Greed
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Greed

Developmental, Cultural, and Clinical Realms

Salman Akhtar, Salman Akhtar

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eBook - ePub

Greed

Developmental, Cultural, and Clinical Realms

Salman Akhtar, Salman Akhtar

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About This Book

Though references to it are scattered in the writings of Klein and Winnicott, the topic of greed has drawn meagre attention from contemporary psychoanalysts. This book fills that lacuna. Noting that the inconsolable, relentless, and coercive dimensions of such hunger have profoundly destructive impact upon the self and its objects, Greed: Developmental, Cultural, and Clinical Realms sheds light on the emotion's myriad manifestations as well as its camouflage by the ego's defensive operations. Issues of childhood deprivation, adolescent novelty-seeking, and clinging to the object-world toward the end of life are examined. The avarice that prevails in today's business world is discussed, as is the deleterious impact of greed upon marital relations. More to the clinician's interest, the book highlights the various ways in which greed makes its appearance during treatment, taking into account the tabooed topic of the analyst's own greed for money, prestige, and intellectual prowess. A remarkable contribution, indeed!

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Publisher
Routledge
Year
2018
ISBN
9780429914331

Part I
Developmental Realm

Chapter One
The development of greed in childhood

Ann Smolen
Violet Beauregarde, the overindulged young girl in the popular children’s book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Dahl, 1964) insists upon “acquiring” an elf (an “Oompa-Loompa”) for herself. She refuses to take no for an answer. Her fate is an unhappy one when she defies warnings and demonstrates oral greed as she shoves a gobstopper into her already overfilled mouth. She turns purple and blows up into a giant grape. Her ending is not pretty, as she is rolled away to the juicing room protesting loudly, where she is to be “juiced” by the very Oompa-Loompa she demanded to possess. Veruca Salt, the other greedy girl character in the story, is a spoiled child who demands everything, as she whines, “I want! I want! I want!” Veruca is given everything she wants and takes what is not given and what is not hers for the taking. When she insists that she be given a golden egg, the Oompa-Loompas determine that she is a “rotten egg” and Veruca is propelled down the garbage shoot where all the bad eggs must go. Augustus Gloop, one of two greedy male characters, is described as enormously fat as he refuses to listen and keeps bingeing on sweets. He too, meets a grim end when he dives head first into a chocolate river and is sucked down the drain. Mike Teavee, the second greedy male character, is only content when he is watching television. He is thrilled to be dissolved into tiny particles and transported into the TV where he can have everything he ever wanted. Only Charlie, the hero of the story, is portrayed as a child who has his desire for acquisition in check. Charlie is not perfect; he too, cannot deny temptation and takes something he is not allowed to have, but he can control his greediness, is apologetic for stealing, and is grateful for the little material things he has. The author, Roald Dahl, makes it clear that the parents of the overly greedy children are not able to help their children or love them in the way they need to be loved, while Charlie is born into a family where there is barely food on the table, but an abundance of love. In the end, Charlie wins the prize; he gets the whole chocolate factory. The moral of the story is that nothing good will come of overly greedy children.

Greed

Melanie Klein (1952) locates greed in the oral stage of development, highlighting that greed is intensified by deprivation, but stresses that there is dynamic interplay between the innate aggressive drive and actual deprivation. Klein states: “… children in whom the innate aggressive drive is strong, persecutory anxiety, frustration, and greed are easily aroused” (p. 62). When loving feelings prevail between the mother and her infant, then the child is able to feel gratitude toward the loving object. However, when there is gross misattunement and when the libido-aggression balance within the dyad (and in the infant’s intrapsychic world) is tilted toward aggression, then receiving supplies stirs up more hunger and more anger; this angry hunger constitutes greed.
Anna Freud (1965) describes how the young infant appears to possess an insatiable “oral greed” as she takes everything she desires. Greed, by definition, is inherently insatiable and will not be satisfied. When we call someone “greedy,” we are disapproving and scornful. It is often said in annoyance and accompanied by an irritated tone (Boris, 1986). Harold Boris and Anna Freud do not view “greed” as pejorative, but rather as “an unresolved state of mind in which one wishes and hopes to have everything all of the time” (ibid., p. 45). By the beginning of the second year when the toddler acquires the use of the word “mine,” “he begins to guard his possessions fiercely and jealously against any interference” (A. Freud, 1965, p. 117). Anna Freud points out that the concept of being stolen from comes into play much earlier than the understanding that the other’s belongings are not for the taking, and in fact,
… oral greed, anal possessiveness, urges to collect and hoard, overwhelming need for phallic symbols, all turn young children into potential thieves unless educational coercion, superego demands, and with these, gradual shifts in id-ego balance work in the opposite direction, namely, toward the development of honesty. (pp. 117–118)
Winnicott (1986) also does not view greed as bad, but instead, describes greed as a primitive love “that we are all frightened to own up to, but which is basic in our natures, and which we cannot do without” (p. 170). I imagine that the fantasy and wish to have every need met instantly and have everything all of the time is also a primitive wish to merge with the mother which produces a state of intense excitement and bliss.

The analysis of a greed-filled seven-year-old girl

Seven-year-old Kay was brought for treatment because of night terrors, bed-wetting, and impulsive aggressive behaviors toward adults, other children, and small animals. Kay witnessed domestic violence, and on multiple occasions, her father threatened to kill his wife and abduct his children. When Kay was an infant, her mother burned Kay’s esophagus by heating her bottle in a microwave oven. Kay’s mother was obsessed with cleanliness and would wash the inside of Kay’s vagina with a washcloth. When Kay was four years old through age seven, she suffered chronic yeast infections where her perineum would sometimes become so raw it would bleed. Kay had also been told by both of her parents that she was stupid, worthless, and fat. Kay’s parents lost custody of their child and the paternal grandparents took over her care and quickly sought psychoanalytic treatment.

The beginning

In her first session, this pretty, slightly overweight little girl, with enormous sad green eyes, stood in the center of my playroom, unable to move, seemingly paralyzed with fear. I stood near her and explained that in this room she could do whatever she wished. Within minutes after my encouragement, Kay became bossy and demanding, insisting, in an abrasive and somewhat cruel tenor, that I sit next to her at the dollhouse and make up a story. She was unable to take part in the play, but instead became the audience to my production of her commands. In subsequent sessions, she continued her imperious and taxing demeanor. The play quickly turned to abusive mother/baby pretence. Session after session I was told that my child got lost and I could not find her; my baby was screaming in hunger and I was unable to obtain food; my baby was sick and I was inept at getting help. As the months went on, this theme remained but became more elaborate. Through this painful “play” she showed me the abuse she had experienced since infancy. She quickly went to her hurt and her pain. Kay gave herself a character and demonstrated how she used splitting as a defense against her pathological greed by sometimes being the “good” Helen and sometimes the “mean” Helen. However, she continued to participate from outside of the play. By this I mean that she narrated the story and I had to speak the lines of my character, but her character never speaks. For example, she would say: “Pretend that mean Helen hates you and gets all the townspeople to hate you, and your husband likes me better than you.”
I act out my despair and sadness and hurt over such treatment.
Her response is: “Pretend Helen doesn’t care.”

The early phase of treatment

As the months wore on, Kay continued to have trouble connecting with other children her age or maintaining any type of meaningful relationships. She acted out aggressively and was bossy, manipulative, nasty, and extremely greedy both outside and in her analytic hour. In her play, she showed me over and over how devastated she felt under her grandiose disguise. She always put me in her place, as she frustrated, tricked, manipulated, controlled, and humiliated me. She slowly began to tolerate the profoundly sad feelings that I expressed (in the play), but would quickly change the theme of the play when she was no longer able to tolerate my affect. For example:
K: Pretend that nobody likes you and you have no friends and you try to be my friend. (I act this out and she rejects and ignores me and will not allow me to be her friend.)
A: I feel so bad. I am so sad. I feel so alone. It is terrible that no one loves me. All I want is for somebody to love me.
She watched me, but in a sideways fashion, out of the corner of her eye, while demanding that I repeat the whole scene several times. Eventually these themes overwhelmed her and she would attempt to change the play to an unrelated theme, but this always failed as she ended up rejecting and hurting me in every game. I would be exiled to a corner of the playroom as she screamed at me, chanting hurtful slurs and stating clearly that I was completely unlovable. These games were repetitive and tedious and I was left to feel devalued and helpless. At the end of our first six months of her analysis, she began to act kindly toward me at the very end of the session. We had begun a ritual where, when I told her it was almost time to end, she would help herself to mints that I kept in my desk drawer. Perhaps she worried that I would not give her a mint if she was not nice. One mint was never enough. Kay would graciously accept the one mint I offered and then quickly grab as many as she could and run for the door. She had to take everything I had and what I gave her was never enough.
Kay elicited strong countertransference as her demeanor was extremely obnoxious, manipulative, and unpleasant. Understanding my countertransference was very important in working with her. I often felt bored, sleepy, humiliated, frustrated, irritated, and worthless. I felt that I was reacting to the emptiness in this little girl. It was as if she were dead, as if her soul had been murdered. However, for the most part, I was able to feel empathy for the pathetic, devastated little girl that she had buried underneath her nasty, greedy exterior.

After one year

Even though all of her presenting problems persisted in her outside world, I had a sense that we were making progress. She had become more fluid in her play, would speak more readily about an event in her life such as a visit to her parents, and was able to tell me, “You feel really sad,” instead of making me insert the affect into the play. For example, in our “mean Helen” game, she would take everything from me, my husband, my children, all of my worldly goods, and instead of waiting silently for me to react, she would tell me what to feel:
“I have everything, you have nothing! I get it all, you get nothing! You feel really really bad!”
Kay’s play continued to be monotonous and repetitious. The point of the play seemed to be to take everything from me, to keep everything for herself, and to frustrate me. For example, she set up a parking game using matchbox cars. The whole play consisted of making sure I never got a parking spot. She did this through trickery. Her demeanor remained bossy, demanding, and controlling. She often screamed at me in a high-pitched voice to do her bidding. I interpreted how important it was to her to treat me this way and I wondered out loud if she was treated that way in the real world. As she listened to my words, her features softened and she got a faraway look in her eyes, perhaps sadness. These interpretations were not responded to verbally but I felt that she was taking in my words.
Kay continued to act out her real-life dramas as she insisted that I act as an abusive mother who does not care for the welfare of her child. I was told to hit and demean my child, leave my child home alone sitting in her excrement, and at one point she wanted me to kill my child by drowning her in the ocean. At times, she would join me and we were two terrible mothers who would go off shopping with our boyfriends. Her identification with her mother’s lying and deceit was evident in her saying: “Pretend that we smile and seem happy in the stores. People can’t tell how mean we really are. Let’s pretend that we can take anything in the store we want, and nobody can stop us.”
In another continuing drama, I am the little sister who lives with mean terrible parents. She is the big sister who has escaped. She has a loving husband and two beautiful babies with whom she is very nurturing. She sends me a letter, telling me I must sneak out in the middle of the night and fly on an airplane to her home. She sends me the plane tickets and $50,000. The game ends when I escape; she is unable to continue the game where there would be a loving relationship between the two of us. In this drama, she was telling me her story, one of escape to a safer home, but one where she still felt alone and isolated. Through the transference her greed, hate, and envy were worked through as this drama was replayed for many sessions.
Over time, Kay began to play a lot of school and teacher games. This play demonstrated the many levels of our relationship and her improved ego functioning. This play was used as another avenue, which she used to feel superior to me, as she was the better teacher, the most loved teacher, the smarter teacher, while I was left demeaned and alone with nothing. At times she used this play as a way to distance herself from me, perhaps as a defense against her fear of intimacy. At other times, this play demonstrated her move into latency as she acted out age-appropriate scenarios where she followed rules and began to tolerate losing or not having everything all of the time. As Kay’s development improved, she became much more open verbally. She told me of her accomplishments in swimming and basketball. She spoke about situations while visiting her parents in which she was upset and unhappy. She told me when her grandparents punished her and how she outsmarted them. She seemed to become a bit less greedy. In the past, she had to use all the clay or all the paint or take all my mints from my desk. She began to show less compulsion to have it all and many times left sessions without depleting all I had. The fact that she no longer needed to rob me of my possessions in order to feel close to me indicated the growth of trust in our relationship. I thought that perhaps I was beginning to become internalized as a new developmental object and that she had begun to have some “object constancy” (Mahler, Pine, & Bergman, 1975), and thus no longer felt compelled to take a part of me home with her. This improvement also demonstrated new ego-strength where she was better able to control her impulses. In addition, her hate, rage, greed, and envy were becoming modulated through our experiences together as she saw that these overpowering affects would not destroy our relationship, as she no longer needed to completely deplete me in order to feel okay.

The treatment deepens

Sexual themes entered our sessions as she began to bring questions about her feminine identity into her treatment. For example, she began a session by opening up a toy cell phone, removing the batteries, which had leaked, and washing out the interior of the phone. She used the phone to call a boyfriend who told her that he loved her. Next, she made a tunnel out of a toilet paper roll to drive little cars through. Later in the session as we were constructing valentines, she told me:
“Once I stuck a scissor in myself on purpose.”
She was unable to elaborate and changed the subject. She ended that session, making necklaces for her siblings out of beads, and she said:
“I have a secret drawer where I keep all the things you have made me. If you come to my house, I will let only you see inside my drawer.”
In later sessions, she spoke about a boy who dressed as a girl and how she is excited by a particular boy who kisses girls on the playground. In all of these interactions I listened. If I had interpreted her erotic feelings in a more adult manner, she would have shut down, limiting the possibility for further exploration.
All of Kay’s play themes demonstrated her intense grandiose fantasies that covered up terrible insecurities. Her need to be admired and lauded was a thin camouflage for her inner feelings of chronic emptiness and boredom. She was in constant search for beauty, wealth, brilliance, and power. She was in search of the perfect “all-good” object. Her play and behavior were exceptionally controlling, which I understood as Kay’s way of showing me that she felt helpless, controlled, and powerless. This left little room for the capacity to love and to experience empathy for others. She often behaved in exploitive and ruthless ways toward her grandparents, siblings, and her analyst. She successfully inflicted narcissistic injuries on others that she was terrified of suffering herself. Kay’s play themes displayed her possessiveness, envy, jealousies, greed, and her impulses to kill rivals and frustrating figures had the potential of becoming nuclei for later dissociality. However, on Valentine’s Day, I found a tiny valentine that she left on the floor in my waiting room for me to find at the end of my day. This tiny glimmer of light gave me hope for further progress.
Kay’s play gradually began to change. The monotonous, frustrating games of the previous year disappeared. She became more organized and contained. Her play became more creative as we built roads which had tollbooths that sent us off to magical destinations. However, even in this more advanced, creative play, she made sure that I did not have enough money to get to the best, most magical places. It seemed that her anxiety had diminished as she worked through her traumatic history, which allowed her creativity to come to the forefront. However, her envy and greed were still evident. A turning point in our work occurred when she began a game in which I was a queen and she my daughter/princess. In this role-play, she sat close to me and called me “Queen Mommy” as we made invitations to her royal birthday party. This play, which continued in different forms, represented an important change in the transference from the “bad” mother transference to the “good” mother transference. My countertransference also began to change as I felt caring, warm feelings for her. This shift occurred because of her increased capacity for greater intimacy. She could now reverse the roles and accept a “loving mother.” For the next several months, school games dominated, but an important change took place. I was given the role of head teacher and she was now my daughter and my assistant. For months, we worked together in a warm cooperative manner, playing this game where we taught our children. Kay directed this play and we had music where we sang, art where we made creative projects, and academics where our children may have made mistakes, but we never ridiculed or hurt their feelings. In pretend recess time in our school game, she made up a game called “silent ball” with many rules, which she wrote out on paper and hung on the wall. Some of our children were unable to follow the rules and they were given consequences with warmth and understanding. These games indicated that Kay was moving forward developmentally and had entered her latency phase.
Kay began to bring objects from home to share with me. When Kay began treatment, she presented with a lack of gratitude and defects in the ability to express and feel empathy for others. At this point, there was a shift as she began to acknowledge that...

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