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The Life and Work of Joan Riviere: Freud, Klein and Female Sexuality

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The Life and Work of Joan Riviere: Freud, Klein and Female Sexuality The Life and Work of Joan Riviere The Life and Work of Joan Riviere traces her journey from dressmaker’s apprentice, and member of the Society for Psychical Research, to Sigmund Freud’s patient and his favourite translator. Marion Bower examines Riviere’s important legacy and contribution to the early development of psychoanalysis. Riviere was also a close friend and colleague of Melanie Klein and wrote her own highly original and influential papers on female sexuality and other topics, in particular Womanliness as a Masquerade (1929). Her position in the British Psychoanalytic Society was unusual as a direct link between Freud and Klein. Her own papers were extraordinarily prescient of developments in psychoanalysis, as well as the social climate of the time. Riviere’s experience as a dressmaker gave her an interest in female sexuality, and she proceeded to significantly challenge Freud’s views. She also defended Klein from ferocious attacks by Melitta Schmideberg (Klein’s daughter) and Anna Freud. The Life and Work of Joan Riviere will appeal to anyone interested in the history of psychoanalysis as well as Riviere’s highly original perspectives involving feminist thought and female sexuality. Marion Bower has trained as a teacher, a social worker and an adult psycho- therapist. She worked at the Tavistock Clinic for fourteen years and currently teaches at The Kleinian Association of Ireland, the British Psychotherapy Foundation and Making Research Count. She has edited or co-edited four books, including the Routledge titles Addictive States of Mind (2013) and What Social Workers Need to Know (2018). The Life and Work of Joan Riviere Freud, Klein and Female Sexuality Marion Bower First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Marion Bower The right of Marion Bower to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978- 0- 415- 50768- 4 (hbk) ISBN: 978- 0- 415- 50769- 1 (pbk) ISBN: 978- 0- 429- 43030- 5 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Out of House Publishing For Steve Contents Acknowledgements ix Prologue x 1 ‘A well born lady’ 1 2 Joan 7 3 Other worlds 16 4 Education 23 5 Apprenticeship and marriage 34 6 Does housekeeping interest you at all? 47 7 ‘Nerves’ 54 8 Ernest Jones 62 9 Freud 79 10 A devilish amount of trouble 90 11 I would be inclined to bet heavily on her 98 12 Child wars 107 13 Female sexuality and femininity 117 viii Contents 14 The road to war 126 15 A front- rank analyst 134 16 War 142 17 After the war 150 18 The internal world 156 Epilogue 161 Bibliography 164 Index 169 Acknowledgements This book would not exist without the work of the psychoanalyst Athol Hughes. In 1991 she edited a collection of Joan Riviere’s papers, complete with a biographical introduction. The papers and the account of Riviere’s life were so fascinating that I wanted to know more. With great kindness Athol lent me her research materials and listened to me read chapters of the book. My son Bruno turned my handwritten manuscripts into an exquisite typed document, as well as giving me much-needed advice. Steve, my husband, showed heroic patience during the seven years it took for this book to come into fruition. He chauffeured me round places where Joan lived as a child and read through the book. Jacob, my older son, always remembered to ask how the book was doing when skyping from San Francisco. I have spent many hours in the following archives: Bedford Council, Brighton History Museum, Wycombe Abbey School, Newnham College and Trinity College Cambridge, the Institute of Psychoanalysis, Lewes County Record Office, the Wellcome Library, the British Library, the Society for Psychical Research, the Victoria and Albert Museum Theatre Archive and the Tate Britain Archive. My friend and co- editor in other ventures Robin Solomon has encouraged me and made helpful comments. Roger and Liz researched census records for me. My editors at Routledge, Kate Hawes and Charles Bath, have been exceed- ingly patient. Special thanks to the trustees of the Melanie Klein Trust for permission to reproduce the photographs. Prologue On 22nd January, 1922, Ernest Jones, President of the British Psychoanalytic Society, wrote to Sigmund Freud: Dear Professor, I thought it would interest you if I told you a few words about your new patient Mrs Riviere, who is going to Vienna next week, as she plays a con- siderable part in the [psychoanalytic] society here. … Most of her neurosis goes into marked character reactions … I am specially interested in the case for it is the worst failure I have ever had. … I think she understands psa [psychoanalysis] better than any other member except perhaps Flugel. Incidentally she has a strong complex about being a well-born lady [county family] and despises all the rest of us, especially the women. (Paskauskas, 1993) When Joan Riviere died in 1962 the International Journal of Psychoanalysis published three obituaries of her, two by people who did not know her very well, and one by someone who did, but claimed not to. James was the younger brother of Lytton Strachey, a product of the Victorian intelligentsia and Bloomsbury. Both Joan and James had made substantial contributions to the translation of Freud and other psychoanalysts. James produced the ‘Standard Edition’ of Freud, and Joan was the translations editor of the International Journal from 1922 to 1937. However, Joan was Freud’s favourite translator. Her beautiful muscular prose was well suited to Freud’s style. Not surpris- ingly, James’s obituary seesaws between admiration and dismissal. James skates briefly over Joan’s ancestors. She was born Joan Verrall. The Verralls were an old Sussex family. Joan’s branches were mainly centred round Lewes and Brighton. Joan’s grandfather crept into the middle classes by becoming a solicitor. Another ancestor wrote a successful cookbook. A copy of this belonged to Thomas Grey, now in the British Museum. With a sigh of relief, James alights on the ‘really celebrated’ Verrall, A. W. Verrall, a classics newgenprepdf Prologue xi scholar at Trinity College Cambridge, where James had been a student. James likens Arthur Verrall to Freud: ‘He had a mind which cut through conven- tional attitudes and superficial shams’. James’s conventional attitude leaves out Arthur’s wife Margaret, also a classics scholar at the university. Joan visited her uncle and aunt often, and as we shall see, their influence was very important to her. James subtly underplays Joan’s education: ‘she had not herself been to the university, and indeed her education had been a little irregular’. Wycombe Abbey School ‘did not suit her’. This was the cutting edge of girls’ education at the time, and Joan spent three years there, followed by a year in Gotha to learn German. On her return home, Joan struggled to find a purpose in her life. She drew, she designed dresses, she worked for various women’s causes. Finally, Joan made the obvious move of a beautiful girl who is not sure what to do: she married a handsome man. Evelyn Riviere was a chancery barrister, the son of Briton Riviere, a well- known Victorian painter. She now moved on the fringes of the Bloomsbury group. Her path crossed with that of James Strachey again: ‘I still have a vivid picture of her standing by the fireplace at an evening party, tall, strikingly handsome, distinguished looking and somehow “impressive” ’. The connection with Arthur and Margaret Verrall led both Joan and James in a rather unexpected direction. The Society for Psychical Research was the respectable wing of spiritualism. It was started by a group of Cambridge dons of an earlier generation. Now its activities centred on the Verrall family. Members of the society grasped the importance of the work of Freud and Breuer. Freud even contributed a paper to its Proceedings in 1912. Joan would have read it. It was the start of her life’s work. James’s obituary was read at a memorial meeting at the Institute of Psychoanalysis. As he neared the end, he began to struggle for what to say. Finally he hit on an aspect of Joan’s character he particularly admired: I think she also regretted my non- committal attitude to questions of psy- choanalytic theory. Non-committal was the thing she could never be. And that I think was … what was so splendid about her … and what she believed she would say out and uncompromisingly. A ripple must have passed among the audience. The elephant in the room was Melanie Klein, who had died two years previously. In 1926, Klein came to England trailing clouds of controversy for her work with young children and a radical technique.
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