Grievance and it’s unhelpful capacity to eclipse mourning

I want to talk about grievance and the impact this can have on patients in therapy. It can sometimes be uppermost in the patients mind when coming to therapy and form the presenting problem or be less visible, unspoken and unconscious. The grievance is often with those deemed responsible for the upbringing of the patient, such as their parents, and can feel unacceptable to discuss. This is a particularly painful place to be stuck for the patient and can eclipse further growth.
The word grievance implies a strong feeling of resentment at being treated unfairly and it is different to a complaint. Weintrobe refers to a complaint as the ‘the voice of the lively self’ (Weintrobe, 2003, p.85).

The essence of a complaint involves the capacity to bear feelings of disappointment, regret, sorrow and even rage but, crucially, an awareness of both a dependence on the object and separateness from the object (object within this context is taken from the theory of object relations and refers to an internalised mental representation of a significant person, such as the primary caregiver, and shapes future relationships and ways of relating with others). Through the course of a child’s development, there is an awareness of dependence on the object, and all the depressive anxieties this can bring, whilst internalising a containing object (mental representation of). Bion (1962) coined the term container/contained and suggested that during early infancy, the infant projects their intolerable feelings of frustration into mother. The mother holds and emotionally digests these feelings, instead of reacting to them, and returns them in a more manageable or contained form with shape. This is known as reverie. It is an active process involving two people. The infant internalises this sense of being contained allowing the capacity to think. The sensation of a muscular psychological infrastructure provides room for expression of previously unexpressed intolerable thoughts. This is reflected in the clinical setting when the therapist doesn’t fix the client or provide advice by ‘engaging instead of explaining’ (Waddell, 1998, p.33) and allows for the capacity to think through pain. The child comes to realise that he/she and the object are neither ideal nor perfect and mourns this loss through separation from such an illusion. As Weintrobe puts it ‘in its mature form, complaint is the cry of mourning’ (Weintrobe, 2003, p.85)

I have oversimplified a somewhat very complex process for the purposes of succinctness but the contrast between a grievance and a complaint helps to illuminate the hallmarks of a grievance and its revengeful characteristics. For within a grievance, the patient can feel wronged, and, as Steiner comments, a ‘striking characteristic (of a grievance) is the sense of right, of justice, of duty and of devotion to the cause’. (Steiner, 1996, p.434). There is resentment at acclimatising to reality which inevitably involves letting go of the idealistic paradise and the once exclusive relationship with the mother. For Steiner, ‘the injury is nursed to keep the sense of injustice alive’ (Steiner, 1993, p. 76). In phantasy, the ideal object can be restored through nursing the grievance and avoids mourning the loss of this illusion. However, as Segal (1972) points out, the sense of idealising an object involves an awareness of the other and a dependence on it. Conversely if it is the self that is idealised, the object becomes a ‘provider of adoration and container for unwanted parts of self’ (Weintrobe, 2003, p.84). This narcissistic illusion of the ideal self prolongs the grievance.

Letting go of the grievance can feel very threatening for the patient and this needs to be understood. The letting go of such a cause can feel, for the patient, as if they are letting go of the glue that holds them together. They can feel as if they are going to disintegrate or collapse. The injury feels unfair, unprovoked and unjust with a need to change the object and find an ally, often in the therapist, to their cause. The activation of this triangular dyad could be interpreted as an experience of an earlier oedipal disappointment. Continuing the theme (of an underlying oedipal configuration), Feldman (2008) suggests and describes a possible representation of a grievance whereby the exclusive relationship with the idealised object comes under threat from the introduction of the third party. Working through the grievance in therapy, though, can lead the patient to recognise that, unconsciously, they feel let down, paving the way for forgiveness. However, more often than not the patient is gripped by a feeling of deprivation and is consumed by resentment and a wish for revenge. One way of defending against working through the grievance is to withdraw or enter a ‘psychic retreat’ (Steiner 1996). After all any open attack, by the patient, on their objects would feel unacceptable and tinge their need to ‘remain in the right’ (Steiner, 1996, p.433) or hold the higher moral ground. Everyone retreats or takes time out to re-group but the unhelpful narcissistic nature of a psychic retreat reverses the patient’s feelings of shame and inferiority to an omnipotent phantasy of superiority.

Each child, though, is entitled to an environment in which it can flourish. Winnicott (1953) refers to the ‘good enough mother’ and LaFarge (2006) suggests that the patient’s sense of individual meaning and value in relation to an attentive audience (both internal and external) can be lost in the wake of the original narcissistic injury, potentially culminating in distorted and elongated revengeful phantasies. Kohut (1971) describes the child’s hunger for admiration through witnessing the ‘gleam of the mother’s eye’ (Kohut, 1971, p.116). This is in relation to the child’s grandiose -exhibitionist self which, through the facilitation of adequate mirroring, is integrated into the reality ego capturing realistic aspirations instead. A traumatic rejection of this self can lead to developmental arrest and outbursts of narcissistic rage when their omnipotence is questioned. The injury underlying this experience is shame of the exhibitionist self.

The role of shame, underlying the narcissistic injury harboured within a grievance, seems to feature significantly; none more so than when moving out of a psychic retreat and working through a grievance in therapy. Being observed can provoke shame but if the patient has preserved a self-idealised image of being admired through omnipotent phantasies, being seen without the narcissistic defence can be shameful (Steiner, 2015).

The grievance towards the object (parents, friends etc) can be enacted within the therapeutic setting through transference (a psychoanalytical term for old phantasies and feelings once experienced towards the primary caregiver which are projected, unconsciously, onto the analyst in the here and now). There can be anger and hostility towards the therapist for their perceived superior position which looks down on the patient, creating a vertical relationship. The vertical relationship, as described by Steiner (2015) holds only two positions; triumph or humiliation. The unconscious ramifications of this dyad can be traced back to early infancy when there is a horizonal relationship between the mother and baby. To the baby this can feel like an exclusive relationship of oneness but overlooks, through omnipotent phantasies, the fact that the baby depends on the mother to be fed and that the mother is separate and different. So, when the mother turns her attention elsewhere, the baby feels dropped or relegated to a lower division which can feel extremely humiliating. Within the therapeutic setting, restoration of this unbearable feeling of humiliation takes a triumphant route through the vertical dyad by attempting to gain the higher moral ground again over the therapist and reverse the perceived dyad. Omnipotent phantasies at restoring the exclusive idealised relationship have many hooks in all kinds of relationships but, crucially, it precludes working through the loss of the idealised object into a more realistic appreciation of the object concerned.

To forgive, let go of a grievance and mourn the loss of the object ideal is easier said than done but the only way out is through and, as such, coming to therapy and opening the grievance up to thought is one way of stepping out of a painful and often protracted rut.

References:

Bion, W.R. (1962). Learning from Experience. New York. Basic Books.
Feldman, M. (2008). Grievance: The underlying oedipal configuration. Int J Psychoanal 63: 743-758
Kohut, H. (1971). The analysis of the self. New York: Norton
Lafrage, L. (2006). The Wish for Revenge. Psychoanal. Q., (75)(2): 447-475
Segal, H. (1972), A delusional system as a defence against the re-emergence of a catastrophic situation. Int J Psychoanal 53:393-401
Steiner, J. (1993). Psychic Retreats. London. Routledge.
Steiner, J. (1996). Revenge and Resentment in the ‘Oedipus Situation’. Int J Psychoanal 77: 433
Steiner, J. (2015): Seeing and being seen: Shame in the clinical situation. Int J Psychoanal 96: 1589-1601
Weintrobe, S. (2003). Links between grievance, complaint and different forms of entitlement. Int J Psychoanal 85: 83-96
Winnicott, D.W. (1953). Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena – A study of the First Not-Me Possession. Int J Psychoanal 34:89-87