Theaters of the mind: illusion and truth on the psychoanalytic stage

309 Pages·2012·15.236 MB·English

by  Joyce McDougall

Theaters of the Mind
THEATERS OF
THE MIND
Illusion and Truth
on the Psychoanalytic Stage
J
oyce McDougal1
;~ ~~~1~;n~~;up
NEW YORK AND LONDON
First published by Brunner/Mazel, Publishers
This edition published 2012 by Routledge
Routledge Routledge
Taylor & Francis Group Taylor & Francis Group
711 Third Avenue 2 Park Square
New York, NY 10017 Milton Park, Abingdon
Oxon OX14 4RN
First Brunner/Mazel Edition 1991
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McDougall, Joyce.
[Th~tres du Je. English]
Theaters of the mind : illusion and truth on the psychoanalytic
stage / by Joyce McDougall.
p. cm
Translation of: ~tres du Je.
Reprint. Originally published: New York: Basic Books, 1985.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-87630-648-2
1. Psychoanalysis - Case studies. 2. Psychology, Pathological
Case studies. 3. Object relations (Psychoanalysis) - Case studies.
I. Title.
[DNLM: 1. Object Attachment - case studies. 2. Psychoanalysis -
case studies. 3. Psychopatholbgy - case studies. WM 40 M478t
1985a]
RC509.8.M3513 1991
616.89' 17 - dc20
DNLM/DLC
for Library of Congress 91-20628
CIP
Copyright @ 1985 by Joyce McDougall
Originally published in French as Thiatres du Te,
@ 1982 by Editions GaUimard.
Published by arrangement with Basic Books,
a division of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reproduced by any process whatsoever without the
written permission of the copyright owners.
Designed by Vincent Torre
For Daniel, Joshua, and Oliver
Contents
Foreword by OUo Kemberg be
Prologue: The Psychic Theater and the
Psychoanalytic Stage 3
1 Static and Ec-static States: Reflections on the
Psychoanalytic Process 17
2 Scenes from Psychic Life 40
3 The Transitional Theater and the Search for
Players 65
4 The Staging of the Irrepresentable: A Child Is
11
Being Eaten" 81
5 Psychosomatic States, Anxiety Neurosis, and
Hysteria 107
6 Elaboration and Transformation of the Psychic
Repertory 125
7 Reflections on Affect: A Psychoanalytic View of
Alexithymia 147
8 From Psychosomatosis to Psychoneurosis 180
9 Theater in the Round: Thoughts on the Economy
of Narcissism 214
rJii
CONTENTS
10 The Narcissistic Stage and the Role of Archaic
Sexuality 228
11 Neosexualities 245
12 Scenes of Fantasy, Delusion, and Death 264
Epilogue: Illusion and Truth 284
Bibliography 289
Index 295
viii
Foreword
Those familiar with Joyce McDougall's extremely readable and
informative PlttI for MtllSurt of AlmormAlily will be pleased to know
11
that this new volume more than fullllls the high expectations
raised by its predecessor. Starting from the theoretical frame de
veloped in her earlier book, McDougall now presents a compre
hensive view of the five fundamental types of psychopathology:
neuroses (including neurotic character pathology); severe charac
ter disorders and addictive personalities; perversions (which she
calls ntDStXUlllifits); psychoses; and the psychosomatic disorders
(psyclwsomalosis) .
ThtIIlm of Iht MinJ is not, however, an impersonal
phenomenological textbook on discrete psychopathological enti
ties. It is a broad and rich framework of central conflicts and
typical psychodynamic constellations that emerge in the course
of psychoanalytic exploration of these different patient popula
tions, couched in a frame of reference that integrates a classical
psychoanalytic perspective with contemporary object relations
theory.
McDougall's primary interest is in achieving an understand
ing in depth of her patients' psychopathology as represented by
what she calls "theaters of the mind." These theaters consist of
fantasied, unconscious, idiosyncratic scenarios that contain
desired-for, threatening, and defensively erected relationships of
the infantile I with significant others. McDougall is less inter
ested in discussing alternative theoretical viewpoints than in
pointing to the clinical relevance of particular aspects of various
ir
FOR.EWOR.D
theories; thus she brings theory to life by relating it to immediate
clinical situations. In so doing, she convincingly illustrates how
an object relations viewpoint is congruent with classical drive
theory. She establishes links among the French, British; and
American traditions, drawing freely from psychosomaticists such
as Marty, De M'Uzan, Sifneos, and Krystal, and from Klein, Bion,
and Meltzer, as well as from Arlow, Engel, Lichtenstein, Mahler,
and Stoller.
McDougall sees the field of unconscious intrapsychic repre
sentations of internalized object relations, including their invest
ment with affects as well as word representatives, as the normal
theater of the mind. Throughout the detailed description of the
symptoms, the intrapsychic situation, the transference and coun
tertransference developments in each of the five types of psy
chopathology, she points to universal basic conflicts around the
issues of engulfment and separation, recognition of the anatomi
cal differences between the sexes, the oedipal scenario, and the
reality of death. Behind the classical scenario of the Oedipus
Complex she presents the scenario of a primitive oedipal situa
tion in which father is absent or devalued, mother dominates the
scene and invasively controls the mental development of the
infant and child, all of which determines primitive fears regarding
the nature of the genitals, violent conceptions of sexual relations,
and a sense of danger in autonomous assertion.
She elegantly shifts from clinical descriptions to the subtle
differences with which basic conflicts are elaborated, elaborations
that will determine whether the patient will follow the road to
one or another of the dominant types of psychopathology. For
example, expanding her theory of the psychodynamics of perver
sion, spelled out in her earlier work, McDougall pinpoints crucial
developments that will lead to a perverse structure and contrasts
such developments with others that may lead to a severe charac
ter disorder without a specific perversion. McDougall also ex
pands her previous work on psychosomatic conditions; critically
reviewing the concepts of alexithymia and operative thinking,
she finds that patients with psychosomatosis have, very early in
life, renounced the body-image aspect of the self. Such a patient
treats his or her body as if it were the extension of a primitive,
FOREWORD
symbiotic mother whose invasiveness forced the infant to aban
don the bodily experience and to cripple affective development.
TlrNftrs of fht Mind presents vivid illustrations of how frozen
character structures, and even the puzzling operative thinking
and object relations of psychosomatic patients, may be trans
formed, by means of psychoanalytic exploration, into intra
psychic experiences of the previously disavowed or acted-out
conflicts. Thus, in the course of a successful psychoanalytic
treatment, the adult J becomes acquainted and reconciled with
the infantile J's as well as with the infantile objects of desire, of
frustration, and of terror. McDougall's many clinical illustrations
may be brief, but she nevertheless manages to convey to the
reader not only the patient's free associations and the develop
.m ents in the transference, but also the changing nature of her
own emotional relation to the patient's communications, her cre
ative use of countertransference reactions to reconstruct those
aspects of intrapsychic reality that the patient could not origi
nally tolerate.
Fears of castration reflecting oedipal conflicts, fears of frag
mentation connected with identity conflicts and issues of symbi
osis, terror of death related to primitive aggression, all acquire
clinical reality as immediate, concrete human experiences, as well
as serving to anchor theoretical formulations. This direct pulling
together of the theoretical and the experiential is one of the most
satisfying ingredients of this book. McDougall's central concern
for communicating the richness of clinical experiences and her
weaving back and forth between clinical experience and theory,
in contrast to advancing any particular theoretical view, adds to
making Thtllftrs of fhe Mind such an appealing book.
-OTTO F. KUtNBERG