A Battle Cry for Our Moment: Revisiting the Two Analyses of Mr. Z

ABSTRACT

This paper is a battle cry for our current moment. In it, we will return to The Two Analyses of Mr. Z and discuss it as a chronicle of self-emergence that implies Kohut’s simultaneous rebellion against his mother’s paranoid control and against the pathologizing bent toward narcissism in the Freudian classical tradition. We also will show how the clinical process that Kohut depicts in the case exemplifies a model of emerging from the shadows of traumatizing narcissism that can be more generally applied. Then, we will discuss the case of Susan in terms of how she and Peter joined together to fight back against the traumatizing effect of Trump and her parents. We think that this emergence process parallels what Kohut describes happening in the second analysis of Mr. Z. and illustrates this model of emerging from the shadows of traumatizing narcissism. We end the paper by exhorting all of us to be inspired by Kohut and Susan as examples, to fight back against the forces of a fascism, driven by pathological narcissism, that have arisen all around us. We posit the concept of differentiating rage and appeal to all of us to dig down, find this affect state and express it to take back the power!

KEYWORDS:

• Differentiating Rage
• Mr. Z.
• Traumatizing Narcissism
• emerging from the shadows

Additional information

Funding

Neither Jenny Kahn Kaufmann nor Peter Kaufmann have any financial interest or benefit that has arisen from the direct applications of our research.

Notes on contributors

Jenny Kahn Kaufmann

Jenny Kahn Kaufmann, PhD, is Faculty, Training and Supervising Analyst at the William Alanson White Institute. Her focus on very early loss, trauma and mourning is reflected in her teaching, writing and clinical work. Her most recent paper—originally given in conference in Halifax—is entitled “Belonging To, Belonging With and the Right to Privacy.” This paper, in press, will be included in a book on Belonging. Other papers include “Witnessing: Its Essentialness in Psychoanalytic Treatment,” and “From Idealizing Transference to ‘Real’ Partner.” Together, Jenny and Peter have written a series of papers on “Emerging from the Shadows of Parental Narcissism.” Their most recent paper (given at the White Institute in September) was “The Costs of Emerging from the Shadows of Narcissism: We Have Met the Enemy and it is Us!”

Peter Kaufmann

Peter Kaufmann, PhD, is faculty and supervisor at IPSS and NIP. He currently is co-director of the overall IPSS program and co-coordinator of the IPSS four -year program. Teaching such courses as “Kohut and his Critics” and “The Evolution of Psychoanalysis”, he has a particular interest in comparative psychoanalysis and in efforts to integrate the clinical approaches and sensibilities represented by different theoretical perspectives. He also has published several papers including “The Guilt of Tragic Man”, “Working with Men Who Please Too Much”, and “On Transforming the Reparative Quest” that reflect his additional interest in the topics of mourning and pathological accommodation. Along with Jenny Kaufmann, he has written two recent papers—Emerging from the Shadows of Parental Narcissism and We have Met the Enemy and It Is Us, that explore the clinical issues and process involved in working with deflated narcissistic patients.