In a recent OEN piece, Rob Kall called attention to certain people who appear to have insatiable cravings for more, more, more. Evidently, the idea of "enough" is not part of their way of life. In a roundabout way, Melanie Klein's account of adult-onset bereavement and manic defenses can help us understand the psychodynamics of such insatiable people -- they tend to be hypomanic persons.

::::::::

Duluth, Minnesota (OpEdNews) October 9, 2014: Ken Burns orchestrated "The Roosevelts" series shown on PBS recently.

Poor Theodore Roosevelt. On the same day, both his wife and his mother died. A high energy guy as a young man, the bereaved Theodore went west, where he communed with nature and learned ranching. In time, he emerged as the hyperactive guy who later became the president of the United States.

Using him as a focal point, I want to discuss Melanie Klein's account of healthy mourning of bereavement and unhealthy mourning of bereavement, which she refers to as melancholia. Sigmund Freud famously published an essay titled "Mourning and Melancholia" (1915). As a Freudian psychoanalyst, she is in dialogue with Freud's famous essay.

In American culture today, one well-known Kleinian psychoanalyst is Justin A. Frank, M.D. author of the books BUSH ON THE COUCH: INSIDE THE MIND OF THE PRESIDENT (rev. ed. 2007) and OBAMA ON THE COUCH: INSIDE THE MIND OF THE PRESIDENT (2011). In his fine book about President George W. Bush, Dr. Frank explicitly concludes that "Bush is incapable of [serious mourning]" (page 255).

Evidently, Theodore Roosevelt also was incapable of serious mourning.

Count yourself blessed if you are capable of mourning in a healthy way.

Melanie Klein claims that adult-onset bereavement always somehow evokes the unconscious memory of what she terms the depressive state in infancy. According to her way of thinking, the depressive state in infancy emerges from the infant's disappointment and frustration when the mother's breast is taken away -- or is not immediately available on demand. The infant's disappointment and frustration engenders anger and aggression.

Hopefully, over time, the infant forms a secure attachment bond with the mother. This secure attachment bond will be the life-long source of inner security.

However, at times, small children do not succeed in forming a secure attachment bond with their mothers. This failure to form a secure attachment bond with the mother in early childhood will be the life-long source of a lack of inner security, because of the ambivalence involved in the early non-secure attachment bond with the mother.

In adult-onset of bereavement, those adults who formed secure attachment bonds with their mothers in early childhood should be able to experience healthy mourning processes.

But those adults who did not form secure attachment bonds with their mothers in early childhood will not be able to experience healthy mourning of adult-onset bereavement. Instead, they will probably experience melancholia.

Actually, I'm paraphrasing a bit here. Melanie Klein actually refers to normal mourning and abnormal mourning (also known as melancholia).

After Theodore Roosevelt's wife and mother died on the same day, he appears not to have been able to experience healthy mourning.

However, he appears not to have experienced melancholia either -- or at least not for a protracted period of time.

Instead, he appears to have experienced what Melanie Klein refers to as manic defenses. In addition, it appears that manic defenses dominated the rest of his hyperactive life.

Surprise, surprise, Theodore Roosevelt many not have been the only hyperactive American in the history of American culture.

In his book AMERICAN MANIA: WHEN MORE IS NOT ENOUGH (2005), Peter C. Whybrow, M.D., a British psychiatrist and neuroscientist at UCLA, suggests that many Americans today appear to be acting out manic tendencies.

In his book THE HYPOMANIC EDGE: THE LINK BETWEEN (A LITTLE) CRAZINESS AND (A LOT OF SUCCESS) IN AMERICA (2005), John D. Gartner, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist, examines certain well-known Americans in the history of American culture -- and in the recent past.

Melanie Klein's account of manic defenses is considerably trickier to explain in an accessible way. But I'll give it a try.

Let's start with her tem manic omnipotence (also known today as grandiosity). In her view, contempt is the flip side of manic omnipotence.

As she constructs the inner world of the small child, the small child works to construct positive fantasies of the mother to restore the loved object (initially, the mother's breast, and by extension, the mother) after experiences of disappointment and frustration. The small child's disappointment and frustration involve activating sadistic impulses in the unconscious psyche. According to Melanie Klein's way of thinking, the small child cannot sufficiently trust the sadistic impulses, which he or she feels may easily get the better of him or her.

According to Melanie Klein's way of thinking, manic omnipotence is closely bound up with the unconscious sadistic impulses. Perhaps we could also think of them as the flip side of one another. But the spirit of manic omnipotence is the inner source of the spirit of rivalry and of triumph, and of the impulses toward the attainment of success.

Let's review. When the young child is able to work out a secure attachment bond with the mother, he or she will thereby be able to work out an inner world of peace and harmony.

However, when the young child is not able to work out a secure attachment bond with the mother, the child's ambivalent bond with the mother will tend to lock him or her into manic defenses and block the child from working out an inner world of peace and harmony. In the terminology that Gartner uses, the child will tend to be hypomanic.

According to Melanie Klein's way of thinking, the hypomanic person tends toward over-admiration (idealization) of certain persons and toward contempt -- or devaluation of certain persons. She attributes these tendencies to the fact that the hypomanic person at bottom is not able to mourn the loss of the good mother imago in his or her inner world.

Following Freud, she refers to the work of mourning. In the end, she even holds out the possibility that the work of mourning could resolve a person's lack of a secure attachment bond with the mother in early childhood. But this would require what Dr. Frank refers to as serious mourning.

Authors Website: http://www.d.umn.edu/~tfarrell

Authors Bio:

Thomas James Farrell is professor emeritus of writing studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD). He started teaching at UMD in Fall 1987, and he retired from UMD at the end of May 2009. He was born in 1944. He holds three degrees from Saint Louis University (SLU): B.A. in English, 1966; M.A.(T) in English 1968; Ph.D.in higher education, 1974. On May 16, 1969, the editors of the SLU student newspaper named him Man of the Year, an honor customarily conferred on an administrator or a faculty member, not on a graduate student -- nor on a woman up to that time. He is the proud author of the book WALTER ONG'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO CULTURAL STUDIES: THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE WORD AND I-THOU COMMUNICATION (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2000; 2nd ed. 2009, forthcoming). The first edition won the 2001 Marshall McLuhan Award for Outstanding Book in the Field of Media Ecology conferred by the Media Ecology Association. For further information about his education and his publications, see his UMD homepage: Click here to visit Dr. Farrell's homepage.

On September 10 and 22, 2009, he discussed Walter Ong's work on the blog radio talk show "Ethics Talk" that is hosted by Hope May in philosophy at Central Michigan University. Each hour-long show has been archived and is available for people who missed the live broadcast to listen to. Here are the website addresses for the two archived shows:

Click here to listen the Technologizing of the Word Interview

Click here to listen the Ramus, Method & The Decay of Dialogue Interview