A synopsis of my writings on the “Narcissistic Defense” from Alice Miller and Hyman Spotnitz

The Maturational Agent

“In recent years I have conceptualized my clinical role as that of a maturational agent helping people with psychologically reversible disorders resolve whatever obstacles to personality development they may have experienced.” pg. 16

“No patient wants to be with a therapist who functions perfectly all the time.” pg. 20

“No other profession provides a better opportunity to experience the full spectrum of human emotions. From the bewildering variety of feelings communicated by patient after patient in diverse sequences and tempos, and at different levels of intensity, one distills from this unfolding panorama of psychic change the essence and the flux of human existence.” pg. 20

“An analytic treatment requires from both doctor and patient the accomplishment of serious work, which is employed in lifting internal resistances. Through the overcoming of these resistances the patient’s mental life is permanently changed, is raised to a high level of development and remains protected against fresh possibilities of falling ill. The work of overcoming resistances is the essential function of analytic treatment; the patient has to accomplish it and the doctor makes this possible for him with the help of suggestion operating in an educational sense. For this reason psychoanalytic treatment has been justly been described as a kind of after-education.” Freud, as quoted in Spotnitz, pg. 61 THIS SENTENCE IS SUPER IMPORTANT

all from Psychotherapy of Preoedipal Conditions; Hyman Spotnitz, M.D., Med. Sc D.; Jason Aronson, 1995

I believe a more correct term would be Preverbal Conditions. Abuse that occurs early in life remains in an amorphous state and I don’t think Freud’s believing the first maturation stage is a sexually based [oedipal] conflict is correct. But, that’s the value of being under-educated in these matters.

IMO Spotnitz writes like an angel, in long, flowing, wonderfully descriptive prose. Spotnitz embodies ALL of Wilbur Strunk’s hopes for vigorous writing:

“Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.”

The only person who has an equivalently flowing style was Joseph Mitchell of the New Yorker, author of Up in the Old Hotel and Jay Gould’s Secret. One of my favorite former descriptions of myself and flourishment was a phrase from Mitchell about the children of the Mohawk Indian high steel workers thriving like gutter sparrows, despite modest circumstances. My searches for wisps of Jay Gould were the impetus for my late night forays to Greenwich Village on my motorcycle. That story, The Gold Star, is  https://ballantynesinspiredmusings.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-gold-star.html

more from Spotnitz:

There is more but I’m going to wrap this even though I am not complete with my work on it. Currently I’m in the section of schizophrenia, it’s causes, effects, and treatment. All of it is relevant to my case. In very brief, the schizoid personality re-directs his hatred to self-hate. MY case would then have been to live a life RESISTING acknowledging that I had hatred for myself, as compensation, for hatred for my abuser, neglecter, my mother. That’s my take on it after 2 nights of study. It IS very helpful to not have a TV.

Anyway, I’ve had an enlightenment. I’m not resisting being abandoned again as I already experienced it and just re-experienced it again and I survived it. Again, the importance of Freud’s comment on resistance is noted. I have not acquired anything, I stopped my resistance to what was and is. As a result of my ‘enlightenment’ I have come out of isolation and am leading hikes for a local hiking Meetup group. When I wrote up my profile I noted that in my 10 months in Sedona I have been on about 180 solo hikes.

Spotnitz describes the schizophrenic as lacking emotional insulation and therefore, developing destructive patterns of insulation:

·       Self-isolation

·       Shutting out stimuli

·       Forceful repetition as a protective pattern against new stimulation

·       Clinging to one idea

·       Self-justification

“All his energy is invested in compensating for the inadequate insulation.” pg. 123

“Highly complex and overlapping sequences and mechanisms which are aroused by the desire to reject some form of reality.” pg. 102 [reality like I was horribly abused by my mother when an infant, etc. Obviously, each person has to come up with their own reality.] The first thing I wrote in the journal I’ve been working with after my ‘enlightenment’ was, “I can relax now.”

“The clinical material supports the hypothesis that schizophrenia represents a pathological mode of insulation against the destructive effects of undischarged aggressive energy. When the goal-directed therapist operates in term of this understanding to build up the insulative capacity of the ego, and help it develop appropriate patterns for the discharge of this energy, the patient is able to function without recourse to ego-sacrificing forms of insulation.

         The scarring of the ego caused by the schizophrenic process cannot be completely obliterated, but evidence of past pathological tendencies will only be found through careful diagnostic testing or interviewing in later life. The organization of a mature ego - that is, a well-insulated ego commanding an abundance of patterns for verbalizing emotions – tends to immunize a patient against a return of the illness.” pg. 135

Too Much Hyman Spotnitz is Just Right

Continuing my discussion from BIM 96 and my own experiences as a result of reading Psychotherapy of Preedipal Conditions, by Hyman Spotnitz, M.D., Med. Sc. D.

Spotnitz asserts that very early life trauma that he calls pre-oedipal [before an infant’s supposed rivalry with the father for the mother], causes a defensive mechanism to be constructed. This defensive shield is “highly complex and overlapping sequences and mechanisms which are aroused by the desire to reject some painful reality.” Freud as quoted by Spotnitz. That defensive shield Spotnitz calls the “Narcissistic Defense” and he and others assert it is unassailable by any ordinary therapy. I wondered for 20+ years why the last therapist I went to told me at the beginning of the session, “Therapy will never work for you.” So at last I know why. I felt pretty hopeless after the session as the therapist did not even charge me and as a compensation asked me to give her an intuitive reading, which I did. She complimented me on my insight.

Recapitulating and condensing, hopefully accurately, the narcissistic defense arises from anger at the necessity to mold to the expectations of the caregiver in order to be fed and clothed and that creates anger which is not expressed to the caregiver but directed inward at one’s self. Hence the term “narcissistic.” This whole set of “highly complex and overlapping sequences and mechanisms” are carried into later life unchanged.

Do not trivialize the power of this self-directed anger. Spotnitz confines his discussions to schizophrenic and ‘psychotic’ patients, but these mechanisms apply equally, if not more so, to alcoholism, drug addiction, anorexia, and other illnesses which should all properly be called neuroses. “Neurosis is self-division”, Jung.
http://jungiancenter.org/wp/jung-neurosis-part-definitions-causes/

Distilling what Jung has said AND “It is only under ideal conditions, when life is still simple and unconscious enough to follow the serpentine path of instinct without hesitation or misgiving that the compensating function of the unconscious works with entire success.” Aion—Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, Second Edition, C.G. Jung, Bollingen Series, Princeton University Press. Pg. 20

Then a generalized definition of neurosis might be anything or anytime we are not following the path of instinct.

Spotnitz also suggests that “the tendency of the schizophrenic patient to accumulate destructive impulsivity in his ego appears to be connected with 2 pathological situations;

1. the historic failure of the infantile mental apparatus to acquire a good protective coating,

2. and the under-development, or strangulation, of its discharge patterns… Schizophrenia [by my definition, ALL neuroses] itself appears to be a pathological process of compensatory insulation that is set in train by these developmental circumstances.” pg. 117

Spotnitz also suggests the need for ‘emotional insulation’ so that our psychic circuits do no short out [my terms] AND he emphasizes the need for healthy, directed discharge patterns rather than self-directed anger.

A few relevant examples from my own case:

In the weeks before Bonnie, my late girlfriend died, she would sometimes ask me to just lie in bed with her and hold her hand. I could, but only for so long then I would have to turn away or get up and clean up, do laundry, etc. I was able to see from this the lack of care I received as an infant and the indelible patterning of aloneness it created in me. It was very difficult accepting that’s who I AM when so starkly confronted by it.

On the other side of the grief of accepting myself is the knowledge that that is who we all are. That IS what makes us human beings. Some people don’t have bad patterning and some people good patterning; ALL human beings are imprinted with an indelible patterning [until shattered by a ‘spiritual experience’].

I’ve thought about what my patterning IS perfectly suited for. The only thing I can come up with is the yogi or other religious mendicant. Since I’ve never strongly attached to anyone when an infant, and, therefore, anyone later in life; my mother, father, sisters, wife, daughter, or even my guru, and therefore probably not strongly attached to myself, then I have been able to traverse the universes and have had a couple of overwhelming ‘spiritual experiences’. I may be strongly connected to what or who was there for me early in life – God.

Clearly, I recommend reading Alice Miller, Drama of the Gifted Child, and Hyman Spotnitz, Psychotherapy of Preoedipal Conditions. You only have to pay attention to about a third of Spotnitz as a lot of it deals with group therapy dynamics and case studies.

And a little more Spotnitz that didn’t make it into BIM 96:

“…the infantile ego which was not trained to release aggressive energy toward its object in feelings and language responded to prolonged periods of frustration by internalizing its destructive impulses. Much of the energy that would have been available for maturational processes was expended to bottle up this impulsivity.” pg. 105

“Sacrificially, he attacks his ego to preserve the object.” pg. 105

“An understanding relationship with a therapist who has a genuine interest in treating him, and feels comfortable in his presence, enables the schizophrenic patient to acquire a more positive orientation to his family and society. But this type of re-education is a time-consuming process. A minimum of five years is usually required to predispose him to accept the pain and suffering which the realities of his life may entail.” pg. 116

AND “This is to be done successfully only if the patient in an authentic candidate for analysis, and we must not be too optimistic in our evaluation of how many of our patients are. If there is violent resistance to this reflux procedure, it means that analysis is not appropriate for the individual. One is dealing with a weak ego, or a young ego, that does not have at present the capacity to assimilate shadow. It is as if such a person is out in a little rowboat that can’t take in any very sizeable fish or the rowboat will sink. Therefore, resistance to the analysis of shadow projections must be respected.” Jung

“In my discussion of the narcissistic defense, it was hypothesized that the excessive self-love and self-preoccupations of these patients serve as a cloak for self-hatred. Their pathologically narcissistic behavior is patterned very early in life into a primitive defense system against the discharge of high accumulations of mobilized frustration aggression. The ego is sacrificed to prevent the release of destructive impulsivity in action that would injure the object [my note: generally the primary caregiver-the mother].” pg. 117

My notes: Illness is a compensatory insulation.

“Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering” Jung