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Belief and
Imagination New Library of
Psychoanalysis ISBN/ISSN:
0-415-19438-5, Price: US $29.99, UK £17.99 BELIEF AND IMAGINATION: EXPLORATIONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS. By Ronald Britton. Review in JAPA vol 50 No 3, 2002 by Howard Levine
'Belief and Imagination is a pleasure to read and a reward to study. It confirms the author's status as one of the foremost contributors to modern psychoanalytic theory and practice. It is a clear and insightful book rich in clinical, theoretical, and applied psychoanalytic wisdom,
and should be a valuable
addition to the library of any psychoanalyst'.
Belief
and Imagination brings together Ronald Britton's writing on these subjects
over the last 15 years, exploring the concepts from a Kleinian
perspective. The book covers ' the status of phantasies in an individuals
mind - are they facts or possibilities?' ;
Belief and Imagination The books
in this series can be ordered from
Review
by Marilyn Lawrence Although
the product of fifteen years of work and bringing together a number of
previously published papers, the
book is a pleasingly integrated work. For
Britton, the 'epistemophilic impulse',
the wish to know and be known,
is not a component of
love and hate, but rather a
drive in itself, but mingled
with and complicated by the other two.
The depressive position, as
outlined by Klein and the Oedipus situation are,
for Britton ..'inextricably intertwined in such a way that one
cannot be resolved without the other; we resolve the Oedipus complex by
working through the depressive position
and the depressive position by working through the Oedipus
complex.' Throughout the
book, Britton examines the different ways in which belief
masquerades as knowledge always acknowledging the difficulty of
giving up our beliefs and the work of mourning which is required to do so.
But what is imagination? Where,
psychically is it located? This
question resonates throughout the chapters. He presents his ideas on the
fundamental importance of finding triangular space,
the space which is encompassed by the parents relationship to each
other and to their children…. here we
are on the trail of the imagination. Chapters
1 - 8 are essentially
clinical accounts of our attempts to evade the oedipus situation and the
depressive position. These
chapters are a clinical tour de force and touch and often build upon ideas
which we have encountered through the works of Segal, Joseph, Malcolm and
Steiner. Chapters
10 - 14 comprise an extraordinary application of these ideas to the field
of literature, in particular
the works of Wordsworth, Rilke, Milton and Blake. At
various points in the book, Britton
refers to Donald Winnicott's ideas, which
as he says, have had an
influence parallel with that of the post Kleinians.
In this series of papers, Winnicott
can be taken as Britton's interlocutor.
He examines Winnicott's view of transitional space and finds it to
be closer to anxiety free mother-infant space as distinct from the less
comfortable but ultimately safer position in the space which the parents
create together in their minds for their child. In this sense,
Winnicott's transitional
space, if used excessively
would be in danger of becoming a psychic retreat. Again and again,
Britton stresses his own contention,
that it is adequate maternal containment
which makes the triangular space safe and creative rather than malignant
and empty. In this way, he seems to link with and diverge from Winnicott
time and again. One
senses that he is trying to locate Winnicott in relation to his own school
of thought and in the final chapter on Publication Anxiety,
he indeed looks in detail at the complex series of affiliations and
counter-affiliations which marked Winnicott's relations to the Klein group
in the 1950's. However, this
is merely history. It is in
Chapter 13, Milton's
destructive narcissist or Blake's true self?
in which I felt some real progress had been made on the matter. In
this intriguing essay, he
juxtaposes Milton's concept of evil with that of Blake.
For Milton, it is
Satan, the proud, self-worshipping narcissist who lures humankind
away from it's knowledge of its dependence on the Father. For Blake, in contrast,
the ills of mankind lay in the abandonment of the true authentic
self, in favour of a
compliant and dependent relationship with an idealised object. Britton sees these as analogous to Rosenfeld's destructive
narcissism and Winnicott's false self, respectively. For
Britton, both are valid
descriptions of linked though
distinct types of psychopathology encountered in the consulting room. No problem thus far. But
says Britton, when these
pathological situations are felt to be generalised,
when perhaps we begin even to reinterpret theory in the light of
them, then we might as psychoanalysts stop observing our patients and
instead get into disputes which resemble the theological wrangles of the
past. Britton observes that
our own beliefs about the past are bound to influence the way we
see things. If we believe in
a period of primary narcissism, we
are more likely to see pathology as linked to a false self development in
the face of the overwhelming
impingement of external reality. If on the other hand,
we believe in the primacy of the object relationship,
we are more likely to perceive narcissism as a problem.
Britton stresses the difficulty which the false self patients
present in treatment. They
are different and more difficult he thinks than the 'as if' patients,
for they comprehend every attempt at objectivity on the part of the
analyst as an attack on their subjective selves. They seek to convert the
analyst to their way of thinking. The
alternative for them, is to
be taken over and made subject to the world view of another. In the countertransference,
it is common to feel
'changed' by such patients, a
phenomenon which Winnicott himself reports.
The pressure from the patient is always to change,
to abandon the third
position and give up the true transitional or triangular space.
I
find this a helpful and illuminating commentary on two expositions of
psychopathology which are often represented quite independently of each
other as though each leaves
no space for the other. While other writers may want to disagree with some
details, a bridge, a link,
now exists. The
chapter I feel least at ease with is chapter 9,
in which Britton attempts to differentiate between those works of
fiction which are truth-seeking and those which seek to evade truth. Truth seeking works, he
argues are those which emanate directly or indirectly from the infantile
phantasy or dream of the writer, while
the truth-evading works of fiction are based upon pleasure -seeking day
dreams. While I find his
analysis of the creative process in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
compelling, the whole project of dividing up the sheep from the goats puts
me in mind of the endless squabbling
within the Universities,
about which are the truly great works of literature and how one
knows it, which bedevilled English literature during my own
undergraduate days. I am
uneasy at the dismissal of popular culture as truth evading.
Why is it that we can find aspects of popular culture from the
past, both religious and
secular, to be worthwhile, while
we can find little or nothing of value in our own?
But this is the great joy of this book;
it makes one want to debate with Dr Britton,
to put another view. One
wants to ask him what he thinks about this or that.
It is not a book which demands a slavish or unquestioning
admiration. Admiration however, the
book does call forth. It is in my view both traditional and revolutionary. I will not discuss the final chapter on publication anxiety,
as for colleagues who
have not yet read the
book, it would be to throw
light prematurely on a very lovely twilight corner.
In the tradition of the post Kleinians,
Ronald Britton in Belief and Imagination
breaks new ground.
Marilyn Lawrence Review by Dr Anton Obholzer If you're inclined to coast along with your well-worn comfortable ideas and techniques, be warned: DO NOT read this book - it could seriously damage your complacency and alter professional self-perception to a discomforting degree! While clearly in the tradition of the work of the Klein group, Britton is also discernibly himself, bringing to his writing not only an in-depth knowledge of the leading psychoanalysts of this century but combining it with the richness of both British and continental literature and philosophy,- a mix that is heady, multi-layered and uniquely Britton. His style is clear, easy to
read and always illuminating, both in terms of the concept and of the
nuances of reflection that it evokes. In the introduction, for example, he
covers concepts such as projective identification and anxiety in an
orthodox yet arresting new way that invites one to have fresh thoughts
about them. Many book reviews end with a recommendation to read or to buy the book. In this case a recommendation is not enough. This book is essential reading for anyone wanting to keep psychoanalytic thought alive and well.
Anton Obholzer
Copyright
© 2002 British Psychoanalytical Society &
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