HEMP

DISTURBANCES IN THE CAPACITY TO WORK
By ELLIOTT JAQUES, LONDON

In its most general sense, work as conceived by Freud (and 1 am here concerned with work in the psychological sense only) is the mental energy or effort expended in striving to reach a goal or objective by means of the operation of the reality principle, and in the face of the demands of the pleasure principle.2 If we examine this activity closely, however, a number of important features claim our attention.

The operation of the reality principle leads to delayed rather than immediate gratification. It requires the exercise of discretion (in the sense of judgement, and not the social sense of being discreet) in determining which courses of action will eventually lead to the best result. Discrimination and judgement must be used, and decisions made. Decision contains the uncertainty of the wisdom of the choice, and calls for the capacity to tolerate uncertainty while awaiting the final outcome, and possible failure.

This uncertainty, however, it must be noted, has a special quality. The use of discretion depends upon unconscious as well as conscious mental functioning—the capacity for synthesis of unconscious ideas and intuitions and bringing them into consciousness. We may not be surprised to find, therefore, that at the core of this uncertainty lies anxiety—the anxiety aroused by having to depend for success upon the coherence and availability of unconscious mental life.

I was able to confirm this conclusion in social-analytic work in industry which 1 have reported elsewhere (6). In the course of these studies, two major components of work were separated: first, the prescribed content—laws, customs, resources, instructions, rules and' regulations, and material limitations—which allow no room for discretion but set the frame within which discretion is exercised; and second, the discretionary content, comprising all those aspects in which discretion and choice have to be exercised. The force of this distinction was brought home to me when it became clear that what is experienced as psychic effort in work—the intensity or weight of responsibility—is entirely concerned with the discretionary content of work. To conform to rules and regulations and other prescribed aspects of work requires knowledge; you either know or you do not; but it does not require the psychic effort of discretion and decision, with its attendant stirring of anxiety.

I was able to demonstrate that weight or level of responsibility is objectively measurable in terms of the maximum spans of time during which discretion must be exercised by a person on his own account. The longer the span of time, the more the unconscious material that must be made conscious, and the longer must uncertainty about the final outcome and the anxiety about one's judgement and discretion be tolerated. In short, the longer the path towards gratification chosen in accord with the reality principle, the greater is the experience of psychic effort or work.

We are led then to the following definition of work, and formulation of the capacity to work. Work is the exercise of discretion within externally prescribed limits to achieve an object which can be reality-tested, while maintaining a continuous working-through of the attendant anxiety. The capacity to work depends upon the coherence of the unconscious, and upon the integration and strength of the ego and its capacity, in the face of anxiety and uncertainty, to sustain its functions, to maintain the reality principle, and to exert pressure to make the unconscious conscious.

The Main Components in Mental Activity

Work is never a simple process of striving towards an external objective. Combined in any

act of work there is always a relation to the objective perceived as symbol. In order to advance our analysis, 1 shall have to digress for a moment to establish a few conceptions and terms in connexion with perception and symbol formation.

The perception of an object is determined by the interplay of the requisite content of the percept with two types of symbolic content which have been variously designated; for example, by Segal (15) as symbols and symbolic equations, and by Jones (7) as symbols and true symbols. Whatever the terms used for the two types of symbolic content—and many writers, including Milner (12) and Rycroft (14), have emphasized the importance of the distinction— the central factor is that stressed by Klein (9) (and elaborated by Segal), namely, the degree of concreteness of the symbol, and the extent to which it co-exists with the object or engulfs it. The degree of concreteness in turn depends upon the intensity and character of the splitting process which underlies the symbol formation. It is consistent with recent developments in Klein's conception of the paranoid-schizoid position (and indeed with unstated assumptions in her earlier work) to assume that it is when violent splitting with fragmentation of the object and | the self is predominant that concrete rather than plastic symbol formation occurs. I propose to show that this assumption is useful and necessary not only in considering the problem of work, but in considering all mental processes, especially the fundamental process of perception, and shall use the following terms and schema.

The perception of an object is determined by
(a) the requisite content of the perception, resulting in a mental percept of the object itself;
(b) the symbolic content, in which the object is modified by projective identification, split-off parts of the self and internal objects being unconsciously perceived as in the external object or connected with it, and the object introjected in the modified form;
(c) what I propose to term the concretive content, in which the object is modified by the explosive projection into it of violently split and fragmented internal objects and parts of the self, loses its own identity and becomes a concrete symbol (or, in Segal's terms, a symbolic equation); it is then violently introjected and experienced internally in concrete corporeal form in a split-off and fragmented state within the body ego.

This distinction between ordinary projection and introjection and the more concrete processes of violent projection and introjection is one consistently made by Klein in her earlier papers, in which she frequently uses the terms expulsion and incorporation to refer to the more violent processes. Bion, in his papers on hallucinosis,4 emphasizes the distinction, and retains these earlier terms.

Developmentally, violent splitting with fragmentation is associated with the earliest phases of the paranoid-schizoid position, when the rudimentary ego is under the impact of intense destructive impulses and instinctual defusion. At this stage, ordinary splitting fails as an ego defence because of the intensity of the anxiety aroused by the split-off persecuting primal object, and from the dangers of destroying the idealized split-off good object. As Klein (10) has recently shown, both aspects of the split primal object become experienced as persecutory, and contribute to the remorseless qualify of the primitive superego.

Symbol formation with lessened concretism becomes possible at the transition stage between the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions. The ego, with greater integration, is more able to contend with persecutory anxiety by means of less violent splitting and with lessened fragmentation. There results a growing confidence in the capacity to sustain the good objects split-off and segregated from the bad ones. The ensuing capacity to reduce anxiety by formation of symbols5 in turn facilitates the onset of the depressive position. Contact with reality is strengthened, greater reality in perception comes to the fore, and a whole range of defences becomes available, especially reparation am! sublimation and a more fully developed use of symbol formation Davidson has given a graphic account of this process in his clinical description of the treatment of a patient suffering from schizophrenia with mutism.7 In passing, 1 would suggest that it is precisely because symbol formation is always based upon some splitting, that symbols tend towards being normative in mode—either good or bad.

In separating out three main components of perceptual processes, and indeed of all mental activity—the requisite, symbolic, and concretive—I am doing so for the purpose of analysis only, and not to suggest that there are objective ego activities separated from symbolic and concrete contents and the conflicts and anxieties from which they arise. It is precisely the coexistence and interconnexion of these components of mental activity which I wish to demonstrate in work: the relative quantity, balance, and content of the three components determining the degree of realism, the creative-ness, the energy, and the direction in work, as well as the extent to which that work contributes to advances in psychic integration. The present formulation thus differs from that of Hartmann who, in defining what he terms the conflict-free ego sphere, writes of ' that ensemble of functions which at any given time exert their effects outside the region of mental conflicts '. In contrast to Hartmann, I believe that the path from psycho-analysis to a general psychology cannot be traversed without taking into account the fundamental role of conflict in all mental functioning—a view which I hope may be supported by the present paper. In particular, I think that the understanding of normal psychological processes will be enhanced by teasing out from within them, and elaborating, the various types of splitting processes employed by the ego in dealing with conflict, and the vicissitudes of the resulting splits and fragmentations of the ego, objects, and impulses—a point frequently stressed by Klein.

The Process of Work

I now wish to turn to the process of work itself. Six main stages may be recognized:
(a) the achievement of a particular objective is undertaken, and a relationship is established with the objective;
(b) an appropriate quantity of the mental apparatus must be allocated to the task;
(c) an integrative reticulum must be constructed and elaborated, within which the work is organized;
(d) concentration upon the task, teasing out the contents of those areas of the mind occupied upon it, and a scrutiny and searching for elements which will help in solving the problem; a process I shall designate by the terms lysis and scanning; {e) gathering, linking, and synthesis of the elements which fit;
(f) decision, by which is designated a taking of action with significant committal of resources.

The processes I shall describe will refer throughout to the interplay of mental events between the conscious and unconscious areas of the mind. Although the focus of emphasis oscillates continually between the conscious and the unconscious—each one alternately becoming figure and then ground—neither the one nor the other process is ever inactive.

I shall outline the six stages of work sequence for purposes of presentation. In reality the various stages interact. The first integrative reticulum may be tentative—an hypothesis, or a mere hunch or feeling. Insufficient, or too much, mental capacity may be allocated. As lysis and synthesis proceed, and knowledge is collected, the integrative reticulum may be modified, and more or less mental capacity allocated; the libidinal relationship with the objective may be altered — ambivalence and the intensity of libidinal investment increasing or decreasing as the task and its difficulties are encountered and experienced.

Moreover, as lysis and linking proceed, trials may be essayed in external reality, but without extensive committal of resources, the knowledge and intuitions built up from these trials being fed back into the elements available for linking.

Relation with the Objective

An objective is an object-to-be—one which has to be brought into being, to be created. The objective may be worked for because of inner need and compulsion, for the personal satisfaction to be derived regardless of other gain. It may be an allocated task constituting part of a person's employment.

The amount of energy mustered for a task will depend upon both the desire to achieve the objective and obtain the attendant reward, and the symbolic meaning of the objective and
attendant psychic gratification. Work is most satisfying when both these elements are consistent with each other, and relatively undisturbed by concretism.

If the depressive position has been sufficiently worked through, the symbolic content of work will be connected mainly with reparation. The analytic literature contains many instances, for example, where the objective represents the creation of a baby and giving birth to it. At a deeper level is symbolized the reparation, restoring, and recreation of the primal good object, and revival of good impulses and good parts of the self. The objective in work is nicely suited for such a symbol, since it exists only as a partial schema requiring to be completed and brought to life by loving care and work. At the same time as the objective is symbolically identified with the good object undergoing reparation and restoration, the bad objects and bad impulses and parts of the self are symbolically identified with obstacles in the way of the work. The more the reality content of the work is consistent with the unconscious symbolic reparative activities, the greater will be the love for the task.

If the discrepancy between the reality and symbolic aspects is too great, lack of interest or hatred is aroused, and loss of incentive ensues. This hatred may be intensified by violent splitting and fragmentation, the incomplete objective being concretely introjected and identified with destroyed and persecuting internal objects. The objective itself then becomes increasingly persecutory through violent projection and concrete symbol formation. Moreover, the intensity of the concretism will determine the extent to which 'putting oneself into the job' becomes a matter of strong positive motivation and sound effort, or of confusion and inhibition. The negative effect is produced by the unconscious experience of losing parts of the self and internal objects into the task concretely perceived, combined with the experience of getting parts of the job lost inside oneself—in the same manner, for example, as when genital sexuality is inhibited by urethral and anal sadism. Fears of failure are then intensified through unconscious fears of uncontrolled destructive impulses.

Allocation of Menial Capacity

The amount of mental capacity allocated (i.e. the amount of occupation with the task) will be determined by the judgement of the size of the task, given greater or lesser effect by (he intensity of libidinal involvement and the amount of ambivalence. The accuracy of the judgement of size of task will be influenced by knowledge of that type of work. It will be distorted by violent splitting and fragmentation. The stronger the love for the real and the symbolic objective, the greater the psychic energy that will be made available for the task.

The allocation of mental capacity requires a genuine act of mental investment. More, it requires the segregation of the invested area from interference by other mental activities. It is an allocation in time as well as in amount. The intensity of absorption in the task is at stake. It is an estimate, and one which may require subsequent revision. The greater the time framework, ordinarily the greater is the area of the mental apparatus that is brought into play. To be preoccupied with other things means just what the word implies: so much of the mental apparatus has already been allocated that not enough is available for the task at hand, Segregation breaks down, and concentration on the task is disturbed. Capacity to work is impaired in neurosis by the absorption of mental capacity in internal conflict, which leaves relatively little capacity available for any other work.

Integrative Reticulum

The integrative reticulum is the mental schema of the completed object and the means of creating it, organized in such a manner that the gaps both in the mental picture of the object and in the methods of creating it are established. Consciously, it is a combination of any or all of concepts, theories, hypotheses, and working notions or hunches. Unconsciously, it is a constellation of ideas-in-feeling, memories-in-feeling, phantasies, and internal objects— brought together and synthesized to the extent necessary to direct behaviour, even if not sufficiently to become conscious.

The creation of an adequate reticulum requires sufficient ego-strength to achieve the necessary intensity of concentration upon the task. If ambivalence about the task is low, and if there is not excessive splitting of the conscious from (he unconscious parts of the mind, then the greater the ego-strength and the greater the conscious mental concentration and effort applied to the task, the greater will be the concentration upon the task in the unconscious mind. That is to say, conscious mental effort has a continuous effect upon the mobilizing of unconscious mental activity and effort, and upon the content and direction of that activity.

Conversely, the strength of the ego-activity mobilized for the task, the capacity to concentrate upon the objective, and the coherence and synthesizing power of the resulting reticulum, depend in large measure upon the coherence in the organization of the unconscious mental processes. The degree of coherence in the unconscious is associated with the dominance of loving impulses over destructiveness, and the intactness of internal good objects—these conditions reducing the dependence of the ego upon violent splitting. When, however, there is insufficient coherence and violent splitting and fragmentation occur, a satisfactory integrative reticulum cannot be established. Indeed a schema of the objective constructed under such conditions will itself be split and fragmented and will thus facilitate further splitting and fragmentation: it acts as a disintegrating rather than an integrative reticulum inducing confusion and disorganization

The assumption of unconscious influences upon conscious mental processes requires no elaboration, The two assumptions, however— that of coherent structure and function in unconscious processes, and that of conscious effort in influencing the intensity, coherence, direction, and content of unconscious activity—may warrant a brief comment. The validity of these assumptions may be simply demonstrated. The successful accomplishment of any task requires the exercise of some or all of the functions which we describe as touch, or feel, or sense, or intuition, or insight. These functions are exercised in the main unconsciously, and are not simply preconscious. They can be brought into play by conscious orientation towards a particular task. Once set going, they may operate, for instance, during sleep, throwing up a result that is consciously available, but without the problem-solving activities themselves becoming conscious. Such activities demand the assumption of coherence and dynamic organization in the unconscious, intimately connected with conscious activities.

Lysis and Scanning

By lysis, I refer to the process of separating and teasing out the contents of those areas of the mind occupied in the task—the products of conscious knowledge and of unconscious phantasies and feelings, awareness through experience, and intuition. By scanning, I refer to the process of mentally looking over and considering the teased-out materials. Both lysis and scanning are concerned with making the unconscious conscious.

Lysis and scanning require the capacity to loosen the elements organized within other sets of ideas, so that many relevant elements may be abstracted and used in the new context; e.g. certain ideas in a book; or the unconscious memory of a particular feature of the behaviour of another person, or of one's own childhood. At the same time the integrative reticulum itself must be loosened and prepared for the linking of new elements, the reticulum possibly needing to be modified in the process. Scanning may be external as well as internal. When insufficient material is discerned in the conscious and sensed in the unconscious mind, new information is sought in the outside world, by search and by research. When libidinal investment in the work is high, so are curiosity and the need for truth— and the desire to discover and use such knowledge as already exists—so that the work of others is prized and valued.

If the ego-strength is sufficient, the concentration of mental effort on the task within the frame of the integrative reticulum results in the loosening out and mobilization of thoughts and ideas relevant to the task. These elements da not come only from the conscious ego. If the unconscious ego is sufficiently oriented towards the task, it will be influenced into throwing forth elements associated with gaps in the reticulum. The more coherent is the organization of the unconscious ego, the greater is the influence upon it of the exertion of conscious mental concentration and effort; and the greater will be the release of elements from the unconscious to be made available for scanning and for possible use in achieving the objective.

In lysis and scanning, if the mental process is plastic, elements of thought are made available for synthesis within other thought processes, without destroying their mental context. At the symbolic level, this process goes on by means of a wide range of possible splits and fusions, but with the good and bad aspects of the splitting maintained intact. To the extent, however, that persecutory anxiety, violent splitting, and the ensuing concretism are;at work, lysis and scanning are inhibited or lead to confusion, because lysis is experienced as fragmentation and disintegration. The mental process is concrete and inflexible, the bits and particles are not available for synthesis, and the integrative reticulum becomes unmodifiable.

Gathering, Linking, and Synthesis

As the process of lysis and scanning proceeds, those elements which fit together and into the schema are gathered together. The question of what constitutes fittingness is of the greatest importance, and warrants a separate treatment beyond the scope of the present paper.8 The loosened elements are mentally tried out for fit into gaps in the reticulum, and those which fit are retained. The sensation is that of insight, of notions which click.

The gathering together of these elements, and their linking within the integrative reticulum constitutes the act of synthesis. To gather, meaning to draw together into a heap, comes from the same root as the word ' good'.9 Linguistically, then, there is reason to connect the creative gathering and synthesizing processes in work, with the unconscious experience of establishing the good object.

Where the apposition and fit are unconsciously made, the sensation of insight is one of 'feel '— something clicks, but it is not quite clear what. It is the feeling that one could do it oneself, or demonstrate how to do it, but. yet not be able to explain how. Effort and study are required to bring the experience into the preconscious by discovering verbal images which correspond to it, and thus to bring the elements forth into consciousness, as Freud (3) has described in The Ego and the Id. The existence of a coherent integrative reticulum spanning the conscious and the unconscious ego acts as a powerful agent enabling the unconscious thus to be made conscious. The necessary act of attending to the task is experienced as mental strain.

When concretism is strong, however, linked objects are experienced as persecuting, the act of synthesis—as shown by Bion in another context (1a)—representing the unconscious internal re-enactment of the primal scene. The mental processes in work arc therefore attacked, and the integrative reticulum subjected to tearing and destructive annihilation. The effect of the erotization of work is thus influenced by the strength of concretism: if concretism is weak, symbolic erotization of the objective in work may facilitate the work and reinforce sublimation; if it is strong, work is disturbed and sublimation is inhibited because of the concreteness of the erotization.

Decision and Action

When the mental process has proceeded sufficiently far, or when time begins to run out, the moment of decision and committal is reached. By the term 'decision', I wish to designate the taking of action to create the object in whole or in part, with a significant committal of resources, so that if the discretion and judgement exercised have been adequate, success will be achieved, but if they have been inadequate, failure will be experienced with wastage of the resources committed.

By decision, therefore, I mean what the term implies—'decaedere', a cutting apart—an act from which there is no turning back. It is the point at which a person's confidence in his mental capacity is put on trial, for the consequence of an act of decision is reality testing. The results of the decision have to be faced. It is the moment when anxieties about the task are mobilized to the very greatest extent.

If, therefore, there is much violent splitting with fragmentation, catastrophe is unconsciously anticipated. This fear of catastrophe is of the paranoid-schizoid type. It is the fear of self-inflicted failure through self-imposed stupidity and self-deception which occur whenever violent splitting and fragmentation, with their attendant confusion, arc at work. It leads, following actual failure, to self-recrimination of the 'if only I had done so-and-so' type; and defence against this self-castigation by projection of the blame only intensifies persecutory anxiety, and in no way repairs the damage. The potency of the destructive impulses is experienced us immediately present. Consequently, irreality and a retreat to the pleasure principle result. Evasion of reality testing may be achieved by obsessional in-decisiveness and paralysis of action or, equally, by careless and grandiose 'decisiveness ' based upon magically omnipotent phantasies and oil-hand disregard of the result.

If, however, the objective in work is successfully achieved in reality, then reparation is reinforced, the bad objects and impulses are diminished by identification with the obstacles that have been overcome, and splitting is lessened. Integration in the ego is advanced, and the operation of the reality principle is strengthened.

But perhaps most important is the late of the concrete components of the mental processes involved in the work. The very fact that a decision was made requires that some of the energy bound in maintaining the fragmentation is released, and with it some of the anxiety that had been tied up in the fixed and concrete symbolism. But the success of the objective work combined with the processes of symbol formation in creating an object in external reality, and reparation internally, mitigates hate and diminishes persecutory anxiety, increases the capacity to tolerate depressive anxiety and loss, and hence diminishes the need for violent splitting and fragmentation. Additional symbol formation occurs. And with the release and experience of anxiety there is relief as well, because of the experience, no matter how slight, of the capacity to tolerate that anxiety without disintegration, and to be creative in spite of it. I shall not, however, elaborate this point further. For Klein (8) has shown in detail in her paper on ' Mourning and its Relation to the Manic-Depressive States ', how every experience of overcoming obstacles and anxiety—and this applies strongly in work—leads to a furthering of the working-through of the infantile depressive position, and a step forward in maturity and in the capacity for sublimation.

A Note on the Role of the Superego in Work

My omission of any reference to the role of the superego in work is no measure of its importance; for example, if it is not excessively persecutory, it plays a constructive role in facilitating sublimation, and forwarding work. But it is a subject which I cannot pursue on this occasion, other than to touch briefly upon one point.

When the superego develops in a setting of violent splitting and fragmentation it becomes harsh and persecuting in its relation to the ego, and is experienced as severely restrictive.10 This circumstance is revived in work when concretism is strong. The prescribed limits—the rules and regulations—within which the work is to be carried out, are experienced as persecuting. And, equally serious, knowledge itself becomes experienced as persecutory, because one of the important effects of knowledge is to restrict and limit the ego's field of choice of action, in the same way as does the superego. Unconsciously, then, knowledge is hated and is rejected, commonly by its being fragmented and repressed.

The ensuing resentment against work is readily illustrated in the behaviour of delinquents and borderline psychotics who react to the demands of conforming to the prescribed content of work and the knowledge to be exercised, by omnipotence, carelessness, and hostile negligence. Equally familiar is the reaction formation of concrete acceptance of the knowledge one knows and over-dependence upon it, with resentment against new knowledge which threatens existing conceptions, theories, and frames of reference.

Psycho-analysis as Work

We may illustrate these processes and the effects of concretism under ordinary everyday conditions, by a brief reference to work which we all know—that of psycho-analysing a patient. The love and energy with which we pursue the treatment is dependent upon the consistency between the conscious objective of mental healing and the content and strength of our unconscious symbolical reparative drive. We must have undergone sufficient personal analysis to enable us to allocate the requisite mental capacity to the task without interference from other preoccupations—especially unconscious anxieties— which might distract our attention and weaken our concentration upon the patient's unconscious mind. In listening to our patients, we each use an integrative reticulum, built up from an amalgam of previous material from the patient, and from the particular theories, concepts, and working notions we employ. This integrative reticulum determines our mental set or attitude and hence influences both the direction of our attention and the weight we place upon various aspects of the material that is forthcoming. It thus influences to an important extent what we each actually observe in our patients.

The clarity of our understanding of our patients will, moreover, depend upon the interaction between our objective perception of the patient and the exploration of the patient by projective and introjective identification through which we symbolically experience what it would be like if we were the patient, and if the patient were ourselves It is likely, however, that the concretive content of the experience will always interfere with this symbolic process to a certain extent, the consequence being that one unconsciously feels oneself to be lost in the patient, and the patient confused inside oneself. This type of concrete projective and introjective identification occurs in counter-transference. If concretism is strong, our relationship with the patient may be distorted and disturbed.

The state of mind in lysis and scanning can be illustrated in the free-floating attention necessary for psycho-analytic interpretation. It is free-floating only in the limited sense of being free within a previously-established integrative reticulum of analytic theory and of knowledge about the patient. Lysis and scanning occur within this schema, elements of the patient's associations and behaviour being scrutinized and picked over in our search for what to interpret—the integrative reticulum acting as a kind of sieve. Then, by virtue of our own conscious and unconscious mental activity, various elements become linked in our minds, and a potential interpretation is gradually gathered up and consciously formed. At the same time, our sense of timing and tone and verbal formulation remains largely unconscious.

The moment of decision is that point when, having gathered together the material which we consider relevant to an interpretation, we not only feel that the time has come to make an interpretation, but we actually make it—we say it to the patient—we commit ourselves. Having done so, we must then face in reality the effects and consequences of our interpretation.

It is probably the case that psycho-analytic work calls for more continuous concentration and menial work than any other. This fact, plus the fact that one's own anxieties are always subject to being aroused by those of the patient, makes us as analysts more readily vulnerable to disturbances in work by concretism. For instance, concentration might flag and attention wander, or the necessary continuous attention to minute detail in following the patient's associations might provoke a certain amount of confusion. In more extreme form, linking may be inhibited, and interpretation may be experienced as dangerous. Decisiveness in interpretation could be impaired.

A Clinical Illustration

I wish now to present some clinical material from the analysis of a patient who suffered a schizophrenic breakdown, and who in his fifth year of analysis was just getting back to work. I have chosen this case because it magnifies and highlights the effects of concretism by showing its operation in the setting of a large amount of violent splitting and fragmentation.

The patient, a 28-year-old man, had worked as a script-writer. The interaction of the various phases in work which I have described may be illustrated by material from a number of sessions at a time when he was trying to write a script for television. He came to one session in a half-triumphant half-despairing frame of mind. He thought he had written an excellent talk, but was convinced no one would buy it. ' If they did,' he boasted triumphantly, 'I would show them; I'd capture the audience!'

His attitude struck me as very similar to that of the previous day, when (as on some other occasions) we had analysed how he had attempted omnipotently to capture me with his talk, so as to get me to do exactly as he pleased—to analyse him, give him insulin treatment, let him stay with me in my house, sleep with my wife, and take over my friends and social life. I interpreted to him, therefore, that he wanted to use television to enter the homes of people and control them with his talk.

He roared with laughter at this connexion, and gurgled with triumphant glee, 'I'd tell them! I'd get into millions of homes at once. The bastards— I'd shit all over them!'

In the light of his associations and previous material, I was able to interpret to him that the TV audience represented to him his own internal family broken into millions of bits—whom he projected into the viewing families. He was then able to gain control over them by gaining omnipotent control over the television, and entering into their homes. The entry was a forced entry, with his faeces, in which he greedily possessed and controlled everything—food, comfort, and parental sexuality. At a deeper level, it was unconsciously a forced entry into his mother's breast and body.

The producers who would turn down his programme were unconsciously his father who was envious of his potency, and who would try to prevent him from forcing entry into his mother and taking control of her. The persons who were libelled in the talk and whom he sought to destroy by so doing, represented his own sadistic and destructive superego; and it was this superego that was fragmented and projected into me and attacked, so that he felt me to be on their side and against him.

When he tried to write, therefore, he had neither a unified objective nor a coherent integrative reticulum. He was literally all over the place. He admitted that those passages of his talk which contained the more persecuted and libellous material tended to be badly written and confused—'garbled' was the term he used. In effect, he could be said to be using a disintegrative framework rather than an integrative one for parts of his writing—attempting to smash his material in bits to disturb and confuse the fragmented internal objects and parts of himself projected into his audience rather than to satisfy that audience.

Under these conditions, the process of lysis was severely interfered with. He explained how, as he tried to write, he could not sort out his ideas. As he tried to find just the right words, the words and ideas seemed to break up in his mind, He could not think in words. He could only spell. A cat was not a cat, but a C—A—T. But even worse, lie could not spell correctly, could not get the letters back together into words. Then he felt people laughing at him—his audience producers, friends jeered and triumphed at his impotence.

Linking and synthesis became impossible for him at such a time, because he experienced himself so concretely inside the job standing for his mother's body. To link only increased his persecutory anxiety, because, for example, it was experienced as a bringing together of the cruel and sadistic penis with the already dangerous contents of his mother's body. Moreover, if he tried to look outside for additional information or knowledge, he became so utterly consumed by envy that he went almost blind with rage. On one occasion, he read a few pages of a favourite author to get just the right style for something he was writing. He then found himself unable to write. In his session on the same day, his associations took us to his unconscious envious and greedy eating of the words on [he page—literally 'tearing them out of context'—and then feeling terrified and dominated by them internally, with the fear that they would appear in spoilt but recognizable form in his own writing. The simultaneous idealization and incorporation of the other author and her work partly made matters worse by increasing his own feelings of inferiority, hopelessness, and despair.

Under these conditions, decision became terrifying and he would retire to bed, sometimes for days on end, and retreat into magical phantasies in which he believed for the time being that he was sorting out ail his difficulties.

Working Capacity and Confidence

I should like finally to return to an earlier theme—that weight or heaviness of responsibility is connected with the length of lime a person must exercise discretion on his own account. The longer the time-span the longer must the anxiety of uncertainty be faced— anxiety without which work cannot be said to have been done. The ability to maintain a continuous working-through of that anxiety, and to go on exercising discretion and making decisions, demands that the requisite and symbolic contents of the mental processes involved in work must predominate over the concretive processes—a state of affairs requiring the dominance of love over hate. It is these conditions which lead to confidence in one's own judgement and capacities. They reduce persecutory anxiety and violent splitting. They provide an unconscious sense of well-being and ease, and faith in the ability to restore and nurture the internal good objects. These feelings lie at the root of confidence in one's own creative impulses and sublimations and capacity to tolerate anxiety and uncertainty.

To the extent that these conditions are not fulfilled, confidence in work, and the capacity to do it, are diminished. Uncertainty replaces confidence, and increases anxiety and confusion. The longer the time-span of the discretion to be exercised, the greater will be the piling up of anxiety and uncertainty. Under these conditions the processes of sublimation tend to be reversed. Plastic symbol formations break down and become increasingly fragmented and concretive in order to bind defused instinctual energy and to diminish persecutory anxiety. I believe that these are the basic processes underlying disturbed work.

This description applies equally to neurotic flight into excessive work. Such flight generally contains as a dominant feature the splitting-off and fragmentation of a part of the work-field with the result that the work tends to be soulless and lacking in humanity. The internal reflection of this work is a splitting-off and fragmentation of parts of the mind, so that psychic processes which might enrich the work-process are not available, and sublimation is inhibited. One of the paradoxical results of making a 'success' of such work is that concretism and fragmentation are thus reinforced, and an impoverishment of personality occurs.

Processes of disintegration and concretism are always present to some extent in the unconscious, and they are reinforced by the failure and anxiety they induce. These processes require constantly to be reversed, and daily work is one of the means by which this reversal occurs. Working—and especially working for a living-is therefore a fundamental activity in a person's testing and strengthening of his sanity.

ETYMOLOGICAL APPENDIX

A number of the psychological processes described above can be illustrated in the metaphoric content of the language of work which symbolizes these processes and the accompanying sensations, in concrete

1. Lysis (' lysis '—to loosen) is the root of analysis, to loosen apart. This notion of a loosening and separating out of mental elements at this stage in work occurs in many words connected with it: discern, discriminate, and discretion (all from ' discernere', to separate apart). The term skill has the same reference (from 'skijl', to divide or separate), relating it to the ability to lease out and discern; so also have the words connected with solving a problem, solve, resolve, solution (from 'se-luere', to loosen apart, ' luere' being the Latin equivalent of the Greek ' lysis *).

The loosening in the above sense is linguistically to be contrasted with fragmentation ('frangere', to fracture or break) which expresses a sharp and conclusive breaking apart.

As against words having to do with discretion and choice, knowledge ('gignoskein', a reduplicated form) has the meaning of being able automatically to reproduce previously established data without the anxiety of choice.

2. Scanning (from 'scandere', to climb or ascend) has the sense of rising above the loosened elements in the mind and examining them from on high. Search and research ('circare', to circle about) and concentrate ('con-centre', centre together) express the sense of mentally circling about the loosened elements, and bringing relevant ernes together.

The mental circling about from above accords with the concept of a plan ('planus', a plain or plateau), that is, a clear area at the surface of the mind from which the elements below can be perceived, and on to which they can be raised. An hypothesis (' hypo-thesis', place below) is a construction placed among the elements in the deeper layers of the mind to help in sorting out those which arc to be raised to the surface plain. The conception of relevance ('re-levare', to raise again) expresses this sense of lifting or raising up and out.

To concentrate gives additional information if we take it back to its Greek root ('kenlron', a spike, goad, prick, centre) which carries the sense of goading or pricking together. This meaning falls into line with the act of distinguishing various elements ('disstinguere',
to prick apart, or to separate by marking with a prick), as though, in the process of lysis, those menial elements which, on loosening, appear to be relevant arc mentally marked for synthesis. In line with this conception is the verbal root of disappointment (' dis-ad-punctare', against marking by a prick), in which the process of menial marking of elements is frustrated and leads to failure.

3. Gathering and good are connected in that both derive from the Indo-European root 'gad'. meaning lit or suitable: i.e. that which is good is that which comprises good and suitable parts gathered together into one whole. The art of bringing relevant material together ('ars', fit) is that of the act of lifting. This notion of fitting or fixing elements together appears in many of the terms related to this phase of work: making connexions ('connectere', to bind or knit together), bringing into context ('con-texere', to weave together) and synthesizing (' synthesis ', place together).

The exertion necessary ('ex-serere', to fasten or bind out), has to do with the putting together in such a manner as to get it out into active use, i.e. into consciousness and then into use in reality, or to force it out {' ex-fortis', effort), by means of effort.

As against these words associated with a putting or weaving or binding together in an organized form, confusion ('confundere', to pour together) has the sense of mental elements running together in an unorganized fashion, without patterning or plan.

4. These processes of analysis and synthesis (loosening and bringing together) of the contents of thought, are accompanied by differentiation and integration of the mental apparatus itself. The differentiation (' dis-ferre', to carry apart) has to do with the capacity to bring different parts of the mental apparatus and different mental processes into play, without destroying mental integration. Integration (' integrare', renew, heal, or repair, which in turn is from ' in-tangere', untouch, unharm), carries this metaphoric sense of undestroyed or left intact even though differentiated; the deeper psychological significance of this emerges in the fact that 'intan-gere' (Indo-European root ' dak ', to bite or tear, from whence, e.g. the Greek ' dakos', animal of which the bite is dangerous), refers also to unharmed by eating, or untasted, an unconscious etymological connexion between mental integration and being undamaged by oral sadism.

5. The use of decision in the active sense of coinmilled to action is given by its root (* de-caedere', to cut apart). The essence of a decision is that once it is taken, the person is cut off from the other courses of action he might have taken.

6. The relating of the sensation of failure in work to psychic mechanisms of self-deception is consistent with its derivation ('fallere ', to be deceived—and deceive deriving from 'de-cipere', to take by causing to fall into a trap); in effect, the internal objects and split-off mental processes are trapped or ensnared as a defence against destructive impulses and persecutory anxiety. Frustration ('frustrari' to disappoint, and ' frustrus'. deceitful) carries a similar connotation of being disappointed through deceit. That is, frustration and failure caused by a person's own inability are experienced in terms of paranoid feelings of being deceitfully treated, a projection of the cunning and deceit characteristic of paranoid-achizoid defences which frequently contribute to failure.