The Melanie Klein Trust: Book Review

The following is from an address Mrs Bion gave in April 1994 in Toronto and Montreal, Canada. It was first published in The Journal of the Melanie Klein & Object Relations Journal, Vol 13, No.1, 1995.

Review by Marilyn Lawrence. (2000)
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy vol 14, no 1, pp93-95.

This is one of the latest in the New Library of Psychoanalysis, edited by Elizabeth Spillius. It is a deep and complex book, many-layered and difficult to summarise.

Entitled Belief and Imagination, I think the sub-title more aptly encompasses the range of the work. It is at once hugely broad; a treatise on human nature. At the same time it is a carefully focused book about the Oedipus complex. Ronald Britton locates himself as a British post Kleinian. It is perhaps this re-emphasis on the centrality of the Oedipus situation in all fields of human endeavour, founded on a more of less securely established loving relationship with a primary maternal object, signified by Bion's notion of containment, which marks out this increasingly distinctive school of thought.

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, Psychoanalyst/Psychiatrist, Chief Executive Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust.

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.
In other chapters he takes everyday working concepts such as Psychic Reality; Containment; the Depressive Position, along with many ideas and configurations of his own, and offers them up in a manner that is very thought-provoking and stimulating.

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