by Andrew Briggs
VULNERABLE CHILDREN IN A VULNERABLE SOCIETY
By
Andrew Briggs
..... we do not live in one world, but in two .... we live in an internal world which is as real a place to live as the outside world.
Meltzer (1981.178)
This discussion article is essentially an opinion piece based upon observations I have made as a psychotherapist and organisational consultant. These associated observations are based upon this comment from Meltzer which succinctly summarises the approach of psychoanalysis to individuals, families, groups and societies. These observations are of a very complicated conundrum easily recognisable when we begin trying to understand how we, as members of a vulnerable society with vulnerable children, are tasked with understanding their relationship whilst being mindful that we are vulnerable participants ourselves. I think that immediately the reader will see this as similar to the Gordian knot of Greek mythology. This highly intricate and complex knot is associated with Alexander the Great. Although it was claimed the knot was impossible to untie, Alexander met it in the city of Gordium, cutting through it with his sword. The problem we have as simultaneously observers and participants in our own society is that we don't have the relationship Alexander had to the physical knot. It was outside of him, and he used his sword to cut through it. It was inanimate and yet the Gordian knot of understanding vulnerability is animate and one we are part of. I do not have a sword to cut through the conundrum, but I hope the following ideas and brief discussions will encourage readers to develop their own thoughts on what is a very serious situation in our society. The article is written to encourage your written responses.
Some background
Prior to training as a child psychotherapist at the Tavistock I taught a range of social science subject areas to university under- and post-graduates. My research was within what was then known as interpretative sociology, which meant I was interested in understanding social actors as individuals and groups from their own frames of reference. This approach incorporated the method social researcher Elizabeth Bott (later Elizabeth Bott Spillius, the psychoanalyst) used for her research of families and their social networks. I used a psychoanalytic approach within a social anthropological one in order to understand the effect of their social context upon how individuals and families behaved, felt and thought. I was helped with my nascent psychoanalysis by a psychoanalyst who periodically offered me what we both decided to term 'debriefing sessions' after I had been in the field for certain lengths of time. Once I began my training at the Tavistock I put this approach to one side as the emphasis became the inner world of the infant, child, adolescent and parents. The focus was always the individual's inner world. Although I learnt a fantastic amount at the Tavistock, this uni-focus began to frustrate me. I was constantly having to keep at arm's length my approach that would have allowed the individual's inner world to be seen as inextricably part of the unconscious of their social world.
Now that I have retired from the NHS and its somewhat limited attention to the conscious individual and obliviousness to the unconscious, and to its not seeing their fully conscious or even vaguely unconscious social context, I have been sieving through clinical experiences. Along with recognising the social context for individual and family difficulties I have also been trying to understand what this context is. In what follows I briefly try to describe where I have got to with these ruminations.
Vulnerability
There have always been vulnerable children and families. Sadly, this is a fact of life everywhere on the planet and throughout history. Humankind is vulnerable. As hunter-gatherers in pursuit of food our herd's or tribe's hunters and gatherers were always prone to attack by beasts of prey, and thus to reduced produce from the hunting and gathering. Across the world, many children are hungry and lack protection - from war in the Middle East and Ukraine, and the climate catastrophe in most of the southern hemisphere (now unquestionably entering the northern). Such vulnerability for so many individuals is the consequence of decisions by so few. 'So few' includes leaders in what are termed democratic societies, and dictators in authoritarian societies. That nobody appears to be doing very much about the vulnerable children suggests to me that these societies - whether or not they have significant numbers of starving or traumatised children in them - are not only assisting vulnerability but may well be vulnerable themselves. But these societies do have the starvation and trauma of children and families pointed out to them by authoritative bodies. The United Nations is one such body. The disregard shown by various governments to its comments and ministrations, however, suggests that we need to be thinking more deeply and widely about societal vulnerability. We are now without an establishment to guide societies back to the protection and provision for citizens who look to them to deliver this. All of what I am saying is comprised of extremely complicated conscious and unconscious dynamics for which psychoanalysis, in its present level of development, struggles to grasp completely. This struggle is understandable, and its existence attests our vulnerability. If we imagine that we are now looking at the knot, then it might help if we consider what many of us may have felt in large group meetings during human relations events. Whilst we are part of the group we nevertheless remain as single members. We might often feel overwhelmed by the number of voices around us all trying to express what they experience in the group. We might begin by sieving out poor comments from the more interesting and perceptive, but nevertheless this can be difficult due to the intensity and number of contributions which result in our not being able to hear ourselves think. Being a member of the vulnerable society in which there are vulnerable children, I constantly find myself unable to think about these two phenomena. Even within current psychoanalytic thinking there are too many ways of understanding the apparent lack of provision and protection by our society and, similarly, for understanding the vulnerability of children. In what follows I take a personal approach to understanding, and thus what I as an individual psychoanalytic thinker have experienced of it as an organisational consultant. It is my way of beginning to see a point of entry into the Gordian puzzle.
Basic assumptions
What might be seen as a traditional psychoanalytic approach to group behaviour - and by `group` I am here including society as a very large group - is Bion's (1955.1961.) ideas about work group mentality and basic assumption mentality. He discusses the work group mentality as 'scientific', by which he means a state of mind that is open to apprehending and encountering reality as it is. He gives the example of Leonardo da Vinci's drawings as encountering the reality of a subject and accurately conveying this reality. Leonardo transformed what he saw into something we can see. Elsewhere in his writings Bion (1992, 244-256) discussed how human beings find facing reality difficult and facing truth even more so. The reality encountered is the truth of something at that moment but how much humans take in is a moot point. He says that because humans find the truth so difficult to bear, small doses of it can feel `lethal`. Hence, work group mentality is always vulnerable to being taken over by one of the three basic assumption mentalities - dependency, fight/flight, and pairing. One can begin to see something of these in contemporary western societies.
As citizens we have been encouraged, generation upon generation, to expect society to provide us with our opportunities to acquire protection, provision, and shelter. Going to work in order to earn enough to acquire these seems reality-driven. Whilst we may then behave with a work group mentality, however, this is not all that is going on. Because we are automatically dependent upon having to go to work to gain the means, we are vulnerable to the powerful who are able to control and monopolise how much protection, provision, and shelter are available. The existence of this structural relationship of seeker and provider automatically encourages a basic assumption dependency mentality. As with the other two basic assumptions, there is the belief that foregone answers and conclusions exist and that the group allocated leader knows these. This elevates the leader (a leader whether or not he or she wants this role) to something above the group membership. They are seen as akin to a deity. But Bion saw this leader as not always a person. It can be an idea or ideology that has taken hold of the group. In my opinion, this explains much of what passes as information released by governments and our dependency upon it as a partial expression of what actually is going on behind the scenes. We are blinded and we blind ourselves by deifying all forms of media and leadership. Perhaps unsurprisingly, basic assumption dependency mentality can easily slip into basic assumption pairing. Here the leader or idea becomes seen as an unborn messiah. This is expressed in the group through certain grandiose, messianic, ideas - group therapy will revolutionise society, that a new and different society is possible, that the coming season will be better than the current one. This mentality can easily transform into basic assumption fight/flight in which the promised solution becomes either to fight or run from whatever reality the group does not want to face. Because the group is prepared to do either in a state of indifference the experience for the individual is of realising that they are not in a meaningful group, but a mindless one (for an in-depth discussion see Bion, 1961). All these attacks on work group mentality (and reality) - scientific thinking - are products of and then exacerbate societal and children's vulnerability. I shall say more about them later on. For the time being I want to address another curve in the knot and discuss object-relations as a core psychoanalytic perspective on this puzzle of vulnerable children and our vulnerable society.
External and Internal worlds
Just to go back to Meltzer's comment at the head of this article. ..... we do not live in one world, but in two .... we live in an internal world which is as real a place to live as the outside world. Here Meltzer is effectively paraphrasing Melanie Klein's statement about the external and internal worlds. She said,
`The analysis of very young children has taught me that there is no instinctual urge, no anxiety situation, no mental process which does not involve objects, external and internal, in other words, object-relations are at the centre of emotional life.` (1952.53)
What this comment is also pointing to is the distinction between the conscious mental functioning of the external world and the unconscious mental functioning of the internal. Further, that the conscious and the unconscious worlds are inseparable. Bion (1962/1967.1970) also saw this inseparability, as can be seen in his writings about containment as the fundamental relationship that gives rise to the infant's capacity to think. As is well known, Bion saw the prototypical container-contained relationship as that of the mother-infant. This relationship forms the basis of containment in later life between analyst and patient, friends, partners and between individuals and various social bodies like sports clubs, workplaces, the morning newspaper, coffee-bars etc. Whether we become vulnerable through the loss of such an external container depends upon how secure our internal container (our internal object) is. The first test of this is in infancy when our container does not arrive as expected. Do we fret and become overwhelmed by anxiety - an anxiety that makes us feel as if death is imminent - or do we remind ourselves that the container is sometimes late and therefore to hold on as we did the last time it was? Holding on is self-containment, possible due to having internalised the containing object. It helps us defer gratification through waiting for the arrival of the external object. Having an internal image of the container is a result of what Bion (1992.71) termed alpha-function. The alpha-function is what makes thinking possible. The absence of the container prompts the need to think about self-containment. Self-containment is the use of the internalised (from the mother) alpha-function. In this instance the distinction between the external and internal worlds can be identified as the cry of the infant being understood by the mother and accurately responded to. Put differently, the infant's unconscious projection of what Bion (1992,181) termed `beta-elements` enters the mother's mind through projective identification. Once in her mind, being in a state of reverie she can transform these beta-elements (Bion saw them as other than mental phenomena) into thinkable, therefore mental, phenomena (alpha-elements) through her alpha-function. Unconscious beta-elements then become conscious phenomena that inform her response to her infant. The infant sees the conscious response and feels the unconscious relief. One of the clear-to-see problems of modern western societies is the breakdown in the container-contained relationship. A stark example of this is the communication of anxiety by groups such as Stop Oil, and the tin-eared and looking-the-other-way approach of democratically elected governments. Another is what the 2024 summer riots in Britain revealed. A vast number of the protesters were young adolescents who participated not for far-right ideological or political reasons but, as one said, `for the thrill and being part of something.` Containment by riot participation is not the same as containment by alpha-function and so should be of concern to all citizens worried about the vulnerability of children and the vulnerability of society.
The necessity for Stop Oil and groups like it is largely due to the breakdown of a containing relationship between citizens and politicians. This is what can be seen on a conscious level, but I think something even more dangerous is going on unconsciously. One of the reasons that containment as the processing of beta-elements has broken down is due to the rise of an ideological mindset that has largely replaced it. Many writers on these damaging facts of modern life - like the climate catastrophe and what some call 'broken Britain' - see the cause as exceptionalism. Exceptionalism is derived from Freud's (1916) paper in which he discusses the exceptionalist as a character type. The exceptionalist sees him/herself as an exception in human affairs entitled to anything they desire, irrespective of their effect on others, and thus not to be concerned with the consequences of their actions. Exceptionalism has become a useful ideology for neo-liberal economies as it drives individuals to expect their increasing desires to be increasingly met, and for them not to worry (have a conscience) about how many people are below liveable pay levels, or that the production of their goods and services might have detrimental consequences to human and non-human environments (see Sally Weintrobe, 2021, for a discussion). Exceptionalism appeals to the unconscious in all of us as it stirs the pleasure principle and negates the reality principle (Freud, 1915.1920). In Freudian terms it by-passes the ego and connects directly with the Id. It replaces the old super-ego with itself as this new parental object that has no moral restrictions and encourages primitive desire. Further, in the relentless pursuit of new desires to be aroused for new markets to be created, exceptionalism's piercing of the boundary between conscious and unconscious mental functioning leaves us all uncontained other than by exceptionalism itself. Unconscious desire - with all of its unprocessed beta-element phenomena - stomps into and across the conscious domain we used to call an unbroken society. We can see this in the virtual reality of children's and young people's electronic games. Realistic car crashes. Plausible machine-gun fights across different terrains. People falling off buildings and surviving. The valorisation of the lottery as the route for a winning few to access huge amounts of money in order to fulfil the exceptionalist society's requirement that they become adverts for it and deeper stakeholders in it. Money like this contains ... or does it? Few are the stories (and yet there are a few) of new affluence being a bugbear. It is also very concerning that the huge technology/communications companies are doing so little to self-regulate on-line content. Not only are children and young people exposed to misinformation and persuasion to commit very grave actions against themselves and others, but they are also unprotected from adult pornography as well as sexual images of other children. These are examples of the penetration of the boundary between the conscious and unconscious. What should remain repressed is not seen by governments and these media companies that refuse to set up safeguards. Hence, we have in effect media companies (by default or unconscious intent) unregulated in their desire to encourage children to witness or be part of adult sexuality, the desire to encourage children to act grievously on themselves and others - seems to be constantly used to create new appetites in a humanity now dependent upon social media. But is it reality? Is it what would pass as a scientific mindset? Is it the truth of human existence or has it become the reality that is a perversion of this truth? Without being able to see reality (whether or not it is itself truth), and to see the truth itself, then individual human minds are vulnerable to mental health disorders and, by extension, so too are our societies. Vulnerable children in a vulnerable society comprised of vulnerable adults and social institutions.
Anything but thinking
With the boundary between the unconscious and conscious ruptured the conscious becomes filled with beta-elements. Bion (1967) also referred to these as bizarre-objects. The bizarre-objects mentioned just now can be added to by movies and other media of children outsmarting and then being triumphant over adults. Adults with young tech-savvy children often joke that they 'ask the kids' if they cannot work out how to operate the television, computer or phone. Endearing as this no doubt is there is an undertow here that we need to be aware of. Our children enter a world we know little about which feeds their age-appropriate omnipotence, but without the parental checks on this that helped child development in the past. Young children need parental adults. Where are the adults?
We read journalists asking, `Why are there no adults in the room?` This question is not simply confined to the current generation of children. Previous generations also took the parental eye off the parenting ball. One wonders whether this accounts for why so many people in power appear to have tremendous self-serving interest but very little self-restraint and altruistic focus. The Johnson government is a case in point for these questions - nobody in government seemed to recognise the imperative to restrain themselves and lead by example during the unprecedented lockdown due to Covid. As the government, we would expect them to behave as good parents; that they didn't perhaps accounts for the level of anger still resonating about the then lockdown in care homes and families not being able to see their dying loved ones. People were vulnerable because they were about to be bereaved and were restricted from leaving their homes to be with them. There was a justifiable expectation that these high levels of distress would be contained by a good-object government.
So far, I have been mainly discussing the maternal parent (container-contained). As the reader is no doubt aware, the father in psychoanalysis is largely - to use a description by John Munder Ross (1979) - invisible. Exceptionalism does not encourage thinking as it encourages a sort of maternal dependency upon an ever-present and ever-providing breast. The father as a function is absent in exceptionalism and, because we live in an exceptionalist society, the father is also absent in society. Whilst an internal alpha-function may be a prerequisite thinking apparatus, it does not necessarily determine what we think about. Being able to think about oneself and others requires the presence of two parental objects. These can be actual parental objects, or two different functions offered to children by one parental object (of either sex and gender). The point is that the additional object, or function, provides for the infant’s experience of difference which itself provides the opportunity for self-reflection.
The early experience of containment through the mother-infant relationship is the blueprint for subsequent containing relationships. Parenting that includes the relationship with a father or paternal function is the blueprint for self-reflection. This form of thinking has been described by Britton (1989) as the recognition of the family relationships comprising a triangle, with such recognition opening the opportunity for a triangular mental space within the infant. Within this space the infant recognises that he/she has a relationship with each parent. This makes two sides of the triangle. Once he/she recognises that the two parents have a relationship together, this gives the triangle its third side. Recognising and accepting that the parents' relationship excludes him/her allows the infant to reflect upon being the observer of this relationship but also the observed. What started as the infant’s recognition of the father as a different object from the mother (different anatomy and existential presence) moved through to seeing the parental relationship as different and separate from one the infant has within the other two sides of the triangle. This emotional-cognitive learning experience, based on the acceptance of difference, is the basis of emotional development. As an anecdotal, but arguably sound, observation the early achievement of a triangular space is the basis of all learning. I saw this particularly when working with referrals from a well-known centre supporting children and adults diagnosed with dyslexia and/or dyspraxia. Many of these patients had difficulties due to early developmental issues linked to not being able to accept the other parent as another object. Thus, they did not recognise difference, and consequently were very stuck. This difficulty in object-relations was beneath the learning difficulties for which they received their diagnosis. To add to this, one could see that so many had parents who were not functioning as a parental couple, with the mother usually taking the dominant role within it. For some this was due to her personality. For others, the father was at a loss to provide noticeable parenting, often excused by his taking the lead bread-winner role and thus have less time and `head-space.` Other fathers simply felt lost.
In these circumstances, parents did not think together and so were unable to provide a balance of maternal and paternal. The maternal tended to be overly indulgent and thus blind to the child's needs also for a different type of nurture. This nurture from the father - limit setting, a managed boisterousness, a different approach to family relationships and those outside - was missing. With psychoanalytic thinkers it is taken as read that one looks to each parent's relationship with their internal parental objects to get a guide as to how and why they parent the way they do. Once I began trying to work with these parents, however, I recognised the exceptionalist mindset which existed tenaciously within them. It was extremely difficult to break through their individualistic view of themselves and thus the lack of recognition that they were part of how their children had developed. Acting out through missing sessions or becoming infantile themselves were examples of their omnipotent avoidance of such consequences. Another common one was talking about family life repeatedly using 'trendy' language, such that the picture built allowed their family life to be recognisably the same as those of celebrities. All this appeared as anti-thinking but was mental phenomena in the absence of the capacity to think. It was beta-elements with the bizarreness seen in the fact that these parents preferred to create a false account of themselves, and pretend to live it, rather than face the reality of the family dynamics they had created.
Gang mentality
The 2024 summer rioters who joined to belong really do offer us a very useful portal through which to try to understand vulnerability. What they joined in order to belong to was a gang mentality. They simply wanted to get a feeling that, in a world where others have things they cannot hope to aspire to earn, they could at least get something thrilling. They did not think of the consequences of being caught and sent for trial (the youngest sent to court was aged 12). One can see these children as products of generation upon generation of economic, educational and labour market deprivation. We might imagine how easily these give rise to a hopelessness that leads to hedonistic participation and having the desire to belong met, regardless of the consequences. But this 'logic' of action is not so different from the exceptionalist whose desires for goods and services to comprise a desired lifestyle are hedonistically shielded from their impact on supply-chains, transport systems, unregulated labour markets and production workers and, ultimately, the planet's continued capacity to support human life. The rioter jumps into the riot. The exceptionalist jumps into the rat-race. The rioter does not think about emotional reality. The parents of the dyslexic children confuse emotional reality with living a lifestyle. All this, as I said earlier, does not qualify as thinking. It might qualify as herd-like behaviour. Exceptionalism as an ideology prompts the herd-like following through the delights of the pleasure principle - celebrity lifestyle or the rioting by those deprived of opportunities for it but subject to its allure.
But every herd needs a stimulus to set its direction. The leader in the herd may therefore not be the originator of the direction, just the first to set off. In human democratic society it is often difficult to see who leads and who follows. For example, there is a frightening level of knife crime and shootings amongst young people in the major cities. Also, there is a frightening level of corporate and political 'assassinations' as these 'senior' people jockey for power over each other. Who is following whom? Are these alternative moral gangs leading through example, or are the so-called `elite` leading themselves and those who knife and shoot? Both groups are part of the same society and are joined through being so. The rest of us are likewise joined and so whatever we make of these 'assassinations', our internal worlds are joined to theirs. How else can we understand the seeming action paralysis that exists in the face of the growing number of political scandals, knife and gun crimes? Because they are riddled with assassination culture our elected representatives are tied into the knife and gun crime dynamics of neighbourhood and national gangs. Whilst inevitably the general populus is too, as observers we can at least comment that nothing seems to be being done to reduce crime and political immorality. Our voices are currently very dim, however, and not really heard through the democratic system. This is evident in the case of the climate catastrophe. Before election Keir Starmer's government set out that it would bring about a fundamental redirection of the economy to reduce dependency radically upon fossil fuels. Since election this manifesto bauble has been rowed back from. Also, since the British election an American one has returned Donald Trump for a second term as President. With Trump we have the embodiment of exceptionalism and, because of his position as the most powerful person in the world, we also have the opportunity for full-on gang mentality. The rule of law is constantly challenged. Upholders of due process and legal precedent are ridiculed and then removed from their jobs. The swimming in the pleasure principle, but the Trump administration has become the swimming in pain for citizens summarily removed to their countries of origin, and for those no longer protected by welfare payments and other public service support.
It soon became clear that Trump rapidly excluded his supporting politicians and public officials who did not totally sign up to his policies and way of doing government. 'The court of King Trump' became a popular refrain amongst the American public. But this is an outlaw King sprung up without the laws and rules that make the institution of monarchy. It is difficult to see what the response of European leaders actually is. Are they going with the politick real and responding like courtiers? If so, what is their mental state? Is it politick-real as work group mentality or is it basic assumption pairing? Starmer's grovelling around for the trade deal papers Trump dropped might indicate a messianic Trump in his mind, but might his sycophantic delivery of the King's invitation for an unprecedent second state visit simply be sycophancy as part of politick real? Whichever way one looks at it, the institution of presidency has been seriously compromised. It is no longer an adult/parental institution based upon grown-up laws and rules, but a culture of celebrity and make-believe that has been created. Celebrity is the messianic idea. Trump and others like him across the world are taken as messiahs by those in their thrall. America is vulnerable. The world is vulnerable. All this said, however, not being party to these events, it is difficult to read further than what one sees of them. But such restricted reading is exactly what fuels the increasing vulnerability in our society. We are vulnerable because we don't know, and we are vulnerable because we are kept from knowing. We either follow out of fear or self-preservation, or we resign ourselves to realising that protest may get us in gaol. This is a polity of gang mentality. The messianic is gang-like.
Millennials and Generation Z
It is difficult to understand what those born between 1981 and 1996 (Millennials) and 1997 and 2012 (Generation Z) make of the vulnerability that I have been describing. The Millennial age range is currently 30-45 years old. The Gen Z age range is currently 14-29 years old. An indication of their views is seen in the various social attitude surveys undertaken with them. For example, over fifty percent would be happy for a strong leader to take power even if that meant by-passing democratic elections. Most fear the climate catastrophe will not be slowed to a stop. Many still live with their parents as the labour market for them is precarious, and thus they are in no position to rent, let alone buy, their own accommodation. They cannot be independent even if they want to. They are automatically caught up in a dependency mind-set. But it is these two generational groups that will be the next to inherit the perennial problems of humankind - largely based on our propensity for self-destruction. As Freud (1920.1930) said, the permanent tension between the inseparable death and life instincts as they vie for supremacy will ensure this. But are these generations equipped to deal with this propensity? What equipment will they inherit from the generation that will inevitably have to hand over responsibility for human existence?
One of the persistent issues that has a huge bearing upon vulnerability is the absence of the father. I have mentioned this earlier, and it is important. Freud (1930) said that he could see no need in childhood greater than the need for the father's protection. Throughout this article I have mentioned the father's importance as a different object from the mother`s. Difference is itself a protective factor because experiencing difference not only stimulates thinking it creates robustness. For me, protection is a little like clinical governance. Clinical governance applies to every aspect of patient care, from each element in a surgical procedure or mental health intervention, to the light bulbs being changed when they fail, to the appropriate professional attitude to work and beyond. Protection is being mindful of child development from pregnancy to the time our children become old enough to look after us. So, protection involves physical and mental activities including nurturing vulnerability through attentive care, including boundary keeping. It involves the provision of the experience of difference and protection from phenomena that perpetuate the rupture of the conscious/unconscious boundary. It is helping children through life to protect themselves through exercising their alpha-function and moving towards independence. All this also protects the child as subject to dependency and thus the potential for dependency upon gang mentality through becoming gang-like in the exceptionalist sense discussed here for rioters and affluent families. My concern is whether enough Millennials and Gen Z have been protected in this way because, if they haven't, then they will soon enter a time of life when they are going to be responsible for themselves and their part of society without the necessary equipment.
Concluding comments
To return again to Meltzer's comment ..... we do not live in one world, but in two .... we live in an internal world which is as real a place to live as the outside world. As psychoanalytic thinkers we members of APPCIOS are aware that we live in two worlds and that so do our individual clients, their teams and organisations, and the society we inhabit. We are in the group and society, the group and society is within us. We are multifariously joined to it but mainly through what it/they project into us (projective identification) and what we project into them. One of the things I have tried to convey in this article is the weakening of the links between us all that create a social vulnerability. Whilst I have described how containment and thinking are resilience factors the point also made is that these are vulnerable to internal dynamics and societal dynamic pressures which prevent reality-based and truthful development. By `truthful` I mean emotional engagement that recognises the vulnerability of human existence whilst also negotiating a world in which containment by ideology (exceptionalism) has brought about a very dangerous and powerful gang mentality running from top to bottom. This is the vulnerable world that creates vulnerable children. Whilst this may seem a somewhat gloomy discussion to some readers, I ask them to keep in mind that hope remains alive. Despite the various attacks on linking and the erosion of individual and societal security described here, that we remain adamant that the life instinct should prevail over the death instinct is what Klein (1952) had in mind when she wrote that humans never give up hope in finding a good-object.
References
Bion, W.R., (1955) Group Dynamics : A Re-View In New Directions in Psychoanalysis. Klein, M., Heimann,P., and Money-Kyrle, R.E., (eds) London: Karnac. Also published in Bion, W.R., (1961) Experiences in Groups and other papers. London: Tavistock
Bion, W.R., (1961) Experiences in Groups and other papers. London: Tavistock
Bion, W.R.,(1962). Learning From Experience. London: Maresfield
Bion, W.R.,(1967) Second Thoughts. London: Maresfield
Bion, W.R.,(1970) Attention and Interpretation: A Scientific Approach to Insight in Psychoanalysis and Groups. London: Maresfield
Bion, W.R., (1992) Cogitations. London: Karnac
Britton, R., (1989) The missing link: parental sexuality in the Oedipus complex. In R Britton et al. (Eds) The Oedipus Complex Today: Clinical Implications. London: Karnac
Freud, S. (1915) The Unconscious, Vol. XIV, Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works. London: Hogarth
Freud, S (1916) Some Character-Types met within psychoanalytic work. In Vol XIV. The Standard Edition of The Complete Works. London: Hogarth
Freud, S., (1920) Beyond the Pleasure Principle. In Vol. XVIII, Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works. London: Hogarth
Klein, M., (1952) On Observing the Behaviour or Young Infants. In The Writings of Melanie Klein Volume Three. London: Hogarth
Meltzer, D (1981) The Kleinian Expansion of Freud's Metapsychology. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 62 pp177-185
Ross, J.M., (1979) "Fathering: A Review of Some Psychoanalytic Contributions on Paternity " International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 60 pp 317-27
© Andrew Briggs 2026
[DB2]are you accepting this too Mandy?
[DB3]thanks within