meaning, there is intention. ‘This boy is bad because he is ugly’—the ugliness
developed because of the badness.
Developmental theory is directional, archetypal theory is referential. A
developmental metaphor says, ‘Yukio suffered severe narcissistic injury as a result of
failure of early attachment.’ An archetypal theory says, ‘An archetype could not express
itself, could not “unpack”, could not “install and run” properly.’ Developmental
theory is about the directed expression of archetype, archetypal theory refers to the
ordered expression of development. Developmental theory views structures from the
point of view of ego, and archetypal theory from that of Self. Both are true, each is
true separately, and, in my view, neither is true alone.
Using both developmental and archetypal viewpoints was essential to help Yukio
understand an experience of congenital difference, a premature closure. In archetypal
metaphor I might say, ‘Yukio, look. You could not embark on your hero’s journey
for deliverance from the terrible great mother because you didn’t have a real mother.’
Or, developmentally, ‘Yukio, you can’t take in what I say, just like you couldn’t take
in the milk your mother had to give you.’ I said something like both at the ‘crux’,
the centre of the clinical material, when Yukio spoke Japanese. I could not translate
his words. Yet, at that moment and for the first time, I understood his pain, he knew
I understood and we both knew we had changed. We ‘made a word’, an analytic
signifier out of his experience. A closure opened.
Problems in analysis arise from linguistic failure, which amplifies intrinsic failures
of trust. For example, we are genetically programmed to bond to mother through
suckling. If this is difficult, later tasks involving bonding will also be difficult (Bowlby
1958:119–36). In the gestural praxis of attachment theory we recognize ‘I’ exist, then
we discover ‘I’ am separate from ‘mother’, and ‘m/other’ has things I need to survive.
In the negative form, this is called envy; in the positive form, it is ‘awareness of
twoness’. The theory predicts that if early attachment is ‘no attachment’ then we form
the myth ‘no attachment’ means ‘attachment’. We can’t manage twoness, tolerate
difference, or recognize envy—particularly the envy of ego for Self.
In the gestural praxis of alchemical theory ‘the gold of the Self’ exists; it can be
separated from prima materia through condensation, distillation, and so on. ‘Matter’
gives us the things we need to survive. Mother is earth mother (Gaia) material world,
a Self which can supply every need of the ego. Theory predicts that if we deny the
existence of ‘the gold of the Self’, then we never learn to meet our basic developmental
needs. We remain forever greedy.
But, and this is crucial, there is no reason to suppose developmental failure or
inadequate humanization of archetypal patterns together or separately ‘cause’
complexes. Our analytic language shapes our theories about meaning and its
disorders. Some things can be said in one language and not another, for languages
are themselves relatively closed systems. Analytic communication is a relatively open
system: we are not objective, only intersubjective (Stolorow et al. 1987:88–99). If we
concretize cause and effect I believe we create more ‘bad karma’. We become prisoners
of our interpretation.
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