Of Things Invisible to Mortal Sight

Celebrating the Work of James S. Grotstein

Annie Reiner

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781782202899
• eBook ISBN: 9780429916717
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Dr James Grotstein (1925-2015) was the foremost Bion scholar, and one of the most noted and honoured psychoanalysts in the world. His prolific writings and generous encouragement to other analysts has had an enormous impact. He was among the first to examine Bion's most controversial concept - O - in particular the mystical aspects of O. The title of this book, Of Things Invisible To Mortal Sight: A Celebration of the Work of James S. Grotstein, inspired by a line from Milton's Paradise Lost (Book III), reflects Grotstein's decades-long examination of the most profound aspects of the human mind. Dr James Grotstein's erudition and depth of understanding made him one of the most revered psychoanalysts throughout the psychoanalytic world. He was well known and appreciated for his prolific writings, so it was only fitting to honour him through writing, and the fifteen articles in Of Things Invisible To Mortal Sight are written by esteemed analysts from Italy, Brazil, Argentina, Israel, and throughout the United States.

Chapter One
The early psychoanalytic work of James Grotstein (1966–1981): turning a Kleinian/Bionian tide away from American ego psychology

Joseph Aguayo

Introduction

To begin to contextualise the psychoanalytic and historical importance of some of the early, significant, and important publications of James Grotstein, we first of all must remember something of the analytic climate in which he came to his analytic maturity. I also limit myself here to Grotstein’s early publications, which during this time, both preceded and occurred contemporaneously with his analysis with Wilfred Bion. I restrict my contribution to the years between 1966 and 1981—from the publication of his first co-authored article on projective identification (Malin & Grotstein, 1966) to the publication of his two books in the same year: Splitting and Projective Identification and Do I Dare Disturb the Universe? (Grotstein, 1981a, 1981b). The former book was the first extensive American presentation of Kleinian ideas to an audience of analysts in the United States, while the latter book was the one and only formally published Festschrift in Bion’s honour that appeared after his death in 1979. To avoid having the current contribution become an impossible mission, as Grotstein was a prolific writer, I restrict myself to his analytic beginnings in the warm climate of southern California and his first institute home, the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. Later on he was an important member of the Psychoanalytic Center of California, an IPA-affiliated institute in Los Angeles whose curriculum was based primarily on British object relations theory.

First, some thoughts about Grotstein’s unique analytic background: his four training and personal analyses were quite varied, the first with Robert Jokl, an orthodox Freudian, the second with Ivan McGuire, a Fairbairnian, a third with Bion himself, and the last with Albert Mason, the only London-trained Kleinian back then in Los Angeles. The variety of these personal analytic experiences attested to one central and distinguishing characteristic of Grotstein’s analytic thinking: his struggle to integrate his passionate dedication to Kleinian/Bionian analysis as an American trained analyst.

Grotstein's early publications (1966–1981) and Bion's sojourn in California (1968–1979)

It requires an act of historical imagination to capture how unusual and strange Malin and Grotstein’s (1966) first publication on projective identification must have been to many of its readers. Reputed to be the first American article on the subject, it was unusual because of the circumstances in which it occurred (Spillius & O’Shaughnessy, 2012). Published at the height of the ascendency of ego psychology in the United States, its emphasis on the clinical value of Klein’s ideas would have seemed a bit outlandish to its American analytic readers. Most American institutes did not include readings from either Klein or her students—and if they did, they labelled them as “deviant” or “heretical” (Aguayo, 2013). Nowadays British Kleinians (Spillius & O’Shaughnessy, 2012), have characterised American analysts, James Grotstein, Thomas Ogden, and Otto Kernberg, as “adopters” who use the term “projective identification” in a conceptual matrix that includes Klein, as well as other contributors, most notably independent school analysts like Winnicott.

Malin and Grotstein’s (1966) paper came at a time when American analytic journals were filled with scores of articles on ego psychology. Typical of these writings are those of New York analyst Charles Brenner (1966), who steadfastly maintained that ego psychology was an advance that incorporated Freud’s ideas on the structural model because it encompassed both neurotic as well as normal psychological phenomena. In addition to its analytic conceptual vocabulary—“compromise formations”, “drive derivatives”, “the ego and its mechanisms of defense” and the like—there were new and important extensions, such as Ernst Kris’s notion of “regression in the service of the ego”. With such ideas in hand, American ego analysts took the field in the direction of the normal, adaptive, and constructive, a point of view which revolved around the centrality of the ego and its vicissitudes. It is indeed hard to resist thinking that the ascendency of American ego psychology occurred at the height of the political and military supremacy of the United States as a post-World War II international superpower.

And yet in this context, Malin and Grotstein clearly marched in a different direction by becoming wholesale importers of British object relations theory. They marginalised the vicissitudes of the ego and what Grotstein once termed “defense analysis interminable”, all in favour of “unconscious phantasy”, “part-objects”, and “early object relations”. One practical reason for their interest was that as American trained psychiatrists—and recall here that the American Psychoanalytic Association was then a monopoly of psychiatrically trained physicians—these analysts all had psychotically disturbed patients in inpatient hospital settings. Even the most eminent Los Angeles analysts of that time, such as Ralph Greenson, were severely tested by patients such as Marilyn Monroe, whose psychological disturbance went beyond the boundaries of the classical psychoanalytic method for neurotically disturbed patients. In this respect, Malin and Grotstein were part of a tide that began a turn away from ego psychology and—along with others such as Harold Searles, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, and John Rosen—began to interest themselves and others in innovative treatment approaches to the psychotically disturbed patient.

However, in the context of London-based Kleinian analysts, the work of Malin and Grotstein would have appeared both commonplace and a bit strange, but for different reasons. In other words, while they were enthusiastic about ideas such as the projection of a “bad self” into the analyst, and saw the value of Kleinian ideas about destructiveness towards a good object, these ideas were already well established in London after the publishing cohort of Herbert Rosenfeld, Hanna Segal, and Wilfred Bion had galvanised support for a thoroughgoing Kleinian psychoanalytic treatment of psychotic states of mind from 1947 to 1959 (Aguayo, 2009).

While there was genuine innovation in Malin and Grotstein’s introduction of Kleinian ideas to a new audience of American analysts, they also mixed ideas, such as those of W. R. D. Fairbairn, Michael Balint, and Melanie Klein, and, as such, would not have recognised how strange and contradictory these admixtures would have sounded to British ears. After all, the strict boundaries still existed between the warring three groups of Kleinians, independents, and (Anna) Freudians at the British Psychoanalytical Society. Of course, at that time, the heated differences between the three groups was not the subject of much public discussion or scholarly publications—that would have to wait until King and Steiner (1991) memorialised the Melanie Klein/Anna Freud debates during the time of the Controversial Discussions from 1941 to 1944. In point of fact, Malin and Grotstein’s eclectic mix of British object relations was received in London with some sense of bewilderment. When Grotstein met British analyst, Sydney Klein in London at a dinner held at Herbert Rosenfeld’s house in 1967, not knowing he was speaking to Grotstein, Klein said, “Imagine that, Americans writing about projective identification!” According to Sydney Klein, these American authors were mixing incompatible elements like Fairbairn, Balint, and Melanie Klein. When Grotstein confessed that he was one of the authors of the papers, Klein gasped and said, “The devil you say!” (Grotstein, personal communication).

Nonetheless, Grotstein and his colleagues proceeded undaunted with their enthusiastic version of British object relations theory. As part of a private study group at the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, one that included Bernard Bail and Marvin Berenson, these young analysts supplemented their education, which had been based in American ego psychology. Urged on by Bernard Brandchaft, a generation older, who was the first Los Angeles psychoanalyst to travel to England for training in British object relations theory, this small group gathered some interest as the first major proponents of Klein’s ideas in Los Angeles. Ivan McGuire was also influential, a senior training and supervising analyst who was quite interested in British ideas, particularly those of the Middle Group. Both Brandchaft and McGuire encouraged the study group to take up Klein’s work (Kirsner, 2000, pp. 167–172).

With Brandchaft’s help this group began financially to sponsor the visits of British analysts to Los Angeles beginning in the early 1960s. Visitors included Hanna Segal, Herbert Rosenfeld, Donald Meltzer, and Wilfred Bion, among others. These small meetings initially started as clinical lectures and seminars held in private homes, but as interest blossomed and attendance grew, these meetings were moved to larger venues such as the Beverly Wilshire Hotel (ibid.). Looking back several years later, Grotstein gave his study group the moniker “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” for having brought Kleinian ideas to Los Angeles.

However, Bion was the first Kleinian analyst invited to live and work in Los Angeles by this group, an effort spearheaded primarily by Brandchaft and Bail. Bion’s decision to relocate to Los Angeles would have a life-altering effect on the work of James Grotstein and many other colleagues there. Enthusiastic to hear the work of this London Kleinian, Grotstein both attended Bion’s seminars in Los Angeles in April 1967 as well as participated in a private supervision group where clinical material was presented to Bion as consultant. Bion arrived to stay in 1968. Shortly after relocating, Bion realised he needed other colleagues to join him, both for support and to meet the growing demand for Kleinian analytic and supervisory services. Other Kleinian analysts, such Albert Mason and later, Susanna Isaacs Elmhirst, also accepted invitations to join him in Los Angeles.

The Los Angeles analysts could not have known the significance of their invitation to Bion. A number of important issues in his psychoanalytic career crystallised as he now turned seventy. Bion had been both president of the British Psychoanalytical Society and chair of the Melanie Klein Trust in the period from 1962 to 1967. His oft-cited comment, rendered in his 1966 paper, “Catastrophic Change”, namely “… loading up the psychoanalyst with such honours that he’s sunk without a trace” (p. 17) may have reflected his weariness of having such an administratively burdened schedule in London, among other things. It is hard to imagine that all this work had not compromised the time that he could devote to his passion of theorising and writing about psychoanalysis. Bion evidently decided that the interest in his work shown in Los Angeles was serious and significant enough to warrant his move there. In addition, he arranged to take on no administrative and leadership responsibilities there. His hope was for a receptive enough environment that would give him ample time to continue his research and writing.

Bion had some sense that his work, particularly on the treatment of borderline and psychotic patients, would be well received in Los Angeles. As mentioned, there was tremendous interest in the claims made by Kleinians that they had had some limited success in the treatment of psychotically disturbed patients. Many physician-analysts in attendance at Bion’s 1967 Los Angeles seminars had extensive experience working with hospitalised psychotic and near psychotic patients (Greenson, 1965; Wexler, 1965), and they were quite interested to hear new ideas on how to go about doing such difficult work. All the clinical examples given by Bion (Aguayo & Malin, 2013) in the Los Angeles seminars were of psychotic and borderline patients, and the transcripts make clear that these examples struck a responsive chord.

So when Grotstein and other Los Angeles colleagues first heard Bion speak of his ideas on technique, epitomised in his brief sketch, “Notes on Memory and Desire” (originally published in a Los Angeles analytic journal, The Psychoanalytic Forum in the fall of 1967), they were quite enthusiastic. Recall here that not much had been written on technique by the London Klein group up until the 1960s, so Bion’s “Notes on Memory and Desire” struck a fertile chord. I have maintained elsewhere that Bion himself may have felt quite intrigued by why his paper created such a controversial stir in Los Angeles. As attested to by the various commentaries written on this paper—and published in The Psychoanalytic Forum—some American analysts were quite enthused while others were shocked and appalled by Bion’s (2013) ideas, such as the active abandonment of memory for previous sessions (Aguayo, 2014).

More importantly, this “here and now” technique of active and receptive listening also implicitly challenged ego psychological assumptions regarding the importance of the patient’s early history, its careful reconstruction and interpretative understanding in the past-to-present transference. Bion’s “Notes on Memory and Desire” was exceedingly compressed, direct, and forthright, almost to the point of being strident. The responses to the paper demonstrated some interest but much incredulity and utter bewilderment regarding just what Bion was attempting to convey. Interestingly, Los Angeles analyst John Lindon, the editor of The Psychoanalytic Forum, expressed his own appreciation of Bion’s work in his own separate discussion, finding it “… provocatively nihilistic of all that we have learned as psychoanalysts” (Bion, 1967b, p. 274).

In light of the fact that few American analysts were familiar with his publications, Bion (Aguayo & Malin, 2013) spoke plainly and directly to his American colleagues, inviting them to ask him questions, repeatedly if need be, so that he could clarify his intended meanings. In these 1967 seminars, Bion shunted aside his dense, epistemological style of communication, particularly with regard to his emerging ideas on analytic technique. Rather than take exclusive aim at the patient’s pathology, Bion also took up the problematic nature of the analyst’s subjective processing capacities. These Los Angeles seminars demonstrated an alternative to a dense, theoretical exposition—he worked with the technical implications of the analyst’s potentially problematic reactions to working with his disturbed patients.

Grotstein and the "Time of Troubles" in Los Angeles

However, by the time Grotstein had entered a five-days-a-week analysis with Bion in 1973, the atmosphere had changed at the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Institute. The initial climate of receptivity for Kleinian ideas regarding the treatment of psychotically disturbed patients then changed dramatically. The original analytic hospitality shown to these London Kleinians changed once some of them moved to live and practise in Los Angeles—welcomed as visitors, they were regarded as suspect competitors once they came to reside in Los Angeles. Rivalries and feuds over candidates intensified once the younger candidates and members began to show strong interest in Kleinian ideas and techniques.

Kleinian ideas regarding psychotic states of mind were subsequently regarded as antithetical to prevailing Freudian approaches, such as those of Milton Wexler (1965) and Ralph Greenson (1965) on what might be termed an “ego deficit” model of schizophrenia. This treatment approach might be characterised as an “ego supportive” approach, in which the analyst functioned as a sort of auxiliary ego, and sat his patients up rather than subject them to potentially harmful and disintegrative states by allowing them to lie down (cf. Knight, 1953). Bion’s approach now would have been regarded as contraindicated, as he worked with such patients, using the couch in a standard five-times-a-week psychoanalytic method.

By 1974, Grotstein and other like-minded colleagues interested in Kleinian ideas found themselves in an embattled minority, as Greenson and others spearheaded a well-documented vitriolic opposition to all Kleinian theory and technique. Greenson (1974)...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• ABOUT THE EDITOR AND CONTRIBUTORS
• INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER ONE The early psychoanalytic work of James Grotstein (1966–1981): turning a Kleinian/Bionian tide away from American ego psychology
• CHAPTER TWO Into the depths of a "black hole" and deadness
• CHAPTER THREE Reaching the transcendent position by a borderline patient in reading Beckett
• CHAPTER FOUR A Beam of Intense Darkness by James S. Grotstein
• CHAPTER FIVE The Weltanschauung of James S. Grotstein
• CHAPTER SIX On talking-as-dreaming
• CHAPTER SEVEN Moving in darkness: working with patients with primitive catastrophic traumas
• CHAPTER EIGHT Ferenczi's "astra" and Bion's "O": a clinical perspective
• CHAPTER NINE The internal world of terror
• CHAPTER TEN Notes on the contribution of antenatal states to the expression of totalitarian behaviour
• CHAPTER ELEVEN On toleration
• CHAPTER TWELVE The analyst's mind, theories, and transformations in "O"
• CHAPTER THIRTEEN Figments, facts, interruption, hints, and ...
• CHAPTER FOURTEEN Alpha function and mental growth: the aesthetic dimension of the mind
• CHAPTER FIFTEEN Bion crosses the Rubicon: the fateful course—and curse—of "O" in psychoanalysis and the furies left in its wake
• INDEX