Illusion, Disillusion, and Irony in Psychoanalysis

John Steiner

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781000063011
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Illusion, Disillusion, and Irony in Psychoanalysis explores and develops the role of illusion and daydream in everyday life, and in psychoanalysis. Using both clinical examples and literary works, idealised illusions and the inevitable disillusion that is met when reality makes an impact, are carefully explored.

Idealised phantasies which involve a timeless universe inevitably lead to disillusion in the face of reality which introduces an awareness of time, ageing, and eventually death. If the illusions are recognised as phantasy rather than treated as fact, the ideal can be internalised as a symbol and serve as a measure of excellence. Steiner shows that the cruelty of truth needs to be recognised, as well as the deceptive nature of illusion, and that relinquishing omnipotence is a critical and difficult developmental task that is relived in analysis.

Illusion, Disillusion, and Irony in Psychoanalysis will be of great use to the psychoanalyst or psychotherapist seeking to understand the patient's withdrawal into a phantasy world, and the struggle to allow the impact of reality.

1 The Garden of Eden Illusion

Finding and losing Paradise¹

Phantasies and daydreams of the ideal

In this opening chapter of a book on illusion and disillusion I am going to begin with a discussion of those unconscious phantasies of an ideal time of perfect pleasure and harmony that we all harbour and may not be aware of. The pervasive effects of such unconscious phantasies of perfection are often revealed through our discontents and grievances when it is recognised that the disappointment in what we have arises from a comparison with a perfection that unconsciously we believe we once possessed and then lost. Sometimes the phantasies emerge as conscious daydreams of heroic or romantic adventures which we all enjoy and can use to create an ideal world designed to satisfy every desire, but especially the desire to be loved and admired. Commonly the day-dreams are based on fairy-tales, novels, or films, in which we play the role of hero or heroine engaged in romantic adventures. While they vary in many of their details all such daydreams involve identifications with heroic figures and lead to wish-fulfilling adventures. It is not difficult to see that these phantasies are in part defensive and serve to reverse feelings of defeat and humiliation such as those that inevitably arise as we work through the Oedipus situation. In these wish-fulfilling daydreams the relationships tend to be romantic rather than explicitly erotic and the outcome implied rather than explicit. Later I will describe how the romance can turn nasty when the idealisation is thwarted and how a more sadistic scenario can become the vehicle for erotic excitement and perverse misrepresentations (see especially Chapter 6).

Most of us use romantic day-dreams only periodically, partly for the relief they provide and partly for the escapist pleasure they allow us to enjoy. Mostly they are recognised to be phantasies and they can be enjoyed as such even though we know that we have eventually to return to face the real world with its mixture of pleasures and pains. Sometimes, however, the phantasies come to take a concrete form where they are no longer day-dreams but are treated as facts and are then no longer distinct from the real world which is expected to conform to the idealised expectations of Paradise. Such concretely held beliefs in the existence of perfection can seriously disturb development and lead to pathology.

The Garden of Eden Illusion

In many of these idyllic phantasies we can discern a reference to a Paradise that was once enjoyed and then tragically lost. The phantasies then emerge as attempts to undo or reverse the loss and to recreate the ideal state that is yearned for. The romantic scenarios can then be linked to the original romantic love affair of the baby with the mother and her breast, which is idealised as a blissful time of mutual admiration and exclusive love. The loss of perfection may then be experienced as a forcible expulsion often associated with humiliation which may then play a critical role in defensive responses.

Even those who recognise the idealisation as an illusion frequently retain an unconscious belief in the reality of a personal Paradise. Others believe that the ideal is a reality that they once enjoyed, often up to a particular moment when it all went wrong. These turning points are linked to the experience of weening but often identified with an event such as the birth of a sibling, a move of house, or the mother returning to work. It is especially in these cases of concrete belief that disillusion may be traumatic and give rise to powerful defences which can seriously disturb development. In an important paper anticipating this type of idealisation Akhtar (1996) described what he called “if-only” and “someday” phantasies in which nostalgia for the past and magical hopes for the future sustain the belief that the ideal state can be restored. They imply a failure of disillusionment which keeps a phantasy of an idealised state alive as one that might still be possessed, “if-only …” the disillusion had not happened. They are often accompanied by the phantasy that “someday” it will all be magically put right and Paradise regained.

The phantasies may then function as idealised psychic retreats in which the patient becomes stuck to the detriment of development and growth. Even more disturbing are phantasies in which grievance turns to revenge and the good object is attacked for failing to deliver the desired perfection. A sense of entitlement can lead to a passionate striving for the promised ideal which is sometimes ruthlessly pursued and which may lead to political or religious fundamentalism in pursuit of utopian dreams.

The Garden of Eden in mythology

Individual Garden of Eden phantasies have their counterpart in the mythological history of our culture where every age seems to have its Paradise. Indeed, the German poet Schiller argued that all cultures have a Paradise in their history and that this corresponds to the Paradise that every individual remembers (Schiller, 1759–1805).

While the biblical story of the Garden of Eden is perhaps the best-known myth, many others refer to an ideal time once enjoyed and eventually lost. In Greek mythology the Golden Age of Hesiod describes how

Men lived like gods without sorrow of heart, remote and free from toil and grief: miserable age rested not on them; but with legs and arms never failing they made merry with feasting beyond the reach of all devils. When they died, it was as though they were overcome with sleep, and they had all good things; for the fruitful earth unforced bare them fruit abundantly and without stint. They dwelt in ease and peace.

(Hesiod, 7 century BCE)

Closely related is the version of Paradise referred to as Arcadia, an area in the Peloponnese of pastoral harmony where Pan enjoyed an unrestricted reign. The romantic images of beautiful nymphs frolicking in lush forests is presented as the spontaneous result of life lived naturally, uncorrupted by civilisation. Don Quixote’s version of the Golden Age which is discussed in Chapter 10 is an ironic elaboration of the perfection of a time before the unlimited abundance of Paradise was challenged by the existence of Oedipal rivals.

Milton’s Garden of Eden

In this chapter I am going to use extracts from Milton’s Paradise Lost as well as some quotations from Keats together with Freud’s paper “On Transience”, to discuss these idealised states as they appear in our personal history,² I will suggest that their appearance in the phantasy life of the individual has similar features to those found in the myths and that in both the idealisation depends on a denial of the passage of time.

Milton’s description of the Garden of Eden allows us to see that the ideal is particularly concerned with the abundance of food and the absence of delays and frustrations.

A happy rural seat of various view;

Groves whose rich Trees wept odorous Gumms and Balme,

Others whose fruit burnisht with Golden Rinde

Hung amiable, …

Flours of all hue, and without Thorn the Rose:

.… umbrageous Grots and Caves

Of coole recess, o’re which the mantling vine

Layes forth her purple Grape, and gently creeps

Luxuriant …

(Book Four, 260)

All kinds of animals abound in peaceful harmony and among all this perfection Adam and Eve stand out as most perfect of all:

Of living Creatures new to sight and strange:

Two of far nobler shape erect and tall,

Godlike erect, with native Honour clad

In naked Majestie seemd Lords of all …

(Book Four, 290)

Work was not necessary and Adam and Eve did only so much labour as would whet their appetite.

More grateful, to thir Supper Fruits they fell,

Nectarine Fruits which the compliant boughes

Yielded them, side-long as they sat recline

On the soft downie Bank damaskt with flours:

The savourie pulp they chew, and in the rinde

Still as they thirsted scoop the brimming stream …

(Book Four, 336)

Around them the peaceful world in which the animals played meant that there was no violence, no strife, and no death.

About them frisking playd

All Beasts of th’ Earth, since wilde, and of all chase

In Wood or Wilderness, Forrest or Den;

Sporting the Lion rampd, and in his paw

Dandl’d the Kid; Bears, Tygers, Ounces, Pards

Gambold before them, th’ unwieldy Elephant

To make them mirth us’d all his might, and wreathd

His Lithe Proboscis;

(Book Four, 347)

Perhaps most enviable was the idyllic relationship between Adam and Eve as they lay “imparadised” in one another’s arms. This is Eve speaking:

with that thy gentle hand

Seisd mine, I yielded, and from that time see

How beauty is excelld by manly grace

And wisdom, which alone is truly fair.

So spake our general Mother, and with eyes

Of conjugal attraction unreprov’d,

And meek surrender, half imbracing leand

On our first Father, half her swelling Breast Naked met his under the flowing Gold

Of her loose tresses hid: he in delight

Both of her Beauty and submissive Charms

Smil’d with superior Love, as Jupiter

On Juno smiles, when he impregns the Clouds That shed May Flowers; and press’d her Matron lip

With kisses pure: …

(Book Four, 500)

Of course, emphasising the woman’s submissive charms is a male view of Paradise but one that is derived from infantile longings for a submissive mother. This is part of the infantile Garden of Eden Illusion of a blissful time when unlimited access to the breast was enjoyed without interference from siblings or fathers. Of course from the point of view of an analytic observer such phantasies are illusions and we recognise that, except for brief moments, no infantile situation is actually ideal.

The mechanism of splitting: spatial and temporal

From the point of view of the analytically trained observer idealised states create a misrepresentation of reality in which good and bad experiences are kept artificially separate through the mechanism of splitting. From the spatial point of view peace can only reign in the Garden of Eden, and indeed in Heaven, if everything bad is expelled and located in Hell. Satan’s appearance introduces the idea that envy and hatred are part of the human condition and that the world is a mixture of good and bad elements but this cannot be tolerated because it threatens the idealisation. Vigor...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Credit lines
• Foreword
• Introduction
• 1. The Garden of Eden Illusion: finding and losing Paradise
• 2. Learning from Milton: the dangerous gap between the real and the ideal
• 3. The brutality of truth and the importance of kindness
• 4. The use and abuse of omnipotence in the journey of the hero
• 5. Disillusion, humiliation, and perversion of the facts of life
• 6. The unbearability of being feminine
• 7. The sympathetic imagination: Keats and the movement in and out of projective identification
• 8. The impact of trauma on the ability to face disillusion
• 9. Learning from Don Quixote
• 10. Reconciling phantasy and reality: the redeeming nature of irony
• References
• Index