pull mother’s hair, scratch, bite. “The good enough mother” provides a holding environment in which the baby can discharge safely without damaging himself or her. If hc urinates or vomits on the mother, she dots not reject, punish or abandon him. She dots not directly retaliate. nor does she act out her annoyance. hostility or hatred. She just cleans up. changes her clothing, and picks the baby up again. In treatment. our patients bring in their prcscnting problems, which may be headaches. ulcers, chest pains, all manner of somatizing; other symptoms may be there as well, such as depression, deadness, suicidal feelings. extreme distress, and psychic pain; in other words, chaos. The patient may be thrashing about verbally, projecting, blaming, crying, spitting up old introjects. and so on. Just as the mother and the analyst provide the proper holding environment for safe discharge, so does the analyst/poet use the blank paper as a holding environment for his or her countertransference feelings. And the poem, like the theory, may become, if one is lucky, both a functional and an elegant container of chaos. Plato in Timueus. speaks of the “chora” (xcjpa) and the “ypodocheon” (ulroSoxeiow), “chora” meaning “space,” “land,” “country.” and “ypodocheon” meaning “receptacle” or “containing underneath.” These meanings are presented as “an invisible and formless being that receives all things” and is maternally connoted (Plato, p. 5 I). The blank paper can be, once again, the poet/analyst’s chora-a space
POETRY
OF COUNTERTRANSFERENCE
defined by its own dimensions and boundaries, but also a motherland vast and open enough to receive all things, its formlessness lending itself to the creation of whatever environment is needed. Thus, it may not always function as a container of abreaction, of aggressive or libidinal discharges, but may be a silent landscape devoid of dramatic intensity. The concept of chora, as a female space that holds and contains, functions similarly in the developmental process, the treatment process, and the writing process.
The Poem as Transitional Object or Artifact Since Winnicott, much has been written about the holding environment and its various implications in the treatment. As Arnold Model1 pointed out:
. . . the analytic process itself was invested with the qualities of a transitional object, apart from the person of the analyst. Although the qualities of the holding environment are generated by the analyst’s technique, they may bccome separated from the analyst and take on a life of their own. The analytic process is not infrequently observed in dreams as a more or less protective container, such as a house or an automobile. (1976. p. 293) The analytic process then occurs in a space created by the analyst and the analysand and may become a transitional object or artifact fashioned by and belonging to both participants. Here, one is reminded of Ferenczi’s (191411956) and Roheim’s view that civilization. culture. money, and art are transitional phenomena, or “defense systems against anxiety . . . the colossal efforts made by a baby who is afraid to be left alone in the dark” (Roheim, 1943, pp. 81-100). A personal recollection of my first infant is, I think, pertinent here. At around fourteen months, this baby went through a phase when he would wake up in the middle of the night and repeat to himself animal sounds (such as moo, miaow. woof woof, pip pip, etc.) that I had made to him during the day when I was showing him a book of animals. His recital was a fine and comforting story/ poem he was telling himself and very entertaining (to both of us) behind his closed door. Analysts, like babies and patients, may find themselves alone in the dark and holding the bag, so to speak, whether the patient is present or not. They,
then. may proceed to create a fantasy, a formula, an hypothesis, a poem. or what have you. Though the analysts/poets may have begun in utter loneliness, talking to themselves, so as to get the discomposed self out of its jam or, for practical purposes, because it was a familiar medium of expression, as the writing progresses, as the blank paper begins to hold them they find themselves in a space that is becoming numenous-ordered and taking on meaning. Echolalia and false starts are replaced by a clearly focused goal: to say what they mean. This leads into a concern with language, with the poet reaching the developmental stage of “couth.” What is said must be said not only precisely, but also uniquely, in a language that is fresh, and containing the flavor of the panicular feeling and the particular person who felt it. Yet, the language must not be personal and idiosyncratic to the point of being cryptic, but must be accessible to others. In the continuum between the uniquely individual and the universal, the freshly imagined and the stale cliche. the personal symbol and the archetype. disclosure must occur each time in a newfound voice and the story told in ways that are comprehensible. The desire to be understood shifts the focus toward communication, while the initial aim of discharge has bccomc obsolete. This new reality needs to be shared. And now the poet wishes for a human ear, and so will speak with another, address a Thou, create an audience, write TO someone. The poet wants to be heard, understood, accepted, validated, affirmed, congratulated for being alive. Ruth Miller (1988) developed the thesis that for Emily Dickinson, because she did not receive any acceptance or recognition during her lifetime, her work became the link between herself and generations to follow:
. . . [her] fascicles were for the poet the transitional object designed to link herself and posterity. And I suggest further that these were for the poet the transitional object designed to forge the link between Emily Dickinson and immortality. . . . Her intuition of her value, of her ability, and of her excellence as a poet was confirmed by posterity. (1988, pp. 464-467) One may discern certain links between the poetry writing process and some aspects of the psychoanalytic process in relation to the transference. When the talking that goes on in the treatment occurs within a narcissistic transference, patients, like the poet in the
MANYA early stages of writing, are almost talking to themselves. hardly aware that there is another person in the room. Later, with the development of “couth,” the patient discovers the analyst as other, and the transference shifts to an object transference. This shift corresponds to the writer’s desire to traverse the interior distance, but also reach out to an (illusory) audience. Within this dynamic and sometimes oscillating transference, the patient/analyst dyad, like the poet/poem dyad co-create something that did not exist before, a new artifact, the poem or the treatment. If one adds to the above the countettransference component, one can see how the poetry of countertransference serves as a transitional object for the analystpoet and becomes an exegetic artifact standing alongside the treatment and. like the treatment, taking on a life of its own. Following are four poems involving experience in transrational expression and providing the phenomenological data from which theory and comment spring. The first one is then brought under scrutiny and analyzed within the framework of the treatment, whereas the remaining are followed by relatively brief commentaries witnessing a variety of countcrtransference feeling responses. The Pact Unveiling
a Threat
I have a love affair with the garbage yearn for the contours of the wastebasket. the can that’s always hungry and lives to be filled by me. We’re in luck in fulfillment of profound need which is a good thing or else the world’d be overrun by bad poetry the rooms stuffed up with words fragmented afterthoughts, trash. If it were where abortions, ancient threadbare broken
not for receptacles to deposit failures, outworn stuff, heroism, crock, junk?
And so you my work in progress
BEAN my flame. my blond and buxom transport my new untied catamaran take care and do no longer elude me but sail to me with a simple sail and settle in my calm or else you may end up in sacrifice to that other hungry and steadfast muse. This poem involves Pamela whom I had been seeing for nearly two years at the time of its writing. Pamela was a 2%year-old, Irish Catholic. She was a tall, blond. buxom, attractive young woman with a good job. The transference had been by and large an idealizing transference without much variation of movement. For over a year a stable countertransference was in evidence. I hardly ever thought about this patient between sessions. She would ring the bell, enter my office. and she was in my life. Her session would end. she would leave, and she was out of my life. Sometimes. I would forget her name. I never brought her into supervision, as I did not see any need to do so. She was one of a few patients who did not complain about my taking a whole month’s vacation in August to go to Europe. I thought that she induced neglect .
Then, while I was in Greece, toward the latter part of August, I had the following dream about her: I hear my office (which is in my house) doorbell ring and realize that it is Pamela, that I had forgotten about her, and that the door is locked. As I hurry to unlock the door I see that the doors of the closet in my waiting room are wide open. I do not want to make Pamela wait any longer by taking the time to close the closet doors; besides, I see the doorknob turn as she is trying to enter the office. I admit her, apologize, close the closet doors, and, as I turn into my office, I see a woman with a young boy sitting on the couch. I feel mortified, in distress again. Who is this woman? What do I do now? Did I schedule two patients for the same hour? Then I realize that the woman is a visitor, not a patient. I apologize to Pamela again as I escort the woman out of the office. telling her that I will
POETRY
OF COUNTERTRANSFERENCE
be right back. I run into my husband who tells me that I must go with him. I say, ‘No. I’m busy. 1 have a patient. I can’t leave her.’ He insists. Next, 1 am sitting in a car with my husband. driving through the narrow streets of an island I had visited. 1 have left Pamela. I am furious with myself for having let him do this and reproach him. He says, ‘Relax, relax. . . .’ in a phony sounding way, like a relaxation tape. He wants to teach me not to care about my patients so much; he thinks my concern for them is exaggerated. I wake up very angry with him. . . . The affects of the dream were: anger, frustration. professional inadequacy, a certain feeling of blockage. stupidity, and a vague sexuality. When Pamela and I resumed treatment in September. some changes were evident in her behavior toward me. She took conscious risks in disclosing new material. she was warmer and more spontaneous. and the level of intimacy between us shifted. I began to think about her. In November I decided to present her case. I wanted to talk about her; I thought of writing a poem about her calling her “my work in progress.” I brought her into supervision in preparation for writing up the case, and I also brought in the above dream. At the time, I had two supervisors, a male and a female, whom I saw on alternate weeks. My malt supervisor pointed out repressed homosexual feelings (e.g., I am opening up all my doors to her. whereas my husband wants me to leave her, and takes me away from her). My subjective countertransference toward patients during that time was that “patients” equal “children” and children come first. Their needs come before those of adults who know how to wait. However, I took in my supervisor’s interpretation of repressed homosexual feelings, went home, and wrote the poem. In the process of acknowledging and feeling these repressed homosexual feelings, I began to feel certain other sexual feelings about the patient. Those seemed to be much more primitive than homosexual feelings; they were preoedipal, preverbal, somehow buried in the body. I stayed with these, trying to follow where they led “in the body” and experienced a strange sensation located in my breasts. That. in turn. led me to connect or remember the primitive sexual feelings of a lactating mother. I was puzzled about those feelings and also about
the overt aggression in my poem. The poem had surprised me in that it came out much differently than I had originally envisioned. When I first thought of Pamela as “my work in progress.” 1 was very pleased with the changes in the treatment and was full of positive feelings toward her. The sadistic stance of the poet who threatens to put the “work in progress” in the garbage if it (she) does not comply was not in my consciousness before I began writing. 1 brought these concerns to my next supervisory session with the female supervisor. She pointed out that projective identification is a commonplace occurrence during breastfeeding. The baby may fantasize a lot and the mother may also project into the baby during this symbiotic act of nurture. Pamela’s mother, who came from an “old. proper, English family with money,” had been “a perpetual teenager” and a bungler all her life. She had been married and divorced three times (Pamela said that she had been to all of her mother’s weddings. the first time inside her mother’s belly), still had no career, was continually in fmancial straits. lived from handto-mouth. and called her daughter to the rescue. Pamela’s father owned a substantial business and her sccond husband was a millionaire; yet. Pamela’s mother blamed her for everything. For example if Pamela had not been conceived. mother would not have had to marry Pamela’s father (a Catholic), therefore would not have been ousted by her family, but would have gone to college instead. Pamela’s mother gave birth to a boy a year and a half after Pamela’s birth, then divorced their father when Pamela was about three. Herself a child, Pamela essentially raised her brother and a stepsister born during the mother’s second marriage, as the mother was too busy working or partying. In the dream, the therdpist was whisked away by a man, leaving the patient stranded just as Pamela’s mother was taken away by all her various men while the little girl was left to care for her mother’s children. In the poem, the poet is an adult responsible for the poem’s conception and in control of its future. The poet can decide whether the “work in progress” lives or gets put in the trash. Pamela had to function as a receptacle for her mother, getting her mother’s “garbage,” absorbing her mother’s projections. It was either that or nothing-that is. neglect, getting thrown away, given the message that she does not or should not exist. Furthermore. all the males in Pamela’s life, with the exception of a grandfather who died, used her as a
receptacle. dumping into her and acting out violent and sadistic feelings. She was raped by one of her mother’s friends. threatened and blackmailed by one stepfather. and thrown out by the third. Her biological father had neither spoken to her nor answered her letters for seven years because he disapproved of her boyfriend. while her beloved younger brother. groomed by the father to take over the business, had embezzled money and disappeared. not letting anyone know his whereabouts. At age seventeen. Pamela had a nervous collapse, could not sleep, and was suicidal. She went into treatment with a psychologist who had an experimental clinic in California. She saw him five days a week. and was taught body control, how to relax. slow down her pulse, and so forth. (Hence. the analyst’s husband repeating. “relax. relax” in the dream, like a relaxation tape). The psychologist did not explore her feelings. The countcrtransfercnce feelings with which I came in touch through both the dream and the poem were of great assistance to mc in understanding this patient and in managing the treatment. The following two poems constitute a feminist poIcmic. The first one. “Archaeology.” rcfcrs to Sheila who came to mc bragging that she had already hccn in therapy for 12 years. She had also been raising her 12-year-old son by hcrsclf. Archaeology You, with your twelve years of digging up your bones of contentions sometimes buried in soil that was loamy and soft easy to get to so near the surface and sometimes stuck deep inside the ground that was hard and frozen over breaking your back . . You, with your twelve years of motherhood, singlehanded. single-minded an O’Malley with Irish solutions to every malfunction you, who were neither my sister nor a friend but a persona. the female part of a lock, disappointed,
relentless . . . you. who once said “Uppity Women Unite” who once cried once got shrill you with your soft hair now cropped short blond and becoming you’re still digging with devotion unearthing bones. shards, obscure old instruments their use unrecorded centuries and centuries of our history denied. still unredeemed. Sheila induced many strong feelings. some of which resonated in such a way as to cause powerful identifications. On one hand, there was admiration and respect for all she had learned and accomplished. On the other. there was a hopelessness (though not openly admitted) relating to the following: “No mattcr how much I learn or progress, I still find myself in the same place, as if the digging can never end. There is a usefulness to the activity and to the tool finding, but thcrc is no hope for resolution, for getting to the bottom of it all, as thcrc is too much resistance in the cnvironmcnt” (e.g.. the ground is frozen). A mapping of the poem revealed 30 o’s, the cumulative effect of which is a sustained moan or wail. One may associate this to an lrish wake, with its loud mourning. drinking, perhaps boasting and part celebration. Conversely, the 10 repetitions of you and your have an aggressive thrust to them that convey a suspicion of derision, a disguised “Boo!,” as if this woman had never been taken seriously. Rather she (as women in a patriarchal society) had been put down. as in “Down. girl,” dismissed, devalued, mocked, humiliated. Yet, she neither submitted nor fully colludrd with her victimization, but persisted in her digging for a self and an identity that was buried way down somewhere. The poem, product of a mixed subjective and objective countertransference, was in itself a tool for me. It functioned as a key to an individual personality, but also presented an idiosyncratic interpretation of the archaeological aspect of psychoanalysis. “On the Grinding of Axes” refers to a white lesbian woman I was treating who was a militant feminist.
POETRY OF COUNTERTRANSFERENCE provided a safe place (an appropriate holding environment) where 1 could transfer the discomfort and agitation I was experiencing in relation to my being overfed, that is, stuffed with too much feeling. The poem delineates all the activities I could think of that people (including myself) may use as defenses against rage. In my mind, the dynamic inherent in all these activities is that of the narcissistic defense (e.g., self-attack and self-hate). (Spotnitz has written extensively on this from 1969 to 1983.) In the first stanza “lament,” “sorrow,” and “whining” indicate a depressive reaction (see also Clevans. 1976. p. 139) that is rage turned inside attacking the personality. In the second stanza, “migraines” stand for psychosomatic symptoms or somatization-aggression against the body. As for “tobacco and gin.” these two words fit the rhythm of the writing better than overeating, marijuana, cocaine, alcohol. It is well-known that these addictions often function as self-medicating procedures producing the anaesthesia required so that people will not feel their feelings, especially their aggressive ones. Conclusion According to Bloomfield (1988. Private communication), in the 1920s Gijdel (Hofstadter, 1980) upset the mathematical world by proving rigorously that one cannot create a deductive system, self-contained, and self-consistent, in which everything becomes generalized and definable and expect to fully understand it, if one is within it. One must step outside that system and check it out with the universe or some confirmed reality before one can comment on it. For example, we cannot fully observe a language (e.g., English), which is a system of active meanings, unless we go outside and learn French or Latin. In the treatment, analysts offer patients the opportunity to slowly step out from inside, observe and study their own axiomatic definitions, and begin to comprehend themselves differently through the analytic interaction. The same holds true for family systems and even nations if we are to look toward international peace. Another analogy one can make on the basis of Gadel’s principle is to say that poetry is to psychoanalysis what French is to English. Thus, and more specifically, the poetry of countertransference may be seen as a widening of the avenue of perception between analyst and analysand. as it, like the dream
offers another language-visual. imagistic, mythopoeic, and transrational-with which to explore and interpret the countertransferences and its nuances. It does not follow that all analysts should become poets. Yet, there is a usefulness to the impulse of employing one’s self as a tool for heuristic research. The extra bonus may involve a corrective experience encompassing continuous integration and personal growth. Compared to this, traditional methodology begins to seem reductionist. In conclusion, I stand in wholehearted accord with Racker’s admonition (1968. p. 173) that “Much more experience and study of the countertransference needs to be recorded.” My work has been offered in this paper as both an experiential and cognitive record of emotional induction and the variety of countertransference. It will, I hope, be viewed as another chart for a terrain not yet fully explored. Refercnccs Amichai.
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