Trauma and Loss

Key Texts from the John Bowlby Archive

Robbie Duschinsky, Kate White, Robbie Duschinsky, Kate White

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9780367349998
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000693232
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

During his lifetime John Bowlby, the founder of attachment theory, was unable to publish as he wished due to strong opposition to his ideas. Now, with the support of the Bowlby family, several complete and near-complete works from the John Bowlby Archive at the Wellcome Collection are published for the first time.

The collection spans Bowlby's thinking from his early ideas to later reflections, and is split into four parts. Part 1 includes essays on the topic of loss, mourning and depression, outlining his thoughts on the role of defence mechanisms. Part 2 covers Bowlby's ideas around anxiety, guilt and identification, including reflections on his observations of and work with evacuated children. Part 3 features three seminars on the subject of conflict, in which Bowlby relates clinical concepts to both political philosophy and psychoanalysis in innovative ways. Part 4 consists of Bowlby's later reflections on trauma and loss, and on his own work as a therapist.

This remarkable collection not only clarifies Bowlby's relationship with psychoanalysis but features his elaboration of key concepts in attachment theory and important moments of self-criticism.

It will be essential reading for clinicians, researchers, and others interested in human development, relationships and adversity.

Part 1

Mature theoretical writings

Chapter 1

Defences that follow loss

Causation and function

February, 1962. [Editors: Wellcome Collection Archive PP/BOW/D.3/78]

Introduction

In the preceding paper¹ (Bowlby, 1960) the conclusion was reached that defensive processes, such as repression, splits in the ego, and denial, are readily initiated in a young child during separation from his mother-figure. Examination of the twin problems of what causes these defensive processes to be initiated and what functions, if any, they serve was, however, postponed. This was because they are the central problems of any theory of defence and so of psycho-analysis itself. “The theory of repression”, Freud insisted, “is the corner-stone on which the whole structure of psycho-analysis rests” (Freud, 1914d, p.16).

1 [Editors’ note:] We suspect this is J. Bowlby (1960).

Largely because in this enquiry I have adopted a theory of motivation different from the traditional one, the theory of defence that I shall advance is different also. Inevitably this has far-reaching consequences, not least for the theory of mental structure. This paper, therefore, takes us into the heart of meta-psychology. Moreover, despite the task in hand being limited to defences that follow loss, to confine the discussion to such defences is not possible. The defences in question, especially repression and splitting, are so central to any theory of defence that time and again we are faced with basic problems in the general theory.

The paper falls into three parts. In the first I shall examine some main features in the general theory of defence, including the phenomena to which it is habitually applied and the way in which the problems of the causation and function of defence are usually approached. Principal aims are to lay bare the nature of the data that require explanation and to draw attention to some of the difficulties posed by traditional theory. One such is the contradiction that confronts the type of theory that, whilst recognising that immaturity is particularly conducive to defence, postulates the existence of a considerable degree of mental organization before the defence can occur.

I shall also indicate some of the points at which the theory I am advancing resembles the traditional ones, especially Freud’s concept of primary repression arising from trauma. This concept was present in his early work and again after 1926. He developed it as a response to his recognition that, so far from being the result of repression, anxiety is a principal condition from its onset, and that, moreover, “the earliest outbreaks of anxiety, which are of a very intense kind, occur before the super-ego has become differentiated” (Freud, 1926d, p.94).

In the second part I shall concentrate on the particular problems presented by the tendency for defensive processes to be evoked after a loss has been suffered. Here I draw both on direct observations of the way young children respond during a separation and also on data obtained in the course of the analysis of older subjects, such as was reported in an earlier paper on Pathological Mourning and Childhood Mourning (Bowlby, 1963). The mental state arising, it is held, is characterised mainly by the co-existence of two contradictory motivational systems, which are in some way segregated from one another. The problem, therefore, is to understand the nature of the segregating process, the conditions that cause it to take the particular form it does after a bereavement, and the functions that in health the segregation processes serve. The hypothesis advanced is one that enables us to view psychological illness in the same light that Claude Bernard (1865, 1961), taught us to view psychological illness, namely as the outcome of processes that are beneficial in kind but faulty in amount. Defence is not conceived as being initiated in order to avoid some foreseeable consequence; and the ego is not credited with undertaking defensive measures for a purpose, either conscious or unconscious. Instead the individual is seen as the unwitting subject of processes that occur outside his awareness and for reasons that are unknowable to him. Although, perhaps, he may come later to explain and support his behaviour by plausible rationalisations, the true causes of it lie, it is held, far beyond his world of reason. Thus it is an hypothesis as applicable to animals as to man.

Concepts of defence

Defensive behaviour and defensive process

As Sperling (1958) has pointed out, when a list is made of the phenomena that are habitually termed defences the items on it are heterogeneous in nature. The term indeed has been applied to phenomena as widely variant as disease entities, character, symptom complexes, affects, physiological states and processes, psychological states and processes, art forms, and behaviour of both social and anti-social kinds. From this array it is useful to select two main usages which appear central for the discussion of causation and function.

One main usage refers defence to psychological processes, such as repression. Logically such processes have the status of inferences, since they cannot be directly observed. Nevertheless, they are inferences only one step removed from observation and therefore can readily be related to observed data. It is in this sense that Freud (1894a) first proposed the concept and himself used it; and it has been in regular use in this way ever since.

The other common usage refers to certain forms of behaviour, with their associated affects and fantasies which are grouped together because they seem to have something in common. Examples are obsessional rituals, manic behaviour, attacking one’s own shortcomings in others. As forms of behaviour, they are open to immediate observation. Since, in addition, they (or verbal reports about them) are our basic data, it is wise to start the discussion with them.

On examination it seems that the different forms of defensive behaviour belong to at least three different classes. The simplest class comprises behaviour which is unchanged except that it is diverted from one object to another.² A second class comprises reaction formations, the basic nature of which is an accentuation of one type of behaviour in place of another type, a strong potential for which, though in great part inactivated, can be inferred. Reaction formations include both behaviour of an excessively polite, cleanly or ascetic kind and also behaviour of an excessively truculent, hostile or promiscuous kind. A third class, which is heterogeneous, comprises behaviour which is neither unchanged in form, as in displacement, nor the opposite of something else, as in reaction formation. It includes behaviour commonly referred to as regressive, e.g. thumb-sucking or masturbation following a disappointment, and also behaviour of other types, such as, for example, the care of a vicarious figure following loss. The theories I believe worth exploring to account for this third class are those advanced to account for what the ethologists have termed “displacement activity”.

The notion lying behind the grouping together as defensive of these three classes of behaviour (and their associated affects and fantasies) is that the behaviour in question appears to be an alternative to behaviour of another kind which is more appropriate to the situation and which may be manifested concurrently, albeit only in covert and fragmentary ways. Whilst a potential for both sorts of behaviour is always present, the one that is less appropriate has dominance and is described as defensive.

It will be noted that in referring to different sorts of behaviour I have each time added in brackets “with its associated affects and fantasies”. The reason is that I conceive overt behaviour to be only one component of a motivational system³ within the organism, and fantasies, thoughts and affects, conscious and unconscious, to be integral to, and other components of, such systems. This usage calls for a note of explanation.

2 [Bowlby notes:] In psycho-analytical terminology “displacements”; in ethological terminology “redirected” activities.

3 [Bowlby notes:] A motivational system is conceived as the product of the integration of a number of what I have termed instinctual response systems. For example, whilst clinging and following are each the manifestation of particular instinctual response systems, the resulting attachment behaviour to a special figure is conceived as the manifestation of a motivational system composed of these and other instinctual response systems, each of which (through learning) has come to have the presence of the figure as its consummatory situation.

In a previous paper (Bowlby, 1961)⁴ I drew attention to the difficulties that arise in theory construction when, instead of behaviour of a particular kind directed towards a particular object or goal, affect is taken as the main class of datum. There it was seen how, in studies of mourning, preoccupation with the affects of grief and guilt had led to the urge to recover the lost object and to reproach it for its desertion both to be neglected. Once the nature of the motivated behaviour is recognised, on the other hand, the place of affects are found to be more easily understood. The same advantage is held to obtain when defence is approached from the standpoint of behaviour and motivation.

The simpler the organism the shorter the route between motivation system and action; the more developed the organism the greater the number of additional systems interposed between them. Although in man the processes arising in these intermediate systems are very complex and may result in long delay between an urge to act and action and also to great transformation between the act originally motivated and the one finally taken, the intermediate processes themselves are no more than links in a chain⁵ that connects a motivational system with overt behaviour. It is in terms of motivational systems and motivated behaviour, therefore, that they are best understood. From this standpoint ordered thought and day-dream are both conceived as forms of trial action; and unconscious phantasy as a form of trial action at an unconscious level. Similarly defensive fantasy, such as day-dreams of success, is conceived as a special and latent form of defensive behaviour.⁶

Let us now turn to defensive processes. They can best be defined as those processes within the organism that create barriers to interaction between different motivational systems. In the ordinary way interaction between systems is free. For example, there are commonly next to no barriers between, say, the systems governing a man’s domestic behaviour, his professional behaviour and his vacation behaviour. Although each may be organised in a way that is very different from the others, they contain common elements, there are no striking incompatibilities, and in a fairly ordered way each governs behaviour during appropriate periods. The requirements of each are communicated to the others and when they conflict, as habitually they do, regulation is tolerably smooth and efficient.

4 [Editors’ note:] We think this is J. Bowlby (1961).

5 [Bowlby notes:] A more accurate figure of speech might be “nodes in a network”.

6 [Bowlby notes:] Insofar as I use the term “behaviour” in this rather broad way, I follow Rapaport: “Behaviour in this theory is broadly defined, and includes feeling and thought as well as overt behaviour”. The model of the mental apparatus is in keeping with that of modern philosophy (e.g. Hampshire, 1962). [Editors’ note:] Likely this is D. Rapaport (1953) and S. Hampshire (1962).

When defensive processes are present, on the other hand, each system seems divorced from the others and at war with them. As a result, one or more dominate the scene whilst the others influence behaviour only in a furtive and fragmented way; conflicts and contradictions remain unregulated so that behaviour stemming from one sometimes cancels behaviour stemming from another. Often the subject is unaware or only partially aware of the existence of some of them. It is a state of affairs that was summed up by Freud in the Outline in the following words: “indeed a universal characteristic of the neuroses [is] that there are present in the subject’s mental life, as regards some particular behaviour, two different attitudes, contrary to each other and independent of each other” (Freud, 1940a [1938], p.77). It is to the processes that lead these “attitudes”, or motivational systems as I am terming them, to be independent and segregated from each other that the concept of defensive process is best applied.

It thus appears that the term defence is habitually used to refer (a) to behaviour (with its associated affects and fantasies) that is in some way alternative to and co-existent with another sort of behaviour (with its associated affects and fantasies), and (b) to the psychological processes that are held to be responsible for this other sort of behaviour not being manifested in an open and direct way. Although this double usage is confusing, in it lies the essence of defence. The concept of defence is invoked both to describe and also to explain a condition of the organism in which at least two motivational systems are not only both of them active (or potentially so) but are so segregated from one another by some kind of barrier that the usual processes by which incompatible motivational systems are regulated are unable to operate. It is in order to distinguish these two usages that I speak on the one hand of “defensive behaviour” and on the other of “defensive process”. The traditional terms “defence mechanism” and “method of defence” do not make this distinction and are therefore unsatisfactory.⁷ The many other phenomena to which the term defence is applied need individual examination. Many of them, e.g. physiological and psychological states and processes, in this th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• Introduction
• PART 1: Mature theoretical writings
• PART 2: Early writings on guilt, anxiety, and identification
• PART 3: Seminars at Stanford and the Tavistock
• PART 4: Retrospective reflections
• Index