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The Critical Hermeneutics of Contemporary Kleinian Psychoanalytically Oriented Psychotherapy from the Perspective of a Novice David M

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The Critical Hermeneutics of Contemporary Kleinian Psychoanalytically Oriented Psychotherapy from the Perspective of a Novice David M View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Duquesne University: Digital Commons Duquesne University Duquesne Scholarship Collection Electronic Theses and Dissertations Spring 2003 Feeding identity: The critical hermeneutics of contemporary Kleinian psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy from the perspective of a novice David M. Greco-Brooks Follow this and additional works at: https://dsc.duq.edu/etd Recommended Citation Greco-Brooks, D. (2003). Feeding identity: The critical hermeneutics of contemporary Kleinian psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy from the perspective of a novice (Doctoral dissertation, Duquesne University). Retrieved from https://dsc.duq.edu/ etd/600 This Immediate Access is brought to you for free and open access by Duquesne Scholarship Collection. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Duquesne Scholarship Collection. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Feeding identity: The critical hermeneutics of contemporary Kleinian psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy from the perspective of a novice A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Psychology Department McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts Duquesne University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Clinical Psychology By David M. Greco-Brooks 04/11/2003 Martin Packer, Ph.D. (Director) Roger Brooke, Ph.D. (Reader) Daniel Burston, Ph.D., Ph.D. (Reader) Bertram Cohler, Ph.D. (Reader) Copyright pending Acknowledgements First and foremost I would like to thank my life-partner Leonard D. Greco, Jr., without whose love, support and patience I would not have had the luxury to spend the last seven years of my life to fulfill my dream for a career. Without his belief in my scholarly and clinical calling this work would not have been possible. My parents, Dr. BJ Brooks and Elisa Brooks, also deserve a superlative amount of gratitude for helping me reach this point in my education. Certainly in this line of work we realize that one is fortunate to have parents who were able to provide and impart the sense of security, confidence, and dedication to learning that are required to jump the innumerable hurdles involved in obtaining a doctorate in anything. Rigidly supportive supervision and supportive therapy are ineffectual for the same reason: while soothing immediate manifestations of distress they do not sufficiently challenge one’s preconceptions enough to foster genuine growth and confidence. I would like to thank Dr. R for introducing me not only to a way of working that has inspired my clinical work and deepened my understanding our human condition, but also to a caliber of intellectually and emotionally challenging supervision that has provided me with a firm foundation from which to grow as a clinician. Her unwavering attention to detail, embodiment of faith and hope in the transformative potential of learning from the “I-Thou” encounter, relentless pursuit of relational truth in the here and now, and her uncanny – at times poetic – ability to find the words to speak what needs to be said, have inspired and nourished my clinical aspirations for the last three years and, most likely, promise to do so well into the future. Of course, none of this would be possible without the intellectual milieu created by the faculty of Duquesne University and sustained by the administrative support of Norma Coleman and ii Marilyn Henline. For all of its shortcomings, the psychology department at Duquesne encourages critical, creative, and reflective thinking like no other doctoral program in psychology. Without the freedom to inquire and pursue my interests in the context of a rigorous, philosophical and scholarly education in psychology, this dissertation would not be possible. Dr. Russ Walsh and Dr. Roger Brooke deserve special thanks for allowing me to pursue supervision with Dr. R. as part of my clinical training. Dr. Roger Brooke and Dr. Dan Burston also deserve special mention with regard to this study, since their willingness to offer critical feedback in the face of my resistance has made this a better study than it otherwise would have been. Dr. Martin Packer deserves special mention as the director for this project as well as my mentor for understanding the purpose, place and viability of qualitative research in psychology that is both broad enough to examine the immense complexity of human phenomenon from the individual to the cultural level, yet conceptually rigorous and systematic enough to avoid the problems of sloppy eclecticism. Dr. Packer believed in my potential as a researcher enough to help me secure a scholarship during my master’s year, a gesture I will never forget. Beyond the financial boost, it told me that he respected my intellectual ability enough to engage in honest disagreements and constructive arguments rather than handing out edicts to insist my work exactly mirror his own, or, worse yet, offering lip-service agreement tokens to avoid the intensity to which intellectual arguments can sometimes rise. Contrary to the consumer (control) model that is sweeping through academia at the expense of thought, disagreeable experiences often incite growth in genuine, unforeseen, and irreplaceable ways. I owe many thanks to some of my colleagues who have helped me think through several difficult aspects of conducting and writing this study, particularly Andrew Felder, Jenny Hwang, Jacqueline Neilson. Fortunately, all three of them have been influenced by their own supervision iii with Dr. R. and have been as generous with their camaraderie as they have with their scholarly advice. They have been there to support and challenge me, offering their time, energy, and at times, even their food and homes! In our day and age that seems to have lost its ability to believe in anything to the point of choosing to let it change one’s self, Andrew, Jenny, Jacqueline, and Vanessa Thompson have remained stalwart and steadfast friends as I have submitted myself to a discipline that is chronicled in the following pages. Most importantly, I’d like to thank Mrs. P. Thank you for letting me learn about your experience as I have been learning how to learn about it from Dr. R. And in all modesty, I think you might approve of me saying that you feel you have learned a new way to learn about yourself too. In this kind of work it is from my learning with your learning that you have been able to bring about some changes that matter to you. iv Preface It may be said that from the Kleinian perspective that happiness is having the freedom to live for those things and people for whom one ought to feel grateful. “There was a patient in analysis with a Kleinian who had a dream that he told her. In this dream his mother sat on his face or chest and he wasn’t able to breath. The analyst interpreted that his dream was evidence that he was envious towards her, and didn’t want to take in what she was offering” … or something along these lines was the story I heard as a first year clinical student, offered as an example of the abusive potential of psychoanalysis. It didn’t leave me with a burning desire to study Kleinian technique. I have heard other stories along these lines from clinicians, stories of perverse abuses of power in Kleinian therapy, offered like warnings of what I don’t want to become or what they fear I might be doing, a scary image of procrustean bed technique. When I started graduate school I had no interest in psychoanalysis, in fact I was hostile to it because as a gay man I had a similar stereotype, that the analytic couch is really a procrustean bed where patients have no say so with regard to their reality, since the analyst, like an arrogant surgeon, assumes a god-like perspective when it comes to ailments of the heart and head, disregarding and disempowering the person. Then, after listening to one lecture after another and one critique after another asserting that analysis, because of its very concepts and philosophical underpinnings, can be little other than a procrustean bed my stereotype gained that aura of a “natural attitude.” According to this natural attitude, psychoanalysis reduces people to parts, dubious entities like egos, ids, superegos, some energy called libido, and worst of all, some bizarre and ridiculous notion of a death drive, the final proof of its status as a miscarriage of mechanistic thought that is incapable of doing justice to human existence. According to this natural attitude and its variants, analysts are cold, v detached, talk about the past in the most banal clichés, and force their victims’ experience into the same tired storylines, like the story of the Kleinian analyst above. But if I was familiar with, and to be fair I participated in it as well, the contempt heaped upon Freud by some, I was not prepared for the – at times – downright hostility towards all things Kleinian. Consider the following story. Not too long ago I met with a prospective supervisor – who is decidedly not psychoanalytic. This was our second meeting, although it had to be rescheduled two weeks prior because at the last minute, for unforeseen reasons, I did not have the car to take to the appointment. So I called to explain and apologize and see if we could have our supervision by telephone in any case. When she called me back she emphasized over and over again that this hour was one she set aside for me when she could have had a paying client use the time, etc. The nature of my circumstances had no bearing on her interpretation of my “inexcusable lapse” in “planning.” So, walking into this, our first appointment since, I was anxious about discussing what had happened because I felt mistreated.
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