2015 January

9-25-05  Sunday

This one hard to write.  About my wonderful, former Ivrit teacher, now living in Herzeliya and seeing the adverse changes in her. The next day, Shabbat, a striking contrast when I am invited at synagogue, Kinor David, (David’s lyre), to lunch at Anglos’ house (Australia and South America, both of whom lived in Palo Alto couple
years). Have put off wriitng this for couple days, in part to integrate, absorb the distress of that Friday night.

Now, sitting in new house where I am renting a room. I sit in the foyer directly beneath the fan, as the heat has not dissipated by 830 pm (although I did do some baking for dinner).  Owner’s cats have evaporated, but not the cockroaches.  I have a new second-hand bed (with a latex mattress, I was told) and have emptied one of my two 70 lb luggages; the second is mostly my Freud. Connecting the computer to the internet not as easy as I had hoped. But Bezeq (the ATT of Israel, prior to the break-up of ATT) man comes Wed. Let’s see what happens. Wiht good fortune, it may mean that I no longer lug my lap top around town on my back and seek coffees at Ilan’s so I can hook up with their WiFi . The other fine coffee shop, also AC’d, says it has wifi, but has not worked for better than a week. It’s at the other end of Ahuza Street, where I usually hike .

After a bit of jockeying phone calls, Y., my beloved teacher arranged for Fri night I should join them. them includes her hubby B., who works for some computer do-dad place that is still doing well.  Their be-ringleted daughter A., beautiful A., whom I knew when she was 2 in SF, and is now about 7 and remembers me clearly from then; their son, E., who is of stoic face, breaks into a surreptitious smile in the car’s back seat when I hand him  a wind-up frog from Toyboat. Froggy does back-flips (and lands on its feet).  Baby Yari is the new addition whom I haven’t met. (The name means something like “brings my light”.)

I slip out of synagogue early, as Y. said she would pick me up at 650 on Ahuza (natch) on the way to get A. at her friends b-day party at the bowling alley in the mall.  Now, I have slipped out early twice from Kinor David on fri night. Although they start earlier than other synagogues, with all the singing and dancing and clapping and hoo-haw, they go longer. (And Tzvi Koren, the rabbi noticed from when I slipped out last time. Not a sparrow falls from the heavens, that god does not notice.) But it is more awkward, bec I am standing a half block from the shul and waiting for  a ride, on shabbat.   I do remove my kippah, but I don’t think this is enough to disguise me; I seem to have a recognizable, even memorable face. It would not be good for me to be sought by Interpol — too easy to catch my mug.  Then I wait, shifting from leg to leg, trying to camouflage myself against a light pole; uncertain from which direction they will come, or the type of car.  I feel a bit undercover, without a fedora brim to pull over my brow.

Nu, comes the car. And it is hubby B., to my disappointment (not Y.) . Also, he is late. Also, he goes to get A. and gets lost.  He is poker faced about all this; calls Y., finds the entrance to the parkiing lot, then drives beyond it. backs up. asks how to get to the bowling alley. Of course, all we have to do is follow the blockades, the sawhorses, the red-plastic tape blocking off the entrance, and we know where to go: exactly where it is obstructed. I recognize A., a Shirley Temple knock-off, right away, and she me. She introduces me to her best friend, Dror (I learned what this meant  a few days ago and have gotten good at forgetting what I have learned — I think it means song).  They profess their love for each other, although later, as A. gets more comfortable at the house, over challa, she confesses, well, brags that another boy likes her and she him: they have even challenged each other to jump off a table. And succeeded without getting hurt. We arrive and Y. comes out with little Y.; she is as lovely as I  recall, bright red hair, tightly curled, held back. Her son, 18 months, is a mirror image and clings to her side, or her breast most of the night. As he breast feeds, he extends his arm to touch her neck, just beneath her jaw (not always tenderly, on the edge); gazes at her, until he gets drowsy, then shakes himself as if to remain awake longer to look at her.

There house is a bit of a castle among Israelis; yet I recall sleeping in the upper bedroom around 2001 and seeing the lights of Tul Karem, not too distant. (Then, the city lights  of Palestinian villages were a different color than Israeli ones, as I recall — yellowish.) Because of the heat, Y. wears a dress with a scoop back, so that one can see her surgical scar, from her spinal rod insertion as a child for scoliosis.  From what I know, this contributed to her sense of uncertainty about herself, even as she at some level knows that people have considered her very bright. Of Syrian background, she grew up in Tiberius.  While known as a dwelling place for Christ, for his walks on water, it was and remains a sadly impovershed village-town on the shore of a peaceful lake Kinneret, its blue waters showing beautifully at sunset as the shore opposite, the Golan heights turn dusty pink and white sea birds weave like shuttle cocks from water to cliffs. It is a town more god forsaken, than blessed. She did so well in school that she was given an unusual temporary exception from the army to study at the Hebrew university, provided she studied arabic and her GPA never dropped below 4.0. In exchange, she joined the army after school and worked in Intelligence. She is fluent in some five dialects of Arabic; reads, writes, speaks.  Her brother is an attack helicopter pilot, in the unit founded by Nehamia Dagan (whom I interviewed for my book).  Why I tell you all this? She married B., whom she met at the university. B. got a genetics BA, then decided he didn’t want to do graduate work and got this well-paying job at a high tech firm. They sent him to SF, where I met Y.. She taught Hebrew at the JCC, thinking herself not good enough to teach Arabic at Berkeley.  (To my good fortune, but I think to her disadvantage.)  She has since learned that she is a very adept Arabic teacher; one of her pupils, dyslexic in Hebrew, has learned to read Arabic fluently. (But as a psychoanalyst, I would venture that if Y. were teaching Urdu, ancient Akkadian or classical Japanese, her student would have learned it fluently.  I think of Rudy Ekstein’s book, with its wonderful title, From Learning for Love to Loving to Learn.)  (Ekstein once supervised me in Chicago, sitting in the analytic insttitue’s library. When he dozed off, I thought all was lost. When I finished, he awoke and discussed the case articulately.  For payment, he asked that I drive him to his next appointment, which Idid in my mustard yellow, slant six Dodge Dart.  he called himself, Rudy Appleseed on his travels.)

The dinner went swimmingly, sort of.  Y. spent the day shopping and cooking.  B. once proudly announced some years ago at a dinner party for several people at his house, that he always seated himself in the corner of the room, then would offer to help, as it was clear that he couldn’t get out of his seat. Clever him. Now, he no longer has  a corner seat, but manages to disappear for dinner preparation or helping with the children; reappeaers when the liver is served. He
loves liver, which in Hebrew is “kaved,” a homonym for the word, “heavy.” Both A. and E. want to show what they can do. Y. worries about showing me A.’s art work, as it may intimidate E.; but A. was last year invited into the semiprofessional children’s choir, the youngest child to join. wehn tehy toured to Barcelona, however, Y. din’t let
her go.  A.’s protrait of flying horses, limbs extended, soaring through forests, are up on the kitchen wall; one made into a serving tray.  E., not to be overshadowed, shows me how he can make paper airplances, paper snowflake cutouts, and pictures of zombies. I make him a jet plane (and extra fold in the nose I learned from one of my patients, gives it distance and better aim).  He marvels that it doesn’t crash on landing.

A. entertains herself, but also treasures the fluttering bumble bee I brought from Toyboat; also, the soap bubbles I brought for Y. she blows above his head so that he can bat and pop them. it is as we move to the living room that the tenor changes. (I brought an extraordinarily lucious chocolate cake from Roladin’s; breakfast for the kids, Y. promised, but we adults did not have to wait.)  B. has disappeared and Y. tells me first how exhausting her teaching job is, and how gratify\ing. At a school modeled after Summerhill (kids vote equally with teachers; a judicial panel of kids and teachers to consider complaints , etc..). while she doesn t think much of how the school benefits the kids, she is teaching the highest national level of Arabic, and her kids are getting the highest national ratings.  Damn good.  but, she confessses that at home, she is distressed; hollering at the kids in the am to get ready. Once asked B. to get them ready at 7 am ,as she had been up all night withthe baby, who sleeps wtih them. At 730, A. , s till pajamed, was out inthe yard, petting a cat; and B. was in outer space. He just forgot.  She confeses for the first time to me, that it seems to her she has four children; and all four have an ability to get into creative dream-like states. that she is too down to earth; wishes she coudl be like them; still doesnt’ consider hersefl creative like them, although she now realizes that she is a fine Arabic teacher. all this to say as prelude to what follows, how the deeply personal can find external experiences to justify inner misery, rather to distract oneself from the inner resources of misery. (This is not to dismiss opinions fo the political world, which may still be valid; only that cleaning ones’ inner slate helps one see the external world with greater clarity.)

Enough Prelude. B. joins us, lounges on the couch and picks up where he strated when he was driving me to the house: how lousy is this country, how lousy is this and every government that preceded it, and how he is more comfortable her than anywhere else.  But they both elaborate.

B. litigates something short of this: the state of Israel is run by maybe 50 people; it doesn’t matter who is p.m., the same people run it.  40% of all kids eligable for army are finding ways to get out of this.  (I am only quoting — have no idea about accuracy.)  All the wars fought by israel (he starts to make an exception of the ’48 war, but doesn’t finish the sentence) were unnecessary wars, promulgated by the Israelis. He gives some examples: the Yom Kippur war, he claims, started by the Israelis only because the Arab armies were on its borders: maybe they wouldn’t have advanced had Israel done nothing; the six-day war, ibid. The ’56 war, for sure. The intifiadas, definitely israel’s provocation.
I listen. With difficulty.  He now states that he will teach his children to never want to be in the army.  (Wise Y, tells him that proscribing them from army will likely get them to want to join. B. responds, then he will trick them and encourage them to join the army, so that they won’t want to.) Later in the car on the way back, he says that in maybe 30 years there won’t be a Jewish state anyhow; demographics and such. Ok maybe 50 years. and “Lo echpat li,” “doesn’t bother me,” he shrugs. (You gather why this Shabbat dinner is challenging for me, a new oleh.) But it ain’t over yet.

Y. has been teaching and reading the Arab literature, mostly Palestinian. She tells me of the powerful writing of a Palestinian (whose name I can’t recall, although one of his books is , “Man in the Sand.)  She tells me sseveral times that the Israeli army killed him in Lebanon.  She also tells me later that this man insisted that the Jews must be wiped out completely and the Palestinians should move back to Israel.  This doesn’t seem to mitigate Y’s outrage at Israel’s killing him.  (I remember that her brother’s training with Cobra’s was specifically on isolating a target and killing the man. But I say nothing.)  She says that she was raised believing that all the wars were necessary, the Jews in danger. Now she bleieves otherwise, nodding towards B.  She says that it is hidden frm Israelis what the Jewish state did to the Arabs. That the Palestinians had a tradition of running away from home during a war, then returning when it was
over. This time, the Israelis would not let them return.

When I mention the mufti’s public radio announcements telling the Arabs to leave so that the Arab armies would kill the Jews, drive them into the sea, then the Palestinians return, either she or B. tell me that people have gone back and listened to the radio broadcasts and that the mufti did not say this exactly. Now, I know not what to believe, but have an uneasy feeling I am in the midst of a folie a deux.  Y. says that before ’48 there were 400 arab villages; now something like 80.  She insists that we must see the world from their perspective and their perspective and language and culture are different than ours. (Terribly different, I add in my mind.) Whatever they think, she says, we have to
live with them. Perhaps, she adds in a moment of desperation, they are Jews who were left behind after the dispersion of Jews.

She continues to tell me the details of the Palestinian’s book Man in the Sand.  clearly a compelling writer, and like compelling writers, does not owe the truth of history to anyone; he is not an historian. But the gist of the book is after being driven from Israel, Arab men have lost all their pride before their families; they are broken. In the book, three Palestinian men try to get to Kuwait or someplace far to get work; try to smuggle across in a water truck through Saudi arabia and die in the truck. She clearly feels with these men. B. continues that when you destroy a man’s livelihood
displace him, it is completely destructive. At this point, I do what i have some regrets about doing. Y. does not know my background.  My father’s entire family (but one) was killed and burned in Auschwitz; likely my father had the stink of their ashes up his nostrils some days. He wasn’t only displaced.  I was born between displaced person’s camps. My father’s mother’s family were the Poznanskis.  (The main street in Lodz is Poznanski street; the current mayor’s home was stolen from the murdered Poznanskis.)  I don’t walk around saying I still have the key to their flat, their industries, their apartment houses, insisting the Poles living there should be wiped out so that I can move back; that I can’t live without going to my Polish homeland. In fact, my father’s “curse” to the Poles is that they should live with themselves.  My father and mother’s approach: you move and build a new home and educate and raise your children. A pretty good revenge, I dare say.

I don’t get to say all this to Y and B.  Y. stops me. Nothing, she says, matches the Shoah.

I turn the subject to their children, to hopeful possibilities of the future, which they permit and B. drives me home.

I am worn out simply writing about this. Feel I should add here the remarkable hopefullnesss of the shabbat lunch the next day. But I do have to do some Hebrew to study tonight. So, good night and be well.

Discussion

We discuss this case in two parts. First how prior to treatment, this boy constructed an elaborate fantasy world of the undead (and saw himself as such) that helped maintain his psychic equilibrium, but also both kept him from becoming human, and “made” him do things to humans that he at times regretted (and at times, didn’t regret), states of mind closer to pre-ruth or ruthlessness (Winnicott, 1970; Giovacchini, 2000). Second, we raise thoughts about how this boy’s developmental model of the undead may cast some light on the meaning of contemporary American interest, even preoccupation with the undead.

D.’s model speaks eloquently for itself: there are various levels of undead, he explained, from the most primitive, Zombie, to a higher level of Vampire, to the almost human, Werewolf.  His explanation of the inner dynamics and motivations of these characters can be understood in libidinal, object relational and dynamic terms (Abraham, 1925; Henderson 1976; Olesker, 2007).

Libidinally, all three subhuman undeads are in the oral aggressive mode.  Even the vampire who sucks blood (oral incorporative) must first attack with his canines (oral aggressive) (Abraham, 1925).  More so, in object relations terms, they “depend” on the living; in a perversion of the infant state, they consume the living, a stance that brings us closer to Klein’s account of infant phantasies of destroying or consuming the breast in the Paranoid-Schizoid position (Klein, 1975).  Matters become more complex dynamically and in object relational terms when we differentiate amonst the developmental hierarchy of the undead.  First, unlike the undead Zombies and Vampires – Zombies having no volition, nor concern or awareness off what they are doing; Vampires having both volition and awareness, but no remorse – D.’s almost paralyzing ritualistic symptoms showed the price he paid for living in his undead internal world.  We can understand the Zombies as being developmentally closer to the pre-ruth stage described by Winnicott (1970) of the younger infant who consumes greedily, even apparently aggressively, but without the infant having a sense of ruthlessness. Second, in contrast, the Vampire shows ruthlessness, certainly in the way that D. portrayed it. Third, ironically, even hopefully, while D. assigned (projected into the analyst) the role of Werewolf, the subhuman with remorse, to the analyst, in later sessions, D. said that each year at his birthday he became either a good or bad Werewolf, indicating that he had this internal representation (closer to human, more depressive position) and no longer projected this upon the analyst only.  Note that the Werewolf’s remorse has a quality of Klein’s concept of guilt; perhaps restoring “life” to my babies was his version of reparation at this point in treatment (Klein, 1975).

D.’s concept of being undead – overtly, apparently alive, but not – expresses his sense of being dead inside, a schizoidal quality, even as he appeared alive on the outside (Searles, 1975; Flarsheim, 1975; Giovacchini, 2000).  His account of he and his baby wearing body masks to look as if they were human, might be his way of describing a form of false self, an apparent aliveness that covers-over the core deadness (Winnicott, 1970; Giovacchini, 2000).  We do not suggest that the core deadness was a form of his true self. Rather, the manic activity and the core deadness were onion-like layers of false self protecting a vulnerable true self (Winnicott, 1970; Giovacchini, 2000). Even his overt presenting symptoms – the driven sports activities, his incessant dribbling up and down stairs until past midnight, while appearing phenomenologically to be a hypomanic defense, proved to be closer to a sense of combating the deadness within.  And his compulsive presenting behaviors, which resolved in the first six months of treatment, we might consider magical acts to protect himself (or others) from aggressive wishes and fears, including annihilation anxiety (Sandler and Joffe, 1965).  Behind all these presenting symptoms and as revealed by the Vampire/Werewolf and other play was a grim sense of terror, a feeling state at the extreme end of the anxiety spectrum (Giovacchini, 2000).

We can speculate about why this boy began this play assigning himself as the Vampire and the analyst as Werewolf

.  We have both historical developmental information as well as his affective expressions on presentation. First, we know from the parents that mother felt withdrawn after his birth, disappointed that this was not a girl and knowing she wouldn’t have further pregnancies. She describes a matter-of-fact, mechanical method of feeding and infant care, what we might consider a kind of deadness. And, when this boy presented to treatment, his facial expressions (unlike his frenetic body movements and tics) in particular were wooden, limited, tight.  Even as his play, gesture and body movement began to thaw and become more excited, at first this was with restricted facial expression. If we understand that an infant sees himself reflected in his mother’s gaze (literally, reflected in the pupils; but also emotionally in her responses), then we can wonder if this boy saw a dead or empty reflection in her face. More specifically, he may have developed a vampire introject: someone who cannot see himself reflected (in a mirror for Vampires; in the facial liveliness of others for this boy) (Flarsheim, personal communication).  But, we are only speculating here on his choice of Vampireness at the beginning. It was significant, we discussed later in treatment, that he assigned the analyst a role of the Werewolf: someone higher on the developmental axis — occasionally almost human, but given (this boy feared) to homicidal rages and subsequent remorse. This boy had to “survive” the analyst werewolf, who did not retaliate in response to the boy’s provocations.

We can couch this boy’s mental construct (undead fantasies) and his work in treatment in terms of shifting from closed to open systems (Novick and Novick, 2001, 2004).  The undead fantasy world (among other mental constructs) was a “magical omnipotent defense against helpless panic; his psychoanalytic work helped him move from a “’closed system’ hostile omnipotent to an ‘open system’ competent mode of self regulation” (Novick, personal communication). Further, in D’s case at least, omnipotence is a magical hostile defense against trauma, rather than a normal phase of development. This brings his mental construct closer to Winnicott’s (1970) distinction between delusion versus illusion.

But, this hierarchy of undead transferences has technical implications for treatment. In the more primitive position, the Zombie transference, we have a patient who feels dead within and is ravishingly hungry. I say “is,” because from D.’s perspective we cannot say the Zombie feels hungry: there is not subjective feeling. In a sense, this is different than Winnicott’s normative stance of pre-ruth of the healthy infant: the healthy infant begins to experience hunger even as it is satisfied: the Zombie must eat the living incessantly without evidence of either felt hunger, nor satiation. This is an example of Winnicott’s distinction between unintegration (the hunger-feeling infant) versus dis-integration (the unfeeling Zombie). This boy’s initial presentation – mask-faced, emotionless, even as he expressed emotion in his movements – is consistent with his experiencing himself as a Zombie. His bizarre play-house stories of a family’s non-chalant consumption of their Superbaby strengthen this picture.

The Vampire transference is more advanced and complex, for the Vampire cannot see his own reflection. The Vampire transference would include the sense that the patient did not feel himself or herself reflected in the mother’s gaze (literally, as we know that the mother’s pupils will reflect the infant.) A psychically dead mother, an unresponsive, preoccupied, perhaps depressed mother cannot reflect the liveliness of the baby.  So too, in the transference, the patient will expect no reflection and increases his provocative attacks in order to see whether there is retaliation and if the analyst can survive these attacks. Recall that the Vampire offers us eternal undeadness if we succumb to its attacks. A therapeutic stance includes not retaliating and also surviving (Winnicott, 1971).

The Werewolf for this boy was projected into the analyst, but could also represent as a transference. There is both hopefulness to the Werewolf – he feels human much of the time, but affected by the moon (like the mother’s menses, we might speculate), he is transformed against his will. And will he tries to have, unlike the Zombie or Vampire who have no volition.  Technically, with a werewolf transference, we not only need survive the attacks, but recognize the sense of remorse afterwards and the wish to become human (again).  That is, this boy’s thoughtful, developmental schema on the undead offers us technical suggestions on how to handle these in the transference. In his treatment, of course, he traversed all three levels of undead; one can have patients who present with only one of these as the prolix literature on vampires, zombies and werewolves cited above demonstrate.

D.’s pretreatment inner constellation, his compromise formation of undead, may not only be his personal attempt to resolve inner difficulties, but also contribute to understanding a societal enigma (Erikson,1968): why have we constructed these worlds of subhumans and why do we revive our preoccupation with them in certain eras such as the present.  What might we understand about contemporary society’s (and particularly contemporary youths’) burgeoning interest in the undead, as indicated by the proliferation of books and movies about Vampires, let alone the long-standing matrix of interest in Zombies and Werewolves in Western Culture (Isherwood, 2011)? That is, we can extend Erikson concept that some talented individuals may experience and (partially) resolve personal intrapsychic conflicts that they share with society in such a way that it casts light on that society, as Erikson demonstrated with Martin Luther, Ghandi and Sigmund Freud (Wallerstein and Goldberger, 1998).  We suggest that D’s unique contribution here is at least twofold. First, that the undead have a developmental hierarchy amongst each other, along axes of volition, guilt and ruthlessness.  Second, and perhaps too obviously, all undead are orally dependent upon the living: they can’t live without them (and, frighteningly for D. at least, the living can’t live with them). Minimally, we can pose questions. Does the recent rise of blood-sucking flicks speak of a sense of internal deadness in our youth, a deadness that can be temporarily slated by the thirst for living blood? Does it also reflect their sense that they are vividly, grimly dependent upon (while aggressively destructive towards) the living? Does it reflect a sense of yearning (such as D.’s) to be transformed into feeling alive?  From society’s perspective, are we experiencing our infants, our youth as consuming us, as never being able to mature into autonomous beings?

At least by posing these questions, we can listen more acutely, more sensitively to contemporary youth. In this way, we can confirm whether these feelings are present, understand what we may need to do societally, if this is true.  More importantly, we can help them devise routes to meaningfully alive inner selves that don’t depend on orally aggressive, incorporative, cannibalistic dependence on those living around them.

References:

Abraham, K. (1915). Letter from Karl Abraham to Sigmund Freud, March 31, 1915. The Complete Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Karl Abraham 1907-1925, 303-306.

Karl Abraham The Influence of Oral Erotism on Character-Formation1

(1925). International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 6: 247-258

Almond, B.R. (2007). Monstrous Infants and Vampyric Mothers in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 88:219-235.

Anthony, E. J. (1977). Nonverbal and Verbal Systems of Communication: A Study in Complementarity. PSC 32: 307-325.

Chasseguet-Smirgel, J. (1984). Thoughts on the Concept of Reparation and the Hierarchy of Creative Acts. Int. R. Psycho-Anal., 11:399-406.

Erikson, E. (1968) Identity Youth and Crisis. Norton.

Flarsheim, A. (1975). Commentary on Searles’ “The Patient as Therapist to his Analyst.” In: P. Giovacchini. Tactics and Techniques. Vol. II Aranson.

Giovacchini, P. 2000.  The Impact of Narcissism. NJ: Aranson. p. 152-5

Green, A. (1983). Narcissisme de vie, Narcissisme de mort. Paris: Minuit.

Henderson JD (1976). Exorcism, possession, and the Dracula cult: A synopsis of object-relations psychology. Bull. Mennin. Clinic. 40: 603-28.

Isherwood, C. (2011), “Bloody, Bloody, Revival, Revival,” The New York Times, January 6, 2011, p. C1.

Klein, M. 1975 Envy and Gratitude and Other Works. London: Hogarth.

Kayton, L. 1972: The Relationship of the Vampire Legend to Schizophrenia. Pp. 303-314.. Psychoanal Q., 43:157.

Kris, E. (1956). On Some Vicissitudes of Insight in Psycho-Analysis. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 37:445-455.

LaPlanche J. and Pontalis, J. 1973. The Language of Psychoanalysis. London: Hogarth.

Novick, J and Novick, KK (2001). Two systems of self-regulation: psychoanalytic approaches to the treatment of children and adolescents. J. Psa. Soc. Work 8: 95-122

Novick, J and Novick, KK (2004). The superego and the two-system model. Psa. Inquiry 24: 232-256.

Olesker, W. (1999). Treatment of a Boy with Atypical Ego Development. Psychoanal. St. Child, 54:25-46.

Roheim, G. (1953). Fairy Tale and Dream. Psychoanal. Study Child. 8: 394-403.

Sandler, J. and Joffe, W. G. (1965). Notes on Obsessional Manifestations in Children. Psychoanal. Study Child 20:425-438

Searles, H. (1975) The Patient as Therapist to his Analyst.   In: P. Giovacchini, Ed. Tactics and Techniques, Vol. II. NJ: Aranson p. 95-151.

Szajnberg, N. (1993). Recovery of a Repressed Traumatic Memory and Subsequent Representational Shift in an Adolescent’s Analysis.  JAPA 41:3, 711-27.

Szajnberg, N.M. (2010). Dreaming and Development: Early-, Mid-, and Late-Phase Shifts in Associative and Interpretive Processes. Psychoanal. Rev., 97:633-656.

Terr, L. (1990). Unchained Memories. NY: Basic.

Wallerstein, R. and Goldberger, L. (1998) Ideas and Identities: The Life and Work of Erik Erikson.  Madison, Ct.: IUP.

Winnicott, D. W. (1970). The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment. NY: IUP.

Winnicott, D. W. (1971). Therapeutic Consultations. NY: Basic.

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Abstract:

While vampires haunt contemporary American pop culture, the undead have populated psychoanalytic literature from Abraham’s letter to Freud (1915) to today. PEP lists 439 psychoanalytic references to the undead (99 on Zombies; 288 on Vampires; 52 on Werewolves).  We can cite only a selection of papers focusing on clinical cases (Kayton, 1972; Szajnberg, 1993; Olesker, 1999), ethnography media and literature, (Roheim, 1953; Chasseguet-Smirgel, 1984), even breast-feeding fantasized as blood sucking, associated with primitive dynamics (Almond, 2007). We summarize the previous works’ libidinal, object relations and dynamic perspectives on various undeads.  Intriguingly, popular culture recognizes what is common to the undead: they can’t “not-live” without humans.  In the U.S., the undead have a  “rampaging presence on best-seller lists and movie and television….” (Isherwood, New York Times, 2011)

But no psychoanalytic paper has looked at the relationship of the three categories of undead both among each other and their relation to the living.  This paper presents a young adolescent’s extensive play and fantasies about the undead, and ultimately, his explanation of how zombies, vampires and werewolves are developmentally related to each other and consequently have different relationships to the living.  Prior to treatment, this boy developed a sophisticated intrapsychic model for the undead that both kept him in psychical equilibrium, yet also kept him from feeling alive.

This boy’s insights about the undead and the dead has developmental implications for handling three types of transferences.  Also, we may shed light on both contemporary preoccupation with the undead in contemporary American popular culture, and its endurance over time in Western culture.

While vampires haunt contemporary American pop culture, the undead have populated psychoanalytic literature from Abraham’s letter to Freud (1915) to today.  Psychoanalysts have written voluminously about not only blood-sucking vampires, but also flesh-feasting werewolves and zombies: PEP lists 439 references to the undead (99 on Zombies; 288 on Vampires; 52 on Werewolves).  We can cite only a selection of papers focusing on clinical cases (Kayton, 1972; Szajnberg, 1993; Olesker, 1999), ethnography media and literature, (Roheim, 1953; Chasseguet-Smirgel, 1984), even breast-feeding fantasized as blood sucking, associated with primitive dynamics (Almond, 2007). In fact, popular culture recognizes the undeads’ need for the living: they can’t “not-live” without humans.  As for popular culture, they have a  “rampaging presence on best-seller lists and movie and television….” (Isherwood, New York Times, 2011)

But no psychoanalytic paper has looked at the relationship of the three categories of undead both among each other and in relation to the living.  This paper benefits from a young adolescent’s extensive play and fantasies about the undead, and ultimately, his explanation of how zombies, vampires and werewolves are developmentally related to each other and consequently have different relationships to the living.  Prior to treatment, this boy developed and built an intrapsychic model for the undead that both kept him in psychical equilibrium, yet also kept him from feeling alive.

This boy’s insights about the undead and the dead has developmental implications for handling three types of transferences, and may shed light on both contemporary popularity (even preoccupation) with the undead in contemporary American popular culture, and its endurance over time in Western culture.  Paraphrasing Mark Twain on the weather: while many complain about the undead, no one is doing much about them. This boy could do something about the undead in his inner life –transform them into living — through psychoanalysis.

Case Report:

1. was seen in psychoanalysis from twelve and half to almost sixteen years old.  His severely obsessional symptoms included having to toss and catch a pencil by its point thirteen times before he could write a single letter, which then had to be written directly on the line, or it had to be erased; paper had to be clear of smudges before writing.  (He dispatched his father for fresh reams of paper for homework.) An outstanding athlete, he had secret rituals, such as drawing sequences of numbers in the mound with his toe before pitches.  While he excelled in sports, his parents noted that he took no playful pleasure.

His symptoms became overt following an accident in which his cousin was paralyzed after a head injury. (The cousin regained some functioning over time.)  Other possible precipitants include his father’s collapse with chest pain (diagnosed as anxiety), his mother’s collapse in a tennis match and his only brother’s move to college in the months prior to presentation. D. began running almost incessantly at home (allegedly to improve his speed on the basketball court and as quarterback), pounding up and down stairways while basketball dribbling, which eventually continued beyond midnight.  He developed sleep-onset insomnia.  He erupted in startles and jerks, which precipitated his pediatric hospitalization.  Both thyrotoxicosis and pheochromocytoma were in the differential diagnosis, based on history and presentation: no medical conditions were found. Tourette’s was also considered.  All somatic symptoms resolved in the first six months of psychoanalysis.

For this paper, the central play about the undead occurred in the first eight months of work.  Initially, after a frozen beginning, in which he sat tensely, kneading his fists in the hem of his t-shirt, denying the need for treatment, he leaped from his seat across the room landing on his knees poking his head into the dollhouse, and demanding “What’s going on in here?”  He initiated elaborate play involving a Superbaby, its mother, father and siblings. The basic theme, with multiple variations over the following months, was that in an initially “normal” looking house, things get strange: father drives home, then into the second floor window and parks the car in the bedroom. Mother is cooking dinner and sends father fishing, which he does in the toilet.  Superbaby comes to life to save the family, or repair matters. In the end, mother prepares an elaborate meal: then, she serves Superbaby as the main dish in the center of the table. Superbaby would come back to life and the “play” would start over, feeling at times, numbingly never ending, as Terr shows in the traumatized children of Chowchilla (Terr, 1994).  The analyst’s major tasks were to articulate the mimed play and to wonder what was going on or why something happened.  D. resisted attempts to relate this to any sense that he felt he needed to be “super” to save his family and that, even though super, he was vulnerable.

Vampire, werewolf, zombie play was next.  In contrast to the dollhouse play, where D. silently played-out the scenes and permitted the analyst to comment from what Anthony called the sessile position  (Anthony, 1977), now, D. involved the analyst more actively.  D. told the analyst that he and his stuffed animals were werewolves; D. was a vampire and D. adopted the analyst’s baby (girl) doll as his vampire child. D. laid out the plot line.  He directed the analyst when to stand, how to throw (Nerf) bombs at the babies, when to sit in this chair and suffer bombardment by D. vampire or vampire baby.  The play had a driven, repetitive quality, but developed over months.  Initially, D. would throw the Nerf ball at the analyst/werewolf to kill him and insist that the analyst retaliate with the Nerf ball to kill the D./vampire.  D. aimed for the analyst’s head and face.  Should one of us succeed in blowing up the other, D. pointed out that as undeads, we would come back to “life” in order to battle again.  Then, he added the analyst’s stuffed animals and dolls into the play. The animals were the analyst’s werewolf babies; D. adopted one baby doll, removing all her clothes, to be his Vampire baby.  Now, our aim was to kill each other’s babies.  His baby, he explained wore a body mask so that it looked as if it were human.  He held his baby aloft, taunting the analyst to shoot. If the analyst did not aim well, D. became enraged, bombarding the analyst and his werewolf babies with Nerf bombs and insisting that the analyst aim better.  Much of this was done with little facial emotional expression in D.; his face was deadened, mask-like.  Then, the game evolved. D. or his baby would kidnap one of the analyst’s werewolf children and hold it aloft. D. commanded the analyst to bomb his child, or D. would slowly and painfully kill it by strangulation, suffocation or torture.  If the analyst hesitated or begged to let his baby live, D. and his vampire baby would crush the analyst’s baby with a look of cold glee, or a smirk and twirling his imaginary moustache, like Snidely Whiplash.  If the analyst insisted he couldn’t throw the ball, D. sent a “force” into the analyst that D. said would make the analyst shoot the bomb.  If misaimed, D. insisted he keep trying.  If the analyst shot the bomb (and D. aided poor aim by moving the baby into the bomb’s path), and killed the baby, the analyst expressed remorse, regret, sadness. When the analyst said that he didn’t want to do it, that the force put into him by D. “made him do it,” D. responded dismissively, even with a look of contempt, “You pulled the trigger.”  D. listened to interpretive attempts such as that the analyst felt how D. might have felt at times: forced to do something uncontrollably destructive towards someone he loved; feeling regret, remorse and guilt afterwards.  D. now tolerated such comments, then insisted on resuming play.  Confirmation came in the aforementioned shifts in play, including D.’s face becoming alive with emotional expression.

It was only months later that the analyst could ask D. about the vampire and werewolf that D. gave the following discourse over several weeks.  He explained that zombies, vampires and werewolves were related but different. They shared three characteristics. 1. None could be killed. 2. All depended on eating humans in order to stay “alive.” 3. None could ever become human.

How did they differ?  Zombies were the lowest form of the undead: they had no will, were almost robotic (he demonstrated mechanical, frozen jointed, masked-face walk) and had no feelings about eating humans.  Vampires were a higher form. They had the will do what they did; they drank blood to sustain themselves, but also gave the (ambivalently) desired “gift” of undeadness to their victims. Vampires too had no remorse over killing people.  Werewolves were the highest form of undead.  They appeared human for most of the month.  Only at the full moon did they turn into wolves, then lose control and eat humans.  And, Werewolves felt terrible remorse the next day, after the fact, perhaps a form of après coup.  Further, they often “knew” what they had done only by a memory or seeing the evidence of blood or shredded clothes on themselves. They suffered the entire month anticipating what they would do so wrong.  That is, temporally, werewolves felt past remorse and future anxiety.

As treatment progressed, D. now took on the analyst’s role of werewolf. He explained that his baby (or he) became a good or bad werewolf on their birthdays. But, he could never predict whether he would be good or bad for the coming year. Further, he explained that his zombie or werewolf didn’t piss or shit: it ate and spit out whatever was disgusting. It had no anus or penis to evacuate itself.  That is, his self-representation of babyhood had but one erogenous zone, a more primitive state (Winnicott, 1971).

D.’s treatment continued with greater symbolic representation over the next few years (Szajnberg, 1993) shifting to drawing, dreaming, recounting movies and books and even singing pop songs, such as “Cupid, draw out your bow/and make your arrow flow/straight to my lover’s heart if you please”.  While a full account of his treatment goes beyond the needs of this paper, some samples of his dreams suggest his intrapsychic shifts.

His dreams restructured over the course of treatment from grimness and passivity in the face of death, to escaping alone, to buddying-up to escape mayhem (Szajnberg, 2010). In his first dream (session #13), he was in an amusement park with friends.  A murderer pursues them. D. runs into a house alone for safety, but the murderer is hiding behind the door. He grabs D. and tries to put him on a lumber saw, head-first.  D. runs away.

His only association was to a “blind-eyed” ostrich that could still run; while blind, its legs still worked to get away from danger.

Towards the end of the first year, he dreamt of seeing a dead woman in a park with wet leaves over her, covering her.  He hears the words, “Esse, Esse”.

He goes home and finds the dead woman in the bath tub. He awakens. This dream he found quietly terrifying and wanted to know how to forget it.  He wanted to dump the dream in my office and leave it there.  The “Esse, Esse,” German for “eat, eat” occurred during his Vampire/Werewolf play, consistent with the oral aggressive and cannibalistic quality of the play, but with a reversal: in this dream, a voice tells the living D. to eat a dead corpse (placing him closer to a Zombie, in his view). This captures the grimness of this boy’s psychic structure built over the years prior to treatment.  We can understand this dream in terms of Green’s dead mother,

of course, but as we will see in the next phase, the maternal transference was also murderous: the undead, after all, are cannibalistic killers.

One pivotal piece of work occurred in the eighteenth month of treatment.  Just prior to the following key session, he had spent several months talking about how the praying mantis mother eats the head of the father after he impregnates her and playing “Black Widow.”  Outside session, he rode a Black Widow roller coaster in a counterphobic manner.  He then spent weeks weaving webs in the analyst’s office, unrolling yards upon yards of Scotch tape: beginning from the door knob, the tape wound throughout the room, finally encasing the analyst in his chair, while D. demonstrated how he as the spider could maneuver around the room without getting stuck by the web, but moving closer and closer to the analyst.

Then, he recalled the following in a quiet manner in the office.  His mother tried to strangle him on his seventh birthday when his parents had a brief separation. (This account was confirmed both by mother and later by father, whom the boy telephoned after escaping his mother’s grasp. When his older brother heard of the episode, he responded dismissively, “Oh, yeah, she did that to me once.”)  That is, the cannibalistic praying mantis, or murderous black widow not only destroys the father, but also tries to choke the son.

After discussing this over several weeks, he further elaborated play, including references to movies such as “Indiana Jones.”  According to D., Indiana could not see how much the boy cared for him, since Indy was preoccupied with the “blond bombshell’s boobs” (not just the antidote lying between them).  His play and work become much more representational and symbolic, such as demonstrating while the analyst stood still, how he had seen the Rockettes dance so closely to around other, without touching and smiling at each other all the time.

In his third year of work, he dreamt the following, which gives a sense of how his inner structures had developed.  He is fighting in Viet Nam and successfully escapes running through a land mine field, jeopardizing his legs. He and a friend swim a river, then must scale a wall to escape. D. climbs successfully; his friend has trouble. A helicopter pursues them, shoots missiles, but misses.  The two now are safely on the other side of the wall and meet twins who become their girlfriends. All four enter an elevator that goes down to the future.  They arrive safely in the year 2000. (The treatment took place in the late 1980’s).

We talked about finding someone in his dream with whom he can escape and “helping” his friend escape. (In the dream, the friend has trouble scaling the wall; yet, he dreams the friend and he both on the other side of the wall.)  We talked of how neat it would be to have twin girl friends. He could accept an interpretation that while the past was scary and dangerous, he sees himself in a future that is safer and with friends, even a girl friend.  For D., this was a way in which he could save his father from suicidal depression and find girls for both of them.  (The suicidal depression was confirmed in the third year, when the father met with the analyst for a referral to analysis: father presented an elaborate plan to kill himself in a clever manner, so that his son could still get the life insurance.)  We can understand the “down” to the future as a form of his regressing in treatment in order to have a better future (Kris, 1956).