‘A father is being beaten’: Constructions in the analysis of some male patients

Abstract

I will suggest that the phantasy of ‘a father is being beaten’ and its transformations emerges for certain male patients as a result of the work of analysis and becomes a potential appropriation of the (symbolic) father. The symbolic beating of the father takes place at the threshold between an anal–sadistic organization and the oedipal situation. The phantasy of the ‘father being beaten’ does not necessarily mean that it is the father who is explicitly being beaten. It is a construction derived from the free associations and dreams, in the analytic encounter, reached through the work of interpretation. Detailed material of sessions of the five times a week analysis of one of my patients will be presented. This will be contrasted with material from four other analyses of male patients where the ‘father being beaten’ phantasy was not achieved. The common feature in all these other configurations is a foreclosure in the relationship to the father and a lack of an internalization of the paternal function as a symbolic capacity. It is my suggestion that this absence of the father in its symbolic function is then sexualized in a fusion between life and death drives. A final contrasting example is derived from Karl Abraham’s classic paper detailing the analysis of a patient where one can interpret a dream as expressing ‘a father is being beaten’ phantasy; however the dream’s repetitive nature and its links with a current dream in the analysis points out to a lack of differentiation between the sexes and an anal–sadistic organization.

Key words:

• après‐coup
• beating phantasies
• constructions
• Oedipus complex
• paternal function
• primal phantasies
• primal scene
• superego

1. An earlier version of this paper was presented as the Karl Abraham Memorial Lecture, Berlin, 10 May 2009.

1. An earlier version of this paper was presented as the Karl Abraham Memorial Lecture, Berlin, 10 May 2009.

Notes

1. An earlier version of this paper was presented as the Karl Abraham Memorial Lecture, Berlin, 10 May 2009.

2. I am aware that in this paper I am focusing on the role of the father, and will appear to leave the mother aside. Several ideas guide this choice: (a) a relative neglect of the role of the father in the British psychoanalytic literature, and my wish to recover the notion of paternal function; (2) a footnote in Freud’s Ego and the Id where he emphasizes that primary identification exists in relation to both parents (see Perelberg, 2009); (3) the crucial relevance of the appearance of the father in the transference in the analyses that I will be discussing. All these analyses were characterized by the predominance of a transference to a phallic woman in their initial stages.

3. Grunberger (1956) has indicated that a masochistic position towards the father is necessary for the achievement of a paternal identification. In this paper I am suggesting that the movement between the two positions in the beating scene is crucial in this process.

4. All the examples which follow are of patients seen in five times a week analysis.

5. Janus was the Roman god of beginnings, gates and doorways. He was associated with the start of day and the first month of the year, called January after him. Like a doorway that can be entered from two directions, Janus was usually pictured with two faces, one looking forward and one looking back. According to a legend, he had received the gift to see both future and past from the god Saturn in reward for the hospitality received. The temple to Janus in the Roman Forum had two sets of doors facing east and west. These doors were open during a war and closed in periods of peace.

6. Hassoun (1995) has suggested that drug addiction is connected to a loss that cannot be named; it becomes a substitute for this loss. I have been inspired by this formulation to think about some of the cases of perversion I have encountered in my clinical practice.

7. The analyses of Mr X, Mr Y and Mr Z, as well as Mr A allow us to identify the following features of the perverse patient: (1) the static, repetitive quality of the interactions with others; (2) symbolic impoverishment (Kohon, 2000); (3) the abolition of time and of après‐coup (Perelberg, 2006); (4) the abolition of reality principle and the predominance of the pleasure principle (McDougall, 1990; Chasseguet‐Smirgel, 1985; (5) construction of a pseudo‐reality that becomes substitute for life (daydreaming, or ‘Second Life’) (Wood, 2007); (6) avoidance of true intimate contacts with other people who become dehumanized (Stoller, 1968); (7) a sado‐masochistic configuration that is fixed (Glasser, 1979; Campbell, 2008); (8) reification (Dermen, 2009); (9) avoidance of feelings of helplessness and passivation (Green, 1986; Kohon, 2005a); (10) persistent doubt as to the truthfulness of what the patient is conveying to the analyst (Campbell, 2008); (11) abolition of the dead father and elevation of the murdered father (Perelberg, 2009); (12) incapacity to mourn and predominance of a melancholic structure, in which absence, loss, and nameless feelings are sexualized (Perelberg, in this paper).