Jacob’s Ladder: Essays on Experiences of the Ineffable in the Context of Contemporary Psychotherapy

291 Pages·2003·9.222 MB·English

by  Josephine Klein

JACOB'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
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.
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,
Exeter EX4 8JN
www.karnacbooks.com
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