Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
By
MARITA TORSTI-HAGMAN
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ABSTRACT
This paper outlines the main arguments in those of Andr Greens works that have
and Bion, their similarities and differences, as Green himself has expressed it. Greens
dead-mother complex are outlined. The author examines Greens relationship to the
drives, including Freuds death instinct and the repetition compulsion. Particular
attention is paid to Greens recent writings from 2000 onwards. In them, it appears
that Greens theoretical emphasis has shifted from the earlier drive- and object-
centredness to an even stronger emphasis on the drive itself. In these later works,
Greens descriptions of psychic motility crystallise, and this is conveyed in the present
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THE WORK OF ANDR GREEN AS READ BY A DRIVE
THEORIST
I write because I cannot do otherwise, says Green and adds, The aims of both the
unconscious and the ego come together in the compulsion to write. (1986, p. 3)
Green identifies the higher level aims of his writing to be the wish to organise the
experiential into theory, and above all, the wish to demonstrate the truth of his quest
in Freuds footsteps. However one may judge it, it is also a testimony. It is, I think, a
Being too conservative means that I am one of the last believers in Freuds theory.
Not that I think we should take it as it is and repeat it as a bible. This has never been
Lacan. If I admire these people I necessarily admit that Freud is not enough. (1999a,
p. 31)
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The analysts that Green cites are for the most part French. Out of theorists outside
France, Winnicott and Bion hold a special position. However, it is difficult to believe
that Freud would not have, for the most part, sufficed. It is only in relation to the
death drive and the theory of narcissism that the boundary between Green and Freud
becomes apparent. It appears that in his writings from 2000 onwards, Green is even
more deeply in conversation with Freuds work. It is as if Green has had an even more
psychic energy. I expect, and would argue that Freud becomes even more accessible
familiar to me personally. My respect for Green has its origins precisely in Greens
texts. Green is the most keen-sighted analyst referring to Freud. It is through Green
that I have begun truly to comprehend the greatness and depth of Freuds oeuvre.
Green is not, nor does he wish to be, a hermeneutic theorist. Green seeks to give due
Greens books from 2000 onwards, in particular, as I already mentioned, with the
Greens paper on affects, which grew into a book called Le Discours Vivant was
published in 1973 (the English translation, with Greens addenda, The Fabric of
was spurred by an early critical separation and distancing from Lacan. Green never
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This quality in Green, first, the studious familiarisation with anothers thought, and
then a distancing and disengagement from it, and the endeavour to create his own
ideas, is I believe a quality that one comes across again and again in all of Greens
his view of the British Schools emphasis on the significance on presence for the
I respect Green, above all the honesty and the uncompromising attitude with which he
analytic trends. All of the books by Green that I have been able to read contain many
Freuds thoughts are so often bypassed, which is not just a sign of the times but
analysts. They hurried to invalidate Freuds findings and tried to simplify that which
observe the associative links flowing deep within both participants, in the analyst and
the analysand. Green has had this patience, and because of this, has been able to grasp
how the analytic process took shape in Freuds mind, as Freud worked to sketch for us
Although Green confesses that he has abandoned clinical work to concentrate on the
intellectual, he also has clear opinions on analytic technique. In the paper The Dead
Mother Complex he states that the presence of the analysts continuous interest is the
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most crucial aspect in helping the analysand. Another instance when Green expresses
the British and outlines the differences between British and French analysts attitudes
toward the analysand. For the French, absence, not presence, is key; for the British,
presence is of foremost importance. There lies the difference. The British treat the
patient as if he were a dying child, analytic sessions take place as often as five times a
week and interpretations of separation dominate. For the French, the analysand must
have the opportunity to regroup himself and his resistances at a distance. Thus, French
In this article I will concentrate on describing Greens work from my own perspective,
and I would not be able to do otherwise. In addition to the fact that for me, Green has
been a significant guide, he has also provided one of the most important theoretical
Lacans significance for Greens development into an analyst has been great, not so
much for providing an object of identification, but for provoking interest, independent
thought, and critique. Lacans Rome Report of 1953 became pivotal for Green.
Lacan inspired Green. From the very beginning, the unconscious for Lacan was not
just about content, but an organised and organising system. For Lacan, the symbolic
approach the unconscious. This early view of Lacans struck a chord with Green.
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Despite Lacans invitations, Green did not follow Lacan, but entered into analysis
with Bouvet. Green had received a psychiatric training and he had an understanding
Although I recognized the interest and merit in this [Lacans the unconscious is
structured like a language] work, I criticized it in detail, already at this period [1961]
by pointing out the lack of attention to, even the occultation of, the place and function
For Lacan, the unconscious is structured like a language. For Bouvet, the unconscious
evolved, as Freud had described it, from object representations, structured differently
from language.
Green describes his relationship to Lacan as follows. In the Rome Report, Lacan
outlines his analysis of Freuds fort-da phenomenon (the play of Freuds grandchild).
In these few paragraphs, inspired by Hegel, Lacan speaks of the impact of childhood
on the structuring of the mind, the position of absence as an internal aspect of the
mind, the birth of self consciousness, the alienation from ones own productions (for
example, the production of sounds and meanings), the conflicts between the psychic
But this happy episode was not to last, for Lacans thought was to respond to the
siren calls of the signifier, and then to that of topography where references to
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language and history were gradually supplanted by other, more scientific ones.
(1990a, p. 2)
Lacan did not merely examine Freuds fort-da game, as Winnicott does, but
reinterprets it, no longer in Freuds original sense, but in the spirit of Hegel.
Lacan attempted to build a bridge between academic philosophical knowledge and the
Green wonders how it is possible to combine Hegel and Freud - Hegels absolute
research.
Lacan proposed to return to the spirit and the letter of Freuds thinking by giving the
speech and language precedence again. Influenced by the rediscovery of the linguist
priority to the symbolic as opposed to the imaginary and the real. The symbolic stood
for the unconscious organization, such as dream-work allows one to apprehend it, for
example. In other words, the unconscious was not a matter of contents, but an
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Lacan created the French Freud. Simultaneously in France, alongside developed
Hartmans American Freud. Green followed Lacans example and began close study
of Freuds work. Lacanian thought was useful in opposing Hartmans American ego
ego functions, made Green agree with Lacans critique. A common object of criticism
was a uniting factor between Green and Lacan. They realised that while Hartman on
the one hand accepted drive theory and never abandoned it, his concept of the
statement The ego is not master in his own house delineates the subject and
with through our own method is the unconscious and its intimate connections with
needs and desires, that is, drives. For Lacan, on the other hand, speech and language
are synonymous with the unconscious. Green observes that language is located in the
realm of the preconscious. Freud distinguishes clearly between the preconscious and
the unconscious. It is precisely the tension between the unconscious and the
preconscious that creates the forcefield in which language is born. This idea inspired
the young Green to write a pamphlet to criticise Lacan, and it eventually grew into a
The following statement by Green could serve as the motto for that book:
The affect is the flesh of the signifier and the signifier of the flesh. (1999b, p. 178)
Green reminds us of Freuds idea that speech is not merely the verbal expression of
thoughts, but also includes gestures and many other forms of expression, such as
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writing. Freud also points out that when we interpret the unconscious, we are
transforming an alien system into a language more familiar to us. This is precisely
what happens in, for instance, the interpretation of dreams. Our interpretations and
their objects are not identical. In addition Freud reminds us, and Green takes care to
raise this point, that the unconscious speaks in many different dialects. We should not
conceptual world, according to Green, in the fact that absence creates the object. The
object is known in hate. (1999b, p. 76) Here, an affect (hate) has a fundamental role
Green criticised Lacan in his writing already in 1960, and they disagreed openly in
1967. It was easier for Green to critique Lacan from outside Lacans immediate circle
than it would have been for those committed to Lacan. Through having immersed
himself in Freuds work, Green realised that the French view of psychoanalysis, that
is, Lacans interpretation of Freud, differed significantly from what he himself found
psychic excitation to zero. In this way Green formulates in his theories the concept of
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Green defines negative hallucination as a representation in which absence itself is
hallucinated. It does not need to be an actual absence, but rather, the hallucination of
absence. It is, therefore, the opposite of positive hallucination, in which we see things
that are not there. Green describes the event using Lacans mirror metaphor: negative
hallucination manifests itself when the person looking in the mirror sees nothing. The
image of the subject, the concept of self, has been lost. What is real and in existence
In Greens article The Intuitition of the Negative in Playing and Reality in Gregorio
Kohons book The Dead Mother: The Work of Andr Green, Green describes what
Winnicott introduced the aspects of the negative, modifying his earlier views (1951-
1953) on the transitional object. Now Winnicott emphasised the transitional objects
not-me aspect. The object is formed from the negative, from what is not present. This
event, this birth of an internal sense of objects, reduces omnipotence and promotes
psychic development. Transitional space exists between two physical beings, a third
object is created into it, one that is not physically part of either being. It exists in a
space which not only distinguishes them from each other, but which contains the
possibility of their reunification. This third object, a concept later further developed
by many analysts (e.g. Green 1975, Ogden 1994, Gabbard, 1997), is one of the central
elements of the analytic situation. A successful analysis creates in the space of the
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The creation of a transitional object is important; not only the object itself, but also
the process of creation. In it, tolerating absence is the most crucial aspect; Winnicott
has understood this, and Green applauds him for it. Not only is the existence and
symbolic significance of the breast important, but also, and above all, the fact that the
transitional object represents the breast (Winnicott, 1971, p. 6). Winnicott mentions
this in a paragraph on symbolism. Winnicott also points out that the transitional object
describes the childs journey from the purely subjective to the objective the part of
the childs mind journeying toward experiencing. What is crucial here is movement.
collapse, the childs creative state dies and is superseded by a persecuting internal
object. This ability to symbolise, which is lost in paranoia, is what Green calls
He is oriented mainly towards the object, while I consider the situation from the
point of view of the presence of the drives. In his words, what happens is a fading of
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Both Lacan and Winnicott concentrate on the negative, the absent; that which is not
available for experiencing or seeing that which is not present. So too does Green,
and this I believe is the most crucial factor uniting the three theorists.
In Greens and Winnicotts theories, the most significant aspect for development is the
framing structure, analogous to the mothers supporting arms. The framing structure
enables the child to tolerate the absence of the object by supporting a psychic state,
The mother is caught in the empty frame of negative hallucination and becomes a
framing structure of the subject himself. The subject constructs himself in the place
where the objects investiture (to be titled) has been consecrated to the locus (place) of
Green describes the operating principles of this framing structure as follows (my
summary): As long as the framing structure supports the mind, negative hallucination
can be replaced by wish hallucinations and fantasies. However, when the child
experiences the death of internal objects, this function no longer works, but instead,
the framing structure is redirected to hold emptiness. Sometimes the framing structure
taken over the mind, removing the object which had been in existence before its
this way seem to have become prisoners of the repetition compulsion. Green connects
this kind of disability with a phenomenon he calls primary anality (1993b). It is not
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the same thing as anal erotism. Primary anality is the state of being ruled by
In his introduction to the book Life Narcissism, Death Narcissism (2001), Green
confuse the significance of a fantasy object with the real object. In this way, the
subject reduces his need for an object as a producer of satisfaction, and, of course, this
habit protects him against disappointment. The ego itself becomes eroticised, and the
desire for ones own self supersedes the desire directed toward the object. Green
outlines negative narcissism thus (my summary): The babys first disappointment
object. In this way, the child believes he can recall the mothers breast that is beyond
identification means a fusion with the primary object. It prevents the perception of
separateness develops, the ego must collect its own self-cathexes for its protection.
These are created by identifying with an idealised object. This process is never fully
psychic charge toward zero; psychic death. The subject gives up his desire, all his
desire, and the consequence of this is that life becomes living death. This is how death
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Green sees this sequence of events as the negative hallucination of wish fulfilment.
Out of this he develops a model of psychic functioning. It is not about unpleasure, but
neutrality, not about depression, but about asceticism, an anorexia of life. This is
Greens interpretation of Freuds article Beyond the Pleasure Principle. For Green,
Greens relationship to the death drive seems at times to shift, but in the description
above Greens view is clear. So, too in the following direct disagreement with Freud.
Green writes:
idea that the self-destructive function expresses itself primitively, spontaneously and
On the other hand, Green emphasises that we do encounter phenomena that do not fit
this view, and in these cases there is reason to ask whether this is where we encounter
the death drive. At the very end of his article, Green states (with good reason, in my
opinion) that the death drive is a concept, and we do not need to look for clinical
evidence. However, Green mentions the character neuroses, borderline states and
It is impossible to say anything at all about the death drive without referring to life
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The object reveals the drives (p. 85)
For Freud, the death instinct and the life instinct are a pair, in the same way as the
process of binding and its undoing. They belong together, side by side. This idea is
sound but insufficient Green frets, it is sufficient to have life drive which can
contain within itself the death drive. (p. 85) Therefore, Green does not see, or does
not wish to see, an absolute concept of the death drive, and he does not investigate it.
Green does investigate the function of creating objects. This is fuelled by the life
drive.
This function is destroyed by the death drive. The purpose of the death drive is to
decathect objects. Its goal is an unbound state that affects not only objects, but the ego
as well. Its consequence is negative narcissism, the reduction to zero of the object-
The resulting indifference does not even serve egoism by means of lack of empathy
for the object. In many cases it appears that the ego becomes as disinterested in itself
as in the object, leaving only a yearning to vanish: to be drawn towards death and
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nothingness. To me this is the true expression of the death instinct, which is in no way
Green uses the concept of the death drive feverishly, even though he obviously does
not wish to recognise it as a drive. Green tries to distance himself from this concept as
Freuds death drive is contradictory. Although Green denies it on more than one
occasion, and explains it through narcissism and reduction to zero, he does not seem
For me, what remains a problem is how Green conceptualises the energy that reduces
narcissism, that is, that orientation of energy; why not precisely as a death drive, as
In evaluating Bions work, Green (1999, pp 7-10) notes the following: Bion wove
together Kleinian thinking and Freuds theory. Melanie Klein, overly intent on the
most archaic unconscious fantasies, did not sufficiently note their effect on thought
significance. In this, he differed from Klein for whom emptiness and negation do not
exist. All psychic space is always full of love and hatred. Bion moves between Freud
and Klein, and Green suspects that although Bion makes reference to Kant, Bion, just
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like the theoretical view of Lacan, seems to have been considerably influenced by
Hegel.
otherwise, but not understanding stops one. The analysand uses not understanding as
well, when necessary. Minus-knowledge is needed when the mind protects itself from
further understanding and psychic work. Bion strongly connects these minus elements
to frustration, and Green wonders why Bion does not perceive any positive use at all
for the ability of the human mind to exist without memory or desire. The patient too
uses this on the analyst when he needs to, in order to paralyze the analyst. Keats
praised Shakespeare for just this negative capability as the highest spiritual gift.
Bion works with the breakdown of mothering and the dysfunctions of the childs
mind, ones where concrete thinking dominates and no development can take place.
Green sees similarity between himself and Bion in their shared interest in the double
effect of disappointment. Disappointment may even lead to the denial of the self, and
in the worst case, to the collapse of the satisfying object and the structures built upon
it. What connects Bion and Green is the examination of the negative and observation
Primary process obeys the pleasure/unpleasure principle. In this article, Green agrees
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Psychoanalysis has little prospect of becoming liked or popular. It is not merely that
much of what it has to say offends peoples feelings. Almost as much difficulty is
created by the fact that our science involves a number of hypotheses it is hard to say
which are bound to seem very strange to ordinary modes of thought and which
fundamentally contradict current views. But there is no help for it. (Freud, 1940)
As author, I take the liberty of adding that contemporary scientific thought in the
For example, physics and mathematics have shown that such approximations bring us
closer to accuracy than does the reliance on absolute numbers. Freud already observed
that resistance to unconscious formations does not only arise from moral censorship,
but from intellectual censorship, as if our findings defied logic and rational thought.
Green describes how, as we listen to the analysand, we soon observe that behind his
words, associations and silences is a logic that does not follow common sense. This
logical thought and obey the reality principle, it has not always been made clear that
primary processes, which obey the pleasure-unpleasure principle also have an implicit
logic. Its main characteristic is that it ignores time; it does not take negation into
account; it operates by condensation and displacement and it does not tolerate any
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It allows our unconscious wishes certain instant illusory fulfilments. The subject is no
longer one, but two. These two processes, the primary and secondary processes,
I feel that if Freud was so strongly attached to maintaining a dualistic point of view
that the duality at the outset was the condition necessary for the production of
something else to be born from the relationship between the two generic terms,
evident in the following: It sets up the pair as a theoretical reference which is more
fruitful than all those which use unity as a base. If we reflect even further on the
implications of this fundamental duality as a condition for the productions of the third
part, we find the basis of symbolic activity. In fact the creation of a symbol demands
that two separate elements be reunited in order to form a third element. (p. 19)
The speech and associations of the analysand are always a compromise formation
between two parties: the unconscious and the conscious. It is also a compromise
between two opposing wishes: the wish to be in contact with the analyst and the wish
to be separate from him. The ego must shift its connections between the primary and
tertiary process. Analysts have often been preoccupied by the question of truth;
discovering what really took place in the patients life. To this Green responds: We
will never know the material truth, but we will know historical truth, that is, the way
in which experienced events developed and formed in the analysands mind. Infantile
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sexuality distorts mental images. It obeys the laws of passion, primary process. (1986,
In his early years, Freud imagined that resistance and repression could be overcome
and access gained to the unconscious. This was to be the treatment technique of
psychoanalysis. It did not work. He discovered that the ego too is part of the
unconscious. This discovery was disappointing. Freud observed that the ego itself is a
source of resistance and that it is not capable of consciously perceiving its own forms
of defence. Finally Freud also realised that this type of functioning of the ego was not
in the least unusual, but part of everyones makeup. On top of this, the ego is, to a
greater or lesser extent, psychotic. It distorts its relationship to reality. (Freud, 1937)
In his final work, Freud faced the role of destructiveness when he opened his eyes to
the reality of negative therapeutic reaction. It was then that the significance of the
death instinct became clear to him. The patients unconscious striving to protect his
illness and suffering turned out to be greater than his wish to get better. Green states
The childs ego admits the two contradictory judgements at the same time. (Freud,
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The two contrary reactions to the conflict persist as the centre-point of a splitting of
The result is that analysis gets stuck. No communication takes place between the split
The more our psychoanalytic work reaches deep layers of the mind the more it is
likely that our hypotheses will appear far distant from ordinary thought, and even
from forms of thought which Freud has already brought to light, and which
enlightened the relationships between the unconscious and the conscious. (1986, p.
29)
SETTING (1975)
Psychoanalysis has always been on the move. Already, the work and views of Freud
underwent change. In the 1970s, some analysts wished to change analytic technique,
According to Green, analysis began to shift toward self-observation of the analyst, his
ability to evaluate his own skills and their limitations, just as he evaluated the
patients.
The real change has taken place in the improved ability of analysts to hear and
observe, not so much in how we help or change the internal equilibrium of the patient.
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We hear what formerly we were unable to pick up. In any case, the sole responsibility
of analysis is to be be able to bring the analysand into contact with his own psychic
reality. (1986, p. 36) The emphasis in analysis has shifted to the analysts ability to
Green also reflects on the analysability of the patients internal disequilibrium. Being
suitable for analysis is not the same thing as analysability. Some factors that lead to
difficulty in engaging the deep layers of the mind and character rigidity. Green often
reminds us of Freuds late observation that the basis of neurosis and perversion is
psychosis. (Freud, 1924). In Greens opinion, analysis is not complete before we are
Green has views on the borderline syndrome: It is a primary depression, in which the
patient strives for emptiness, the reduction to zero of the self and of everything that is
psychotic patient attempts to fill his emptiness retrospectively with his delusions.
Neither scenario is about, as with a neurotic patient, emptying out in which the
superego contains forbidden wishes, but rather, the striving for emptiness is primary.
The borderline patients problem is the conflict between two opposing internal
objects: the defense against a persecuting, intrusive object, and at the same time, the
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Green reminds us continually that object relationships are triadic and not dyadic, as is
almost always suggested. That is, both father and mother are present, but these
tendencies: good/bad and alongside them, emptiness, that is, non-existence and a
One should not simplify these difficulties as love/hate relationships, this does not
work. The contradictory pressures described above mainly affect thinking. In their
precisely in integrating and working through absence that psychic structuring takes
The borderline patients unbearable mental state and the difficulty of his analysis or
therapy is due to this simultaneity, that on the one hand, he cannot tolerate absence,
and on the other hand, simultaneously with this, the inner emptiness if filled by an
Treating this complex of problems prompts questions about the analysts function. He
is compelled to regulate the two different tendencies so that neither the deadening
emptiness nor the overwhelming intrusiveness drowns the patient. He must be able to
provide the patient with a way to connect with working through, verbalizing, with a
feel for how to digest problems in the mind, with the flexible psychic state that the
analyst communicates with his own actions. Of course, the analyst is required to be
pressures that are communicated by the patient through actions and words. This
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analytic functioning most closely resembles a capacity for reverie, a term more
Working through always takes place on a metaphorical level. The analyst strives to
analysand when he feels the analysand can receive and digest it. The experience of
discovery helps the analyst whether his interpretation is right or wrong. The analyst is
symbolization may begin. At the same time, the birth and development of an object
A symbol is a two-part object coming together in the symbol. The symbol is created in
the moment of perception. This is the product of analysis, the third object, which
moment of understanding.
When he is successful, the analyst creates an absent meaning. His potential for
understanding creates hope in both participants. In this way, new connections, not
Green is interested in the fathers role in the emergence of the childs ability for
representing a third presence in the mothers mind. He is the third element enabling
the communicative coexistence of dyad of mother and child, and in this sense, the
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Green suggests, in contrast to Lacan, that the more important than mirroring in the
attitude toward the analysand is to make sure that the patient can or becomes able to
distinguish between these two perceptions. The same is true for the analyst in relation
to the patient.
The effect of the negative on the psychic has preoccupied analytical theories and
clinical practice for the last forty years, with varying solutions. Often it is placed
intersection of many suggested ideas. For him, negative hallucination is on the one
hand essential in the healthy psyches creation of an internal functional space, and on
the other hand its pathological, perverse and alienating effects can be observed in
clinical work.
Greens thinking has been motivated by the desire to examine the phenomenon
which is about the dead mother complex, or the tomb of the dead mother in the
patients mind, as Green so aptly describes it. It is built into the childs mental
structure and surfaces in the analysis of an adult incapable of love. Green views the
love relation similarly. The avoidance of love is not about separation anxiety or
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castration anxiety, but about the idea of a triadic relationship being intolerable and
about the fear that the impossibility of sharing will lead to the total disappearance of
all the satisfaction and all the good that have already been experienced.
In his article The Dead Mother (published in France in 1983) Green discusses
negative hallucination in the childs disappointment in the mother when the mother
has lost her liveliness in her contact with the child due to her own sudden depression.
At this point the child discharges his positive maternal cathexis and identifies with the
image of the dead mother that has emerged. This leads to a lifelong striving to
decathect from each meaningful relationship. This restricts life. Desire and attachment
must be given up, even existence is experienced as forbidden. The father is imagined
retrospectively at the oedipal stage to be the cause of mothers grief and loss. The
primal scene is Greens basic idea: The witnessing of parental intercourse is not what
is crucial; what is crucial is that the child was not present. This feeling is intolerable
and the inability to work through it psychically creates in retrospect, precisely at the
oedipal stage, a dead mother complex. This trauma re-emerges in analysis. The result
of this trauma, and of the fact that the third party, the father, gave the mother pleasure,
Green lists the most painful constellations of internal mental primal scenes:
sublimate and the total denial of the primal scene. Three anti-erotic factors are side-
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by-side or separately in operation in these psychic scenarios: hatred, homosexuality
and narcissism.
Analysis threatens to become endless, interminable and without a solution. From the
transference it becomes evident that the patient is powerfully attached to the analysis
itself, not to the analyst. The patient needs a listener like a child who comes to him to
tell him what has happened. He does not use the analyst for analysis. The analyst is
idealised and seduced. The patient presents himself as a strikingly good and easy
with his talk and tries to influence the analysts feelings. He feeds the analysis trying
to prolong it endlessly. Speech is not associative and if it is, the patient speaks of
himself as of a third person. Emptiness and the absence of drives characterise this
situation. Green offers the same advice to the analyst as he does above: the patient
Green begins his book Chains of Eros: The Sexual in Psychoanalysis (2000) by
examining Freuds relationship with the physical. Freud created the concept of the
drives in psychoanalysis as a bridge between the mental with the physical. Sexuality
infantile sexuality and perceived its presence in the psychic symptoms of the adult.
Freud saw that transferred onto dreams, desire colours the unconscious charges and
contents that take the stage in the form of dream images. In transference, Freud was
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able to uncover love, and the conflict that is an integral part of it. He noticed that
infantile sexuality always encounters the opposing forces of censorship and amnesia.
The drives are Greens basic theme in this book. The drive must be understood as a
That which floats to the surface, which one must exert pressure upon to send back
The verb is a vehicle here, the subject passive rather than its agent. (Green, 2000, p.
102)
Green emphasises that Freuds interests went from sexual trauma though memory
theories, shifted toward an interest in the functioning of the mind, to how the mind
DRIVE
significant phenomena and therefore I wish to quote him word for word. His view
corresponds to the picture I too wish to put forward. This is how Green describes the
drive:
It became essential for Freud to find a concept to span both the direct and the fantasy
forms of instinct, and which could incorporate a dynamic force, the changes in
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physical location that take place during development, including the variations of
intensity and the transformative ability itself. This is a formulation of the drive. It is a
concept that both expresses its original basic premise and those distant phenomena
that this original force has lead to. Freud no longer clung to the sexual recollection,
but rather, now concentrated on this force, an energy charge, and to its opposing force
that sets repression into motion. Many have attempted to make psychoanalytic theory
fit with external events by sweeping away the complexities and difficulties of Freuds
The following sentences add to this idea, and I feel it is essential reading for todays
I have shown elsewhere that the model of the drive is a result of an interiorisation of
the model of action an internalised action which has no direct opening onto the
outside but which has an impact on the mechanisms that control discharge to the
(2000, p. 63)
The unconscious is not merely the container of contents or meanings, and it is not,
just as the drive is not, purely teleological. The drive is an concept of energy. It is
It is precisely the qualities of transformation and dynamism which I think are the
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characterisations that capture the idea of instinctual energy and the motion it
It is useful to keep in mind, as Green too points out, that Freud said to a critic, while
First I have to admit that I have tried to translate into the language of our normal
123)
Eros which holds together everything in the world. (Freud, 1921, p. 92)
impossible to find a concept that unifies both knowledge and the soma. In Eros, the
Green says, in agreement with Stoller, that it is also important to note that Eros does
not just contain pure bliss, but it also contains sadistic strivings, and a desire to cause
pain and trouble. Indeed, he states that Eros is an organic charge of libido, organically
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united with its destructive opposing force. Eros, the life force, becomes part of the
psyche. The structures of psychic functioning absorb Eros. Eros is described as the
love instinct, but Freud already states that one cannot claim that a drive loves its
object. Rather, one has to say that Eros is compelled to love. Eros demands the
realisation.
Green outlines a new concept, the erotic chain. I will allow Green to speak at length
as these quotations powerfully express just that drive theoretical viewpoint of Greens
that I am describing.
If we accept as I propose, the hypothesis of an erotic chain that begins in the drive, to
spread out as far as a luxuriant foliage of fantasy and of sublimation, passing through
desire and memory; if we thus link the huge field of unconscious representations to
Furthermore we can imagine that the activation of cathexis a notion that runs right
through the chain, going from an actualization through the act, to the elaborations of
fantasy or sublimation may bear on any link in the series, following various
towards the soma either towards the psyche or towards biological structures,
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This is followed by an important statement:
between the activated drive (at work in an action) and speech (word representations),
in. (180)
Green analyses his own and Freuds idea of how the ego is in fact always split,
particularly when word representations are activated. Affect and word cannot fully
meet.
Green also examines biological factors that we can observe during an analysis,
particularly in situations when they cause difficulties and prevent the analysis from
The first of these impasses is apparent in the repetition compulsion: psychic forces are
dammed up in such a way that psychic movement is prevented and it only begins to
repeat.
A second object of scrutiny is the division of psychic energy between two opposing
forces, libido and destrudo, their balanced or unbalanced interaction. Instability can be
observed in the rigidity of defence mechanisms and in fixations which do not allow
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A third factor is apparent in unbalanced binding and discharging: here too, in the
Perspectives from developmental theory have attracted psychoanalysts during the last
few decades particularly as studies in baby observation and research into child
development have made enormous progress. The field is of great interest but it is not
Psychoanalysis is a different kind of science and its concepts, for example, its concept
of time, is completely different. The concept of linear time does not tally with
Freudian time. In other words, the picture of how time behaves in the mind given by
The relations between the mnemic fragments are of more value than the fragments
themselves.
I shall again keep to Greens own text, because in my opinion he is unusually good at
expressing just the dynamics that I too, as a drive theorist, seek to approach.
This is how Green expresses it: It is clear that no form of linear development can
account for the peripeteia of the theory: the Freudian pendulum continues to waver
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unconscious desire, and now the loss of the object a loss which used to be transitory
but for which there can be no turning back of the clock now are at stake, and a
fact the two axes, historical and structural are complementary. That which existed at
the beginning of history will constitute the primary pole (2002, p. 19)
Green continues:
the agencies and the way in which the effects of the various forms of temporality are
inscribed in them. The time is now not just in pieces; its parts are in a state of tension
This takes place when biological time (the id) and more developed historical time (the
The next reference reveals how essential the dynamism is for Green:
We will see that there are elementary forms of the psyche which are entirely
take the paths of a somatisation, more or less evocative of meaning. (p. 39)
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GREENS UNDERSTANDING OF THE REPETITION COMPULSION
I have selected the following quotations in order to introduce Green the clinician, best
revealed in his consideration of the negative therapeutic reaction and the repetition
transference:
How can one untangle the ties of these interminable transferences, which are deadly
Freud situated his thoughts on free unbound destructiveness in the context of the
repetition compulsion, which, as he describes it, spreads to every agent across the
aggression, which is woven into the superego and is in this way in relation to an
object.
The impasse seems to make the transition impossible except by repeating the trauma
again and again with an object. That is to destroy, in an underhand manner the
of the primary object of the past. Only the analyst can offer the way out by proposing
himself to the analysand as an object who accepts that which is hazardous (p. 132)
The analysis is asphyxiated. Thus repetition can only cease, and respiration can be
restored, on the prior condition that has repeated and reproduced itself until its
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thirst is satisfied; that is until the subject has had enough of destruction, without
succumbing to the punishments called for by his unconscious guilt which pushes him
Deeper analysis shows that the analysand is addressing an object which can only be
used on account of its deficiencies; and that he is only relating to a ghost of an object
Green explicates the origins of the ghost-object: This object has become a narcissistic
object as a consequence of the childs inability to deal with his own trauma. It has no
direct relationship to the primary object of the past, but is the analysands own
indifference with which he treats himself, in the same way as he feels he has been
treated; in a manner that is cruel and deadened to pain and which avoids all
experiences of being understood. The analysand must avoid at all costs this
experience of being understood, because it reminds him of the feeling that he does not
The discharge of repetition is in fact an attempt to create a vacuum at the heart of the
The ultimate aim of the compulsion to repeat is to destroy the internal primary
maternal object, with which the subject is fused in a manner that does not allow either
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structure begins to break down, the consequence is not relief and healing, but total
collapse. What is the remedy? Green believes that the analyst must allow himself to
be used for destruction without resisting it, at least to an extent that allows the
In my opinion, Greens solution is the only possible one, but one that demands a great
deal from the analyst. I appreciate it and my own experience of analytical work
corresponds to what Green says here. Here we encounter Green the clinician who
If I had not observed such developments, I would not have taken the trouble to
describe them in detail Hopefully, others will be able to reap the benefit. (p. 135)
EPILOGUE
My sense is that Green has been from the very beginning strongly in touch with drive
energy both in his concepts and the dynamics of his theory. The moulding of drive
energy in his theory again powerfully features in the books from 2000 onwards.
Movement and process gain the position that drive theory requires in psychoanalytic
conceptualisation. Green has returned to his roots. In my selection of extracts, one can
What, then, is the clinical significance of Greens theory? What is its relationship to
analytic practice? The significance is great. The analyst who can afford to listen and
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prematurely add representational content where it has not yet been created, will
understand and see the multifacetedness of analysis in a deeper way. He will see the
forms of its associative movement vividly enough to be ever-ready for journeys that
create new symbolisations both by the analytic couch and in his own, theory-building
psychic world.
The English translations of Greens works listed below are the sources for this article.
Green, A. 1975: The analyst, symbolization and absence in the analytic setting. Int. J.
Green, A. 1999a: The Work of the Negative. (in French, 1993). Free Association
Books, London.
Green, A. 1999b: The Fabric of Affects in the Psychoanalytic Discourse. (in French,
London.
Green, A. 2000: Andr Green at the Squigle Foundation. Edited by Jan Abram,
Karnac Book.
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Green, A. 2001: Life Narcissism Death Narcissism, Free Association Books, London.
Kohon, G. 1999: The Dead Mother. The work of Andr Green. Routledge. London.
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