Anatomy of regret and reparation: Resolution of transference resistances through the combined use of the creative process and the mourning regrets groups.

Description of the Two Groups

During forty one years of practice as a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, I have led writing groups. These groups focus on the overall creative process of each group member, which includes, but does not overly privilege, actual presentation and feedback on creative work. Each member speaks and/or presents work on a rotation basis. However, at points when conflicts or impasses emerge in the group, interactive group process becomes highlighted, as opposed to serving as a background for the foreground focus of individual psychic and creative process. When critical transference and transference resistance dynamics present themselves, interpersonal dynamics become the focus of the group, allowing projections and transferences to be sorted out. The resolution of conflicts, and the understanding of projections, and of “self and other” psychic structure, can then be applied to each group member’s individual process, in relation to her or his creativity and creative project ambitions.

Within the course of resolving and understanding transference resistance, which emerges as a parallel dynamic to internal object or “internal editor” impasses to individual creative process, relinquishment of inhibiting old object ties unfolds into the affect evolution of the mourning process. For this reason, some who participate in these writing groups also choose to participate in my monthly

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therapeutic mourning group, where they can engage more fully with the depths of grief, loss, guilt, shame, and envy, all of which constitute affect constellations, with accompanying object relations conflicts. Blocked and unblocked aggression is understood in relation to defenses against object loss, which involves interplay between grief sadness and depressive guilt sadness. The guilt sadness, so implicit in the relinquishing of formative object ties (Klein, 1940; Kavaler-Adler, 1993, 1996, 2003, 2013, 2014) is spoken of in the therapeutic mourning group, and sometimes in the writing groups as well, as the anguish of regret (Kavaler-Adler, 2004, 2013).

Unlike in the writing groups, where a rotation of presentation is employed, in the ongoing monthly therapeutic group (also called the mourning regrets group), there is no individual rotation, but rather a full group process interaction, which begins with individual process within a structured meditative visualization. The opening of guided visualization involves a focus on breathing, combined with varying forms of free association. The guided visualization leads to a specific focus on allowing an “other” to emerge from each person’s internal world, as if the person emerges through the breathing and body, rather than being directed from the group member’s head. As the internal world person emerges (or sometimes a part of the self), each group member is asked to say what they need to say to this person, and to wait for a response. Also, they are guided to speak gut feelings from their stomach, which brings up hunger and aggression, and to see if there is a heart connection, so that one can speak from one’s heart to the internal person. Each group member engages in an internal dialogue with the internal other or finds that such dialogue is blocked due to the lack of response of the other. All this is repeated with a meditative focus on a second person emerging from within, to be spoken to, while held in awareness, by looking directly at the internal other within the person’s mind. Disconnections can become the focus, along with connections that may lead to grief, anger, rage, as well as to regret, forgiveness, and renewed love. Sometimes, the group member, with his/her eyes closed, cries during the meditative visualization, and often the deep grief and longings in the tears are shared in the group following the visualization. The focus on the stomach brings encounters with anger, rage, hunger, and hate (sometimes manifesting as envy) – and also with deprivation, in relation to the internal other, who is often a parent, sibling, or an intimate relationship figure, such as current boyfriend or ex-husband. Group members find that the feelings in their heart are quite different than those in their stomach: as longings, loss, grief, and love are felt through the heart. If the heart feeling is blocked, this has psychodynamic significance. The stomach speaks in impulses, while the heart speaks in more refined affects. When the heart and stomach speak to each other, conflicts between love and hate often manifest.

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Then each participant can decide whether she/he wishes to take the internal “other” (the internal object that is based partly on a real past or present external object) into her/his heart, or to leave them outside the boundaries of the heart and self. When I ask each group member to open her/his eyes, the group opens space for each person to share their visualization, and the one who volunteers to share first begins the group. This focus on the individual in the group, by the group, allows for a great deal of empathy for the pain, longings, aspirations, conflicts, regrets, and grief of each group member. This leads into the group engaging with the old narratives of each person’s life, and with transforming these old narratives into new ones. Old internal objects are relinquished, and new present external others are engaged with. New external connections are also internalized. New and healthier psychic structure develops, for healthier new modes of relationships.

As each person shares their meditative visualization, a group process emerges that engages the internal mourning process with communication in the moment, between group members. Over time, the relationships in the group evolve, and they create interactions that involve understanding and insight into each group member, and into how each person is subjectively experiencing and dealing with life. This monthly group exists for twenty two years now. We never meet in July and August, but the four hour group with the initial meditative visualization and a half hour break for lunch is the ongoing format that has brought much in-depth engagement over the years. Members stay for varying lengths of time, as some leave after resolving some specific issues in their lives, but those who stay long term, benefit the most.

            Description of Writing Group and Therapeutic Mourning Group Members

Both groups are open to adult women and men of all ages. The writing group described here had been meeting every other week, and had five (and sometimes more) members at the time. I call the writing groups “creative process” groups because, at times, they have had members who were pursuing other art forms, such as painting (Kavaler-Adler, 2000). A painter can bring slides of her paintings into the group, as one woman did, which can be shared in the same manner as other people’s writing. A musician or actor could bring in a tape recording of her/his work. Nevertheless, at the time of this study, the writing and creative process group consisted of five writers, who were struggling with fiction, writing, poetry, memoir writing, professional clinical writing, magazine writing, and fiction-memoir writing. Sometimes they would share shorter pieces of free associative journal writing. I have also had people pursuing diary and letter writing, dissertation writing, and theoretical psychoanalytic writing, as well as clinical writing about psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. Sometimes writing group members

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have followed themes that were healing to them psychologically at the moment, such as writing a series of essays on their mother, father, grandmother, son, etc. In other words, my writing groups encompass both writing therapy, and writing actively or professional or trade publication. I can have professional writers and painters in the groups, along with beginning writers, who are at the point of just being able to write.

The two women who are at the center of this clinical narrative are both fiction and memoir writers. The woman I call Lillian was completing her first book, which was subsequently published. The other woman, who I call Adrian, had published one piece of memoir writing, and was working on both fiction and memoir pieces at the beginning of this clinical story.

            Looking Into the Face of Medusa: The Dramatic Clash between Two Articulate Ladies

Adrian and Lillian were members of both the every other week writing group and the monthly therapeutic “mourning regrets” group. It was during the course of one writing group meeting, when Lillian exclaimed that she had less and less interest in Adrian, and really had no concern for Adrian’s new findings about herself. This came a year after Lillian and Adrian had an earlier clash that had been discussed, and which only had partially been resolved.

At that earlier time, Lillian said that Adrian had been “chomping at the bit” when she wished to speak about her view of the group process, sarcastically deriding the hunger behind Adrian’s wish to have her turn in the group, and being critical of Adrian’s self-expression, in asserting her own point of view of the group process. Adrian felt blamed for speaking up just as she had felt in her family, and blamed at a point of making progress in being more direct about her anger, and about her needs.

This clash between her and Lillian was now being revisited at a later time. The transference dynamics became clearer, as the clash between Lillian and Adrian re-occurred. This clash was confusing for the group members, until the dynamics behind it could be defined.  Lillian and Adrian had somewhat different views of how the group should be run, related to different interests, which were also tied in with transference reactions. Lillian wanted more psychological exploration, and Adrian wanted more focus on literary critiques of the individual writing projects presented in the group. Their negative reaction to each other’s requests was influenced by each seeing the other as critical of the other’s wishes. Lillian reacted to Adrian’s critiques of people’s writing in the group, and to her comment that she has been cautious in regard to commenting on Lillian’s work. Adrian said that she believes Lillian doesn’t want critiques. She added that she has been afraid of Lillian’s anger, which can be well articulated.  This led to Lillian making a cutting comment, reminiscent for Adrian of the old one, in which she

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disdainfully replies that she has become increasingly less interested in Adrian. Adrian was hurt and was able to say so.

Lillian’s disdain for Adrian came after Adrian had made progress in expressing her honest views of how others in the group can improve their work, which she always has done in a supportive and encouraging way, generally being very well received by other members of the group. But for Lillian, Adrian is now stereotyped as an editorial critic, who won’t accept and appreciate where people are at. Adrian replies, “I hold myself back from commenting on the writing.” Lillian is insulted! Adrian says she is afraid of Lillian’s anger, and Lillian looks like she would like to explode.  Lillian holds herself back, but protests with obvious pain behind her protest, saying she has indeed been open to criticism of her work, but is decidedly not interested in technical editing. Lillian continues, saying that she is in the group to receive feeling responses to her writing, which she believes she gets from other members of the group, and particularly from me, the group leader, but not from Adrian. “We don’t all have to be the great writers you want us to be,” Lillian states to Adrian. Adrian replies: “This is why I’m cautious about giving you feedback. But I do admire you, and wish you could see my struggles and changes.”  Lillian threw back her most cutting comment then: “I find you less interesting than ever. I don’t care about all your little changes that you say you’re making.” Tears immediately come to Adrian’s eyes, and she takes the risk of being vulnerable, even in the face of attack:

That really hurts me! You say I’m less interesting to you than ever now, now that I’ve been struggling to go to the other side of being in touch with my feelings, which is something I’ve always admired you for. Besides I also see you as my mother in this group, and now I’m afraid you’ll leave me and the group. It’s so easy for you to feel everything! It is part of what I admire in you. I’m just beginning to get there, and it hurts me that you don’t even see or care if I’m changing.

Lillian starts to feel intensely guilty, which manifests, at that point, in more rage, expressed nonverbally now, in her withdrawal and facial attitude. Meanwhile, I feel rather sympathetic to Adrian, particularly because of the openness about her hurt, and about her wishes for understanding and interest (love) for Lillian. But in addition, I sensed my own countertransference bias toward her at this moment, just having come out of one of Adrian’s individual therapy sessions. In fact, in that last individual session with Adrian, I had observed, and felt, a particular turning point in Adrian, a turning point toward awareness of the transference longings that had been inhibiting Adrian in her self-expression, particularly in her self-expression of anger. I knew the depths from which her admiration of Lillian’s free capacity to express anger came from.  I also knew the depths from which her fear of Lillian’s anger

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came, and how conflicted she was when faced with Lillian as a transference mother. Adrian had projected her longing for love and support onto Lillian, defending against deep grief about losing love and support from her actual mother, due to her mother’s death many years before.

Seeing a new state of openness in Adrian, during her individual session, and a new state of her insight into her defensive maneuvers, and knowing also how genuine her attempts to help other group members, with her tempered critique of where and how they were holding themselves back form fuller self-realization through writing, it was all too easy to defend her, while questioning Lillian’s reactions. I began to say that it was clear that others in the group experienced Adrian’s responses to their writing as helpful, which the members confirmed with their feedback right there and then. So I wondered out loud why Lillian found Adrian’s comments so one-sided, critical and demanding. In saying this to Lillian, I banked on the years I had spent working with Lillian in different writing groups I had conducted, and in the Saturday group. (In the course of this writing group experience, Lillian had been also a member of my “Mourning Regrets” therapy group.)

Lillian and I had formed a therapeutic object relationship! Occasionally, she had some individual consultations. However, having been quite accusatory herself, Lillian was quick to feel accused just then, even by Adrian’s vulnerable exposure of hurt, and even more so by my seeming favor for Adrian at that moment. Indeed I knew I was feeling the sense of Adrian’s pain at that moment. Also, having a countertransference reaction to Adrian as an individual patient, made me think how unfair it seemed that just as she was becoming less inhibited, and was more fully expressing the full range of her feelings, she was rejected by Lillian. From experience, I also know her vulnerability to fears of being envied and attacked. Given all this, I must have spoken with a heartfelt feeling for her plight that I lacked just then for Lillian (although in the past I had felt her internal struggles in groups, and she had generally felt me to be an ally). In fact, I became interpretive with Lillian, rather than responding to her growing hurt, which was still hidden and not exposed (in contrast to Adrian’s exposure of hurt).

Lillian seemed to be fighting off that vulnerability to her own hurt with a defensive stance (Klein, 1940). Before directly interpreting anything, I asked Lillian a question that she experienced as an accusation, perhaps because of her vulnerability to feeling blamed and injured at that time, when I understood Adrian’s perspective. I asked, “Do you think you’re caught up in a transference response to Adrian now?” Lillian remained cold, perhaps trying to appear indifferent, yet looking explosive. I continued, perhaps interpreting too much, rather than addressing the reason for Lillian’s lack of receptivity: “The reason I ask if you’re aware of a transference response is because you are seeing

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Adrian as all critical now, and are not seeing anything else about her.” Tense, cold, and irate, with the harsh chill of defensive indignation, Lillian shot back her answer like a dart:

I don’t know about transference. How the hell would I know! That’s your department! But I don’t need to have a relationship with anyone I don’t wish to have it with! Furthermore, I can’t believe that Carol (another group member) said that I was resistant to feedback about my writing, when I’ve taken so much interest in her feedback, and actually re-shaped my work in response to things she’s said. I also took feedback from Adrian, when she responded to the epilogue of my book.

Adrian responded then, allowing me to recede temporarily into the background. Adrian said:

Lillian, when you gave me the epilogue to read and respond to, it was the only time you gave me work to read outside the group. I couldn’t get the full flavor of the book without reading the whole thing, and you never let me read it, although you let Carol and Gerald read it. I was wary about responding to the pieces of it you read in the group, because I know how sensitive you were about wanting the whole of it comprehended and responded to. I feared your anger, but I also thought it might be unfair to suggest anything about your technique, or the way you wrote, when only viewing small poetic pieces, without the whole narrative.

Lillian was not ready to yield yet.  It was time to end the group, and I could feel the chill of her rage, and I could feel her wish to cut everyone off and escape. I felt quite uncomfortable ending the group at the appointed time for ending that particular day. However, I knew I needed to trust the process, and trust Lillian’s capacities to regain her observing ego, and her very astute capacities for self-reflection.

Nevertheless, I decided to call Lillian that evening, because I knew she felt unsupported by me. She may even have felt abandoned at the moment of her regression and transference dynamics. I imagined that she may have felt betrayed. When I called Lillian it was clear that she wished to be abrupt and felt me as intrusive. I tried to appeal to her understanding of the writing group process. I said that she could discuss all her feelings and reactions in the next group. I said that she did not have to stay alone with them, as she appeared to do at the end of the group. I suggested that she was overwhelmed, and I could understand that in her anger she might be contemplating leaving the group, but, I said, I would hate to see her cut everyone off without communicating. I suggested that this group could, perhaps, be more receptive to her feelings than her family had been. She reared up, taking umbrage with my last comment, saying her family was fine! I felt intensely like an intruder.

I would never have called Lillian if I had had individual sessions set up with her. I tried to appeal to her observing ego, saying that her view of Adrian was one-sided, when only seeing her as a critical and harsh judge and editor. I told Lillian that her view of Adrian was unusual for her because she was usually sensitive to all sides of people. I added the “coup de grace”: “That’s why I think you’re

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entrapped in a transference reaction.” Lillian responded coolly, thanking me for the call, but saying that she was seriously considering leaving the group, since she didn’t want her writing to be subjected to Adrian’s technical critiques. She said that she could get that from an editor, and said those critiques spoiled her experience of the group as a place for her to feel her work, and to feel others feeling it. I was struck by her still-stereotyped view of Adrian, reinforcing my conviction that she was unconsciously enacting a transference response. I said that we could talk about it all in the next group (two weeks later). I added that I would like to help her say what she wanted and need to say. Despite the frustration of this call, and Lillian’s ambivalence about receiving it, it was to be seen that she did take in what I said. Lillian began to use our talk in the call to sort things out.

Nevertheless, Lillian’s anger was still the dominant communication at this time. I next learned from Adrian, in an individual session, that Lillian had been sending Adrian emails, in which she apologized for her cutting comments in group. Further, Lillian suggested to Adrian that they were both victims of the group format that I had constructed. I, therefore, fully expected to be the “bad mother” for Lillian in the next group.

            Next Writing Group Meeting: Reintegration of the Group through the Processing of Regret

Interestingly, Lillian had done a great deal of psychological work in the meantime. In fact, she came into the next writing group with a letter of remorse and regret, which she proceeded to read to the writing group. I suspended the usual rotation format to allow Lillian more time to be heard, since it was critical to the whole group to work together through the group impasse, consequent to Lillian’s perceptions of Adrian. Fortunately, every group member was willing to do this. Only Lillian was to become uncomfortable with having so much time to speak, after she finished reading the prepared letter.

In her letter Lillian responded to my question about her transference, and demonstrates that she has now taken her reaction to Adrian quite seriously. She begins to speak with a tone of grief, sadness and remorse. She spells out the nature of her conscious (or “psychic”) regret (Kavaler-Adler, 2013) toward Adrian. Then she elaborates on her transference. We observed how psychic space was opening up for each individual in the group, when Lillian could tolerate her own depressive position based (Klein, 1940) effects of guilt and grief, along with opening herself, beyond her former manic defenses (attitude of contempt), through her acknowledgement of her own regret. Lillian’s acknowledgement of regret allowed her to speak about her transference response with grief and compassion for herself.  Then she could show compassion for Adrian, and even for me. A very new interpersonal group mutuality resulted from this, allowing the group to provide a restored safe transitional space environment, allowing

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– once more – for the members to test their behavior in the communicative skills out in the group, as a transitional and transforming avenue to the world outside. An internal dialectic within Lillian herself was now expanding into an external dialogue between Lillian and Adrian. This consequently was allowing reintegration within the whole group, as intimacy evolved through dialogues between Lillian and Adrian, which would be further developed through the therapeutic mourning regrets group.

We all heard Lillian say in her letter that she had bypassed the bounds of what is acceptable behavior to herself by her comments to Adrian in the last group. Lillian apologized, and said that she could see that she had hurt Adrian by saying how uninterested she was in her. However, she said that she believed that Adrian’s editorial view of the work in the group triggered off, for her, her re-living of her father’s criticisms of her and her creativity, during all the years when she was growing up.  Rather than remembering the pain, she re-lived it in the group, in relation to Adrian. Lillian further explained that she could not know she was experiencing transference, at first, because it was unconscious. However, with contemplation, she realized she had to let in the truth and meaning of what I, as the group leader, and as a psychoanalyst, was saying about that. She also said, with some compassion for me, knowing I have a lot to deal with in this kind of a group process. Lillian, continued, saying that she had seen me work with the interaction of the individual writing-creative process, along with the group interpersonal process, for many years, since she had participated in many of my writing groups.

Finally, Lillian revealed her own anguish and injury. She spoke of her father’s continuous assaults against any form that her creativity would take, saying that it’s a miracle that she could express herself at all after that.  Lillian then reminded us of her father’s mental illness, which had developed along with his failure to succeed in his own art.  She acknowledged the link between her re-living of the pain with her father, and her one-sided view of Adrian, with the transference projections that that entailed. Then Lillian proceeded to declare that she did not want her own writing critiqued in the manner that Adrian was establishing in the group. She also explained that hearing Carol join in with Adrian about her perceived lack of receptivity to criticism had contributed to her feeling less safe in the group. She said that she felt hurt by Carol, with whom she had shared so much.

Lillian said she has been thinking that it might be time for her to move on to another format for her writing, having been in my writing groups for seventeen years, with a break of only a few years. She conjectured that she might need a class in playwriting, where her particular interest in that form of writing would be respected, since now she was suspending poetry and memoir, and concentrating on playwriting.

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            Everyone listened very attentively as Lillian spoke. As always she spoke with a great depth of feeling.  She also had noticeably moved from a place of anger, which could have exploded into rage, into a more thoughtful and self-aware place. This self-aware place gained its containing tranquility from her tolerance of grief and loss, and through the refinement of integrating grief affect with symbolic cognitive meaning, through the conscious ownership of regret and remorse (existential guilt, Kavaler-Adler, 2004, 2006, 2013b). Lillian was confronting the potential loss precipitated by her own aggression, as she was also able to more clearly articulate the cause of her aggression, with her new level of self-awareness. Object loss can be precipitated by one’s own aggression (Kavaler-Adler, 2013b). Therefore, feeling the grief of remorse and regret, as well as of loss, allows for the realization of psychic truth in the form of personal responsibility (Kavaler-Adler, 2004, 2013).  Melanie Klein (1940) wrote of this evolution of the depressive position, as the affect transition from aggression to sadness, which defines self-integration, and allows for the enlarging of the capacity to love.

I have expanded on Klein’s understanding of self-integration through the affect evolution and insight of the depressive position, by theorizing a developmental view of mourning.  This view of mourning allows all clinicians, as well as others, to experience how grief is developmentally advanced by the experience of remorse and regret within guilt, as guilt accompanies the experience of loss (Kavaler-Adler, 1993; 1995; 1996; 2013).

            The Group Responds and Develops through Lillian’s Growth

When Lillian finished her self-expression, she would have been ready for others to begin their turns again, sharing writing in the writing group. However, I was clear that the group members needed to respond to her.

Gerald was the first to speak. He said that he was moved by the letter, but had the odd feeling that there was something kind of suicidal in it, as if Lillian had to kill herself off because of her guilt toward Adrian, and towards her father, because of the hate that she felt, even towards Carol. He chose this opportunity to say that he personally liked the group format as it was, had been very helped by it, and had been greatly helped by Adrian’s commentary about his own writing, even to the point of transitioning into essays and short stories, from poetry.

Then Carol spoke, saying that she felt scared now of losing Lillian, who had become so important to her.  Still, she said she felt she had to back up Adrian. Carol said that she had felt similarly to Adrian that Lillian was somewhat guarded about her work, and only wanted certain kinds of responses to it, but Lillian was not explicitly stating this. She said she would miss Lillian terribly if she

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left the group, and hoped she wouldn’t. She said that she loved Lillian’s work, and she felt Lillian was an enormously important, and powerful, presence in the group.

Another group member, Cynthia, remained rather quiet. However, she did comment that she felt the descent into death-like feelings that Lillian conveyed, as she reacted to Adrian’s statement that she was afraid of Lillian’s anger. Cynthia was aware that Lillian seemed to have experienced Adrian saying that she was afraid of Lillian’s anger as an accusation that she, Lillian, was bad. Cynthia said she could relate to the depth of pain in Lillian’s psychic descent, which she too had felt when she experienced herself as the subject of accusations.

Then Adrian spoke. She said that she really appreciated Lillian’s apology, and appreciated the struggle that Lillian was going through. However, she felt, because of her transference with Lillian, that her mother (transference mother) was threatening to abandon her.  She said that this did not allow her to feel at all free to speak. Adrian continued, saying she thought that Lillian had tremendous power in the group. She even believed that if Lillian threatened to leave the group, she could get everyone else to do whatever she wanted them to do.  She recalled other times when Lillian wanted the group to run in a particular way, and had said so along with a threat of leaving.

As the group leader, I then pointed out that although we always discussed other options, the group format had remained pretty much the same. I added that Lillian, at one point, had wanted me to speak about my publishing and writing experiences, and this had clearly been overruled by the rest of the group, as it probably should have been. However, I added that whether Lillian stayed or terminated, she needed to take time to communicate with the group.  I said that Lillian needed to sort out the decision in terms of her creative process needs versus conflict in the group, so that she could understand her own motives. I asked, was Lillian thinking of leaving because of the projections and transferences within her, and in others in the group, that made her uncomfortable, and which demanded psychological work, or was she thinking of leaving due to creative process needs, such as to deal with playwriting?

Lillian then responded, saying first that she didn’t really feel supported by anyone in the group except Cynthia. She said that she wished right then to feel held, and that Cynthia was giving her that feeling, by understanding the depth of her pain and anxiety. Everyone else, she thought, was making demands on her that she didn’t think she could handle them, because she felt too exposed and vulnerable. She thought that she understood her part in the transferences, and wanted other people to also take responsibility for the group. It didn’t all depend on her!  She would stick with it for a while, and see how she felt in the group, but at the moment she didn’t feel like exposing her work there.

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            This provoked some guilt among the group members. Adrian also felt an anger that she would deal with in her individual sessions, in terms of transference and associations, and defenses, before bringing it back into the group. Lillian also expressed a concern about what went on in my sessions with Adrian, since she was realizing that it was better not to have contact with group members outside the group. I said that Adrian might bring up things about the group during her individual sessions, if they came from her associations, and she and I might then discuss her associations in terms of who the group members represented to her, or what parts of herself they represented. Sometimes, I said, when something came up related to the group, I would suggest to Adrian that she speak about it in the group.

Lillian was receptive to this answer. I was aware, however, that she had a valid concern about what might be said between Adrian and me in her individual sessions, especially since Lillian had no individual sessions of her own. She had had some individual sessions with me many years ago, when she could afford such sessions. She had done some critical work then on her transference with me, which had helped her in the groups with me, and in her work within the groups, as well as in her life. She had told the group more recently, however, that since she experienced me as a mother, she would like to explore more in her transference with me. At times, she said, she felt the writers’ group had interfered with her addressing these issues. This had influenced her decision to rejoin the monthly therapeutic mourning regrets group.

            The Next Stage in the Writing Group

A period of time followed in the group when Lillian held herself back, wanting to make clear that she was not this “mean person” that Adrian sometimes took her to be. She still flinched from Adrian’s comment about fearing her anger, as if she took this to mean that Adrian saw her as an angry woman. It was a critical turning point when I could interpret to Adrian, in an individual session, that her fear of Lillian’s anger was, at least in part, a fear of her own anger projected onto Lillian. Adrian responded powerfully to this interpretation, and used it astutely in a group session with Lillian. She connected this phenomenon, of her own projected anger, with her own history in a way that was evocative for all of us, and which took Lillian off the hook for her transference projections. This allowed Lillian to move closer to Adrian, culminating in their rapprochement in the “therapy and mourning regrets” group.

Then, during a writing group session, Lillian announced that she felt she had gotten an enormous amount from the group, ad valued each person in it, but had decided, after continuing for a while, that

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she really needed a different format to work on her playwriting, and would have to leave this writing group. She maintained that she couldn’t afford both kinds of writing groups.

Adrian responded by saying that she wished Lillian wouldn’t leave, because she felt she had unfinished business with her, and the group was such an important format for he to work out conflicts with women. She said she had always felt frightened of competition with women, always fearing the envy and anger of other women, and also having a difficult time with her own envy. She said she really valued Lillian’s incredible ability to articulate her feelings, and also wanted to see the further development of Lillian’s work. She told Lillian and the group, after a session in which I had interpreted her projection of anger, that it wasn’t Lillian’s anger she was afraid of, as she had thought.  Instead she discovered that it was her own anger she was afraid of!  She said that she had repressed her anger her entire life. Not only wasn’t her anger allowed in her family, but she had never dealt with her anger at her mother, resulting from the time when her parents had separated for a year, when she was nine years old.

Adrian went further with the history of her inhibitions in her aggression. She explained that she had protected her mother by pretending to be grown up, saying to her mother, as they left her father and her home, “I’m glad to have it all behind me.” As they packed up and left, however, Adrian was not at all glad to have it behind her. She declared:

I lied. I was furious! I held myself back, but I wanted to lash out at my mother and scream: ‘Go back there and work this out!’” I was giving up my father, who I adored, and who had adored me, and was giving up my fairytale home, with all my adventures, and with my security. I didn’t want to leave and go to some strange place in another state. At school I was excluded, because I was dressed in expensive clothes, and was forced to ride in a chauffeured limousine. I hated the school, the town, and my mother’s misery there. My mother stayed up late, drinking. I wanted to lash out at my mother, and was terrified of how angry I was. My father had asked me if I wanted to live with him, and I had to shut myself up to protect my mother. He never forgave me!  It was never the same, even when my parents go back together later. I never got my father back in the same way. He never got over feeling rejected. If I had been honest, and could have said what I felt, I would have said I wished to live with him. But that would have killed my mother, and I needed her more than anything. So there I was, pretending to be altogether and grown up, and ‘supporting my mother,’ while burying all my anger and my longing.

Then Adrian spoke of the “longing” that Lillian had profoundly felt, when she read the letter to the group. She said:

Susan said the word ‘longing’ and Lillian sobbed out that grief. In my childhood, I had to bury all of it. No wonder I’m afraid of Lillian having all her feelings. I couldn’t have any of my own. I wish you’d stay so we could work it out, Lillian. I’ve never had a chance to do that with a woman.

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Lillian said that she was very moved by what Adrian said, and she could see the more vulnerable part of Adrian that was usually hidden. However, for herself, she didn’t feel that she had any unfinished business. She believed she had dealt with who Adrian was to her, and she needed a group to focus on her playwriting, and couldn’t afford to stay and pay for both writing groups. She also felt that it was healthy to move on from this particular form of writing group, because she had been working in this way for years. However, she said she was going to rejoin the “Mourning Regrets” group, because she felt that she still had more to learn about her transference with me, Susan. Lillian said that the mourning regrets group allowed for that kind of work in-depth. Adrian responded warmly at first, very relieved that she wouldn’t lose Lillian altogether. Adrian said she was very happy that Lillian would be re-joining the therapeutic mourning regrets group. Adrian said: “That’s great! I’m really glad you’re coming into mourning regrets.” Later, in an individual session, Adrian expressed a more ambivalent reaction, saying she feared Lillian coming into the mourning regrets groups could spoil the group for her. She still had some fear of Lillian. Nevertheless, it was going to prove quite fortuitous for both Adrian and Lillian, and for the entire mourning regrets group, that Lillian made the decision to re-enter that group. Lillian made a clear decision for herself that paid off for her and for others, too.

            Culminating Process in the Mourning Regrets Therapy Group

It was in one particular mourning regrets group that an evolution of events allowed Adrian to hear Lillian in a whole new way. In this group, Adrian came to speak of gratitude and love that helped to open a vulnerable place in her heart.

In the second half of the four hour mourning regrets group, after the meditative visualization, Miriam told Adrian that she was hiding her power by acting so helpless. Miriam said that she knew it was a struggle for Adrian to express herself, but like herself at times, she believed Adrian was “not coming out with it” and was “pulling her punches.” Adrian, at first, felt she was being misunderstood, and then suddenly did come out with it! She responded to Miriam by enumerating all the things she wanted in her life. She risked being open about her desires, instead of hiding them as she has all her life, even from herself. As Adrian listed her wishes, such as to be widely acclaimed as a novelist, re-marry, and give part of her business over to someone else, so that she would have more time to write, Miriam was impressed. The whole group thought it was great that Adrian knew what she wanted!

Lillian, however, had a different reaction. She said that even though Adrian feels competitive with her, and says she’s afraid of envy, she isn’t as interested in the same things as Adrian. Lillian said she’s happy to publish her work, but doesn’t believe that she is as interested in achievement as Adrian.

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She told Adrian that she wasn’t competing in the same arena. Different things are important to her, like the time in the past that Adrian let down her guard in the mourning regrets group, and said something really tender and appreciative of her. Lillian said she wanted to savor that moment, and was really upset that the group leaders (we then had a co-leader), and the group, intruded, and the moment was lost. However, Lillian said that in general Adrian didn’t show that openness, so that when Adrian said she, Lillian, is so important to her, she couldn’t relate to it. Generally, she felt pushed away by Adrian’s attitudes, sarcasm, humor, criticalness, and rejections of what is said to her. She pointed out that even though Adrian says she can receive and take in what is said to her, including a recent comment by Miriam about her, just made in the group, she does not show this. Instead, Lillian told Adrian, she is speaking as if negating everything said that might confront her with her own behavior. Lillian pointed out that Adrian overtly rejected Miriam by proclaiming that Miriam was misunderstanding her.

According to Lillian, even though Adrian proclaims that she takes in, and remembers what she and Miriam and others say to her, she has no way of knowing this or feeling this. “What am I supposed to do, read your mind?” Lillian said to Adrian:

You said in the writing group that I was so important to you, that I was some kind of mother for you. But that’s not what I feel. I feel your harshness, your negations, and your critical judgments. I don’t feel like engaging with you around your ambitions. That’s not what’s so important to me. I want to write, but I’m not so concerned with fantasies of fame and acclaim. What wins me is when you show the vulnerable part of you, as opposed to the ambitious part of you. When you said that sweet thing to me in the “Mourning Regrets” group that time you won me! But then the moment was lost! And it was a moment. Then it all got covered over. When you said to me that you were scared of me, when I returned to this group, I wanted to be with you. I wanted to know what image you had in your mind of me. Who am I to you? What did that mean? But then you went back to hiding.

Now, as Lillian spoke an incredible sweetness came into her voice. The nurturing, caring, loving part of her came alive as she vividly reached out toward Adrian. She also found Adrian hungry to hear what she had to say. However, Adrian said that she feared re-living with Lillian, as well as with Miriam, the shocked and traumatic feeling she had felt in boarding school, when suddenly all the girls turned against her, and she didn’t know what it was about. She had stayed in her room, hidden away, because some girls had spread hideous rumors about her, as they seemed to be jealous when some boys had come to visit her, and not them. Lillian remembered that Adrian felt like any woman might turn on her, just when she was thinking all was fine!  She felt out of control, because she couldn’t control how women would see her. She didn’t know if other women would be envious, or if they would judge her for some reason

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she had no way of knowing about. But she said too that when Lillian spoke of that time when she (Adrian) had opened to her vulnerability, and had said something tender to Lillian, she felt Lillian being there in a different way, in a way that reminded her of her mother, the good part, the best part of her mother.

Adrian said that she knew everything Lillian was saying to her about her defensiveness is true, but it was really hard to hear. She realized that she gets a different response when she’s vulnerable, but she found it really difficult to get to that part of herself. Lillian responded by saying that Adrian is capable of getting to her heart in a way that I spoke about in the visualizations: connecting to the heart. As Lillian spoke, recalling again Adrian’s tender comment that had gotten lost, a comment that she remembered so well, from a Mourning Regrets group two years earlier, Adrian suddenly said, “As you were speaking just a few moments ago, I had the thought that I’m not afraid of Lillian anymore.” Lillian responded, “I knew that.  Somehow I knew that.”

Then Lillian said, with great tenderness, “I know it hurt you when I said I wasn’t interested in you anymore in the writing group, but it was because of the way you hide the vulnerable part of you. I hardly ever get to see it.” As she spoke of the two sides of Adrian, and appealed to Adrian to show the heartfelt part of her more, Adrian was able to stay emotionally open for longer than ever before, in either group. As Lillian spoke sweetly to Adrian of how she keeps things from others in her head, and doesn’t reveal she is taking them in, appearing outwardly rejecting, I recalled my own sense of this with Adrian. I thought of all the times that I was surprised how much Adrian had taken in what I had said to her, and how she used it, because when I spoke Adrian often pushed me away. However, over time this had lessened, particularly in individual sessions, where she had become more open to me.  I even ended up feeling at times like Adrian had been stealing my ideas from me, rather than receiving and acknowledging them, as coming from me. So often, as Lillian was saying, Adrian comes out with sarcastic comments about me, and my interpretations in group, that push me away, as a person, even as she is quoting what I say as an analyst, and using it to understand herself.

This resonance with Lillian’s comments made me feel much closer to Lillian than I had felt for a long time. The compassionate side of her was so strong, when it came out, that it made me forget she could also be cutting, as she had been at those critical times with Adrian. The loving part of Lillian was so powerful now that the whole group seemed deeply and intimately connected. There was a quiet and tranquil ease between Adrian and Lillian. Consequently, Adrian was noticeably more soft and yielding

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than usual. Then Adrian told Lillian that at times like this, Lillian reminded her of her mother – the best, most loving and tender part of her mother.  Everyone in the group, as well as I, felt deeply touched.

Lillian responded by saying that Adrian needs to stay in touch with that inner place where she has her good parents. With reference to something said by me, she said that she agrees with me that we all need an inner connection with the good parents to be able to realize ourselves. She spoke of the movie, “The Buena Vista Social Club,” which Adrian and I had both seen. Lillian speaks of how a musician in the movie, in Cuba, feeds and nurtures the religious statue in his home with food and drink, to feed the spirit that in turn nurtures him. She related this to nurturing the internal good parent object, by connecting to it through the heart, and spoke of her belief that all creativity and self-realization comes from this. She said, “Some people carry pictures of the Virgin Mary for the same reason,” and laughed.  Adrian was right with her now. Adrian says that she know this, and thinks that she should put up all her favorite pictures of the people she loves in the study, where she wants to write.

            A Return to Creativity through Mourning

The talk is coming back full circle to creativity and writing after resolving the interpersonal issues between Lillian and Adrian, and after the group descent into the areas of grief, remorse, regret, and the love that is renewed through grief sadness. Adrian said to Lillian and the group:

I know I need to stay in touch with that place inside of me where the love is, the goodness, the tender part of my mother. When I don’t stay in touch with that place it’s this huge battle, full of frustration, every time I try to write.

It’s clear that Adrian feels nurtured by Lillian, and that she can now symbolically take Lillian in. She can receive her through her words of observation, her interpretation of Adrian’s need, and through her interpretation of Adrian’s hidden capacities for contact. Adrian received Lillian’s insight into the way her capacity for contact through vulnerability can be overridden by her conflicts over competitive impulses that could become a slightly alienating hostility.

In a later group, Adrian was able to expose her critical and rejecting thoughts in a benevolent and benign humor that shared the hidden hostility without enacting it.  She remained aware, related and even entertaining through this, as she listed the contemptuous and angry thoughts she had toward other women in the group during another mourning regrets group meeting. She contained her aggression with loving warmth behind a lighter humor, lighter than the former sarcasm. Through her warmth and humor Adrian demonstrated an observing ego capacity in relationship to hostile and/or competitive impulses, which formerly she was threatened by. Being able to contain her hostile wishes and impulses in humor

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and loving feelings, she became able to free psychic space for observing ego functions. She no longer was compelled (at least at this point) to turn against herself with a persecutory superego (Klein, 1957), or “antilibidinal ego” (Fairbairn 1952), attack in order to unconsciously express her aggression; nor was she compelled to be paralyzed by the conflict around turning these impulses against others, which would inhibit her creativity and interpersonal relations. With conscious ownership of her aggressive fantasies, Adrian could relate to others without fearing that she would destroy them (her mother). She contained her hostility, and neutralized it, through the loving feelings that she had now developed with the group members. Consequently, Adrian contained her hostile wishes in symbolic fantasies, and with the affect of loving warmth that accompanied her new and softer form of humor. Lillian’s engagement with her helped her to this turning point, along with the intimate and intensive work on her defenses in individual sessions.

            Lillian’s Evolution

Lillian is freed up. She takes space in another meeting of the mourning regrets group, to speak of her wish to surrender to me. She says that one reason she returned to the mourning regrets group is to deal with the nature of her attachment to me, and to who I represent to her, and have represented to her over the many years that she has been in my groups. As she speaks about wishing she could surrender to me, instead of holding herself back (as she is aware of doing), wishing she would surrender in the manner of another woman in the group, she opens up in a flood of sobs and cries of grief similar to the time when I mentioned her “longing,” after she read her letter in the writing group. She cries at an orgasmic level. Then she says that she feels like she is experiencing me as her internal primal object, and needs to be able to come close to me. “Otherwise,” she says, “I know I’m missing out and sabotaging myself!”

Following this, Lillian and Adrian would sit together in the monthly mourning regrets group. They giggled together, sitting next to the male group leader, and half flirting with him.  Adrian acknowledged her competitive feelings toward Lillian, and her envy and jealousy of her.

They laughed and laughed! Several groups later, when Adrian was feeling distraught over a current failing on her father’s part to show any affirmation of her as a woman – which reflected the earlier loss of her father’s admiration at the time of her parents’ separation – it was Lillian who quite spontaneously expressed her own admiration for Adrian, telling Adrian how beautiful she looked that day.

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            The Psychic Transition

In Kleinian terms, Lillian at first enacted a neurotic regression into the paranoid-schizoid position, from where she perceived Adrian as persecutory or assaultive.  Lillian heard Adrian as expressing demands from some superior status. Lillian projected her own manic defense onto Adrian, lending to her own split off contempt, with its air of defensive superiority. However, when Lillian began to mourn she experienced the grief, sadness, and remorse consequent to her retaliatory attacks on Adrian (retaliatory against Adrian’s projections of aggression onto Lillian). Lillian consciously suffered regret and remorse, in relation to the one cutting comment she made of Adrian.

Through such grief laden regret and remorse, Lillian softened into a depressive position psychic state of concern (see Winnicott, 1963; Klein, 1940, Kavaler-Adler, 1992). This allowed psychic “potential space” (Winnicott, 1971) to open within herself, as well as in the transitional and interpersonal space between her and Lillian As Lillian owns her own aggression, she moved from the paranoid-schizoid to the depressive position (Kavaler-Adler, 2000, 2003, 2004, 2013). She did so through feeling the grief of hurting Adrian, who, at the unconscious level of primal object relations represented a father-mother whom she has hurt (Klein 1940; 1957; Kavaler-Adler, 1993; 1996).

Feeling the grief, which follows surrendering to object loss and guilt, allowed Lillian to move toward a position of reparation – as opposed to remaining in a position of persecution and retaliation. It is particularly at the point, when Lillian can feel the regret of hurting another that she is able to surrender to grief, and to overtures of reparation (Kavaler-Adler, 2004, 2013).This allowed for mutuality, and for a “capacity for concern” (Winnicott, 1963). Adrian and Lillian both re-owned their split off parts. This furthered self-integration within each individual, and enhanced psychic healing and wholeness. The group process evolved. It continues to evolve from this.

An impasse in the group occurred, due to the paranoid reaction of Lillian, and due to Adrian’s projection of her own anger onto Lillian. The resolution of this impasse came through Adrian’s vulnerable communication of hurt, and through Lillian’s ownership of guilt and grief.  This allowed for a re-integration of the group in parallel with a re-integration in each group member, particularly the two members in psychic conflict and defense.

            Unblocking Creative Motivation

Both Lillian and Adrian benefited, in a sustained way, from the group experiences that enable them to understand the nature of their own anger. They became increasingly free from the transference projections and displacements that had confused their perception of others, and which had motivated

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hostile reactions, and caused them to confuse the past with the present. Each group member was able to feel the loss of the parental objects, which they were protecting by repressing and displacing their anger. Others in the group, who could identify with their experience, benefited from their new understanding of their transference projections as well.

The mourning regrets group has moved forward, with the resolution between Lillian and Adrian. Through being in the group with Lillian and Adrian, others in the group could contact their rage, grief, and frustrated desires and longings, which were inhibited by old ties to primal parent figures. Evolving out of this new freedom, and new self-understanding, has been a new and renewed capacity for pursuing creative work. Both Lillian and Adrian have moved forward on writing projects, following through, and facing self-sabotaging tendencies that were prompted by negative internal editors, which were reflecting identifications with negative parts of their parents in their internal worlds. These internal editors had been projected outward in the interpersonal transference dynamics in the groups.

            Lillian’s Creative Progress

Specifically, Lillian has now been able to own the ambition that she so long denied. This enabled her to bring a long-term writing project to full fruition despite extreme difficulties in the publishing process. Lillian had said that it was miracle that she could create at all, given her battle against an internalized (“negative editor”) father of childhood. She had been stuck before with an internalized father who had continually attacked her with hostile and belittling forms of criticism, for her self-expression. In the face of this, and in the face of Lillian’s self-sabotage of an entire career in another art form, it is Lillian’s monumental achievement that she can now move through the act of writing, so smoothly, that she can finalize a complete book of poetry, memoir, and narrative, which resulted in her first major publication.

For many years Lillian had been in writing groups with me, while also pursuing many forms of writing. She had switched from one form of writing to another, and had received feedback about the writing in the writing groups. In fact, she had opened up areas of mourning in herself, on her own, through reading her writing in the writing groups. She could open the pain of loss, and the anguish of longing, while reading to us in the group. As Lillian thus mourned, she consolidated the lyric of her self-expression in a book that spoke of her formative early life in terms of poetry and poetic narrative. She emerged with an expression of grief that would always renew love, and that crystallized a modern form of memoir. The memoir spoke deeply of her anguished and tormented love for a father, who had always felt compelled to damage himself, and the family he loved. In her writing, Lillian could speak of her

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hate. She could speak of her mother’s love of mothering her daughters, and then having her mothering profoundly disrupted by the envious assaults of her husband, Lillian’s father, who was suffering so much himself.

For the first time, Lillian navigated the rejections of publishing to find a publisher who believed in her work, and who was determined to publish it. However, her relationship with the publisher forced her into a repetition of some of the torments of growing up with her father.  In the middle of the publishing process on her book the publisher began to fall apart himself, just when she was depending on him for the birth of her work in the world. The publisher stopped being a friend and support, and failed at maintaining professional boundaries. Similar to her father who fell apart repeatedly, due to mental illness, and resulting professional failure, the male publisher broke down due to a love affair in his life. The publisher lost the capacity to be aware of Lillian’s professional needs. Lillian felt that her whole life was hanging in the balance because she had not followed through on former opportunities for success, and this seemed like her last chance to seize the day. Feeling dependent on the male publisher, Lillian was vulnerable to submitting to the publisher’s demands for her to comfort him. Not infrequently, she was caught up in phone calls in which only a few minutes were spent discussing her book and its publication, and an hour was spent talking about the publisher’s personal problems

Fortunately, Lillian was able to discuss this situation in the writing group.  In the group, she received critical feedback about the inappropriateness of her publisher’s behavior. She was given support to set limits for herself, and not to be pressed into service as this man’s surrogate mother.

A critical turning point came in Lillian’s ability to deal with this man came when Lillian re-experienced her anger towards her father, in her transference associations with Adrian. Her rage toward her father could become freshly conscious, when she experienced Adrian as the critical father who assaulted her creative efforts. In the meditative visualization during the “Mourning Regrets” group, Lillian cried, as she felt her deeper experience of longing for her father’s love, which lay beneath the surface of her anger, and its transference expression with Adrian. During the meditative visualization Lillian experienced herself as a “bleeding heart,” a vulnerable heart part of her that was bleeding due to the agony of writing her father’s love. Experiencing the anger with Adrian, which connected her to her yearning for her father, allowed Lillian to interpret and understand it, when she felt the same anger at her father again. Then she could further recognize the negative father transference, when she began to project it onto her male publisher.

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CONCLUSION

            Lillian

All this new understanding, through gaining insight in the group of her unconscious transference wishes and anger, allowed Lillian to set more adequate limits with her publisher than she was previously able to do. Owning the power of her anger, which brought self-agency, allowed Lillian to distinguish the effects of her past on her current inhibitions. This further allowed Lillian to demand to have her own needs met with the publisher for attention to her professional work. Then when the publication process was again delayed, Lillian spoke to the mourning regrets group about the disturbing situation, not just to the writing group. The mourning regrets therapy and mourning group, helped Lillian mourn the grief of past career disappointments, since carrying this disappointment within her, until then, had made Lillian vulnerable to being sucked into her publisher’s inappropriate demands. Now Lillian could stand up to the publisher.  She appropriately demanded that the publishing process proceed.  With the help of the group, Lillian came to more clearly distinguish her need to stick with the present opportunity for her books publication, from actions that were self-sabotaging, because they were repetitions of the past, where she would masochistically submit, as if submitting to her father.

Making the distinction between the past and present, Lillian was now equipped to consciously work on the very real difficulties of her present situation. The group and I helped Lillian to see that her mother’s masochistic submission to her father need not result in her own submission to circumstances in the present, due to a regressive identification. Specifically, we helped her understand that her self-sabotage in the past was different from her current attempt to negotiate a difficult situation with a man she was realistically dependent on for her circumscribed professional goals. Soon after her discussion of this issue in the mourning regrets group, where Adrian, as well as the others, worked hard to respond empathically to her dilemma, Lillian announced in the group that her book was on the verge of publication. She stood up to the publisher over many critical editorial and publishing issues, and was triumphant. The group applauded Lillian’s creative process.

            Adrian

Adrian’s tendencies to be blocked or stuck in her creative work were also increasingly ameliorated by the work she did in the two groups. She continued in both for quite a while. As Adrian re-owned the power she had given up to Lillian, due to her transference projections, and due to difficulty facing the anger at her mother that lay behind her projections, she started writing on a more consistent basis. Furthermore, she developed the overall direction of her writing, as she followed her own internal

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emotional journey of mourning. For the first time, Adrian became clear that she wanted to write a novel, not just a short story or play. Now the subject of the novel could emerge naturally, along with the freeing of her association process in treatment. She told us that she was going to write about an aunt who greatly influenced her emotional development as she grew up. In the past she might have been overwhelmed by such a long-term ambition. Now however, following an awareness of the projection process that psychically eviscerated her, she was able to engage in a psychic dialectic between her overall vision of the book and her natural mode of writing in spurts. Through the writing group and the therapeutic mourning group process, Adrian learned that her natural way of writing in spurts captured, and even expanded, a profound moment of experiencing; which, in turn, gave birth to dialogue, visual imagery, character formation, and transformation through descriptive narrative.

In the writing group, Adrian began to read different pieces, which were reflective of moments that conveyed character portraiture. The group was impressed by her ability to capture the immediacy of the moment, and the way in which this allowed her to give birth to colorful and vivid characters. They also observed Adrian’s ability to subtly foreshadow interpersonal interactions through a moment of emotional immediacy, resulting in evocative images that could become full characters, or could be suspended in time as pivotal memories in the formation of a character. Lillian’s view of Adrian as an overbearing critic disintegrated, and the same group that had heard Adrian speak about the critical importance of showing experience, rather than merely intellectually describing it, listened intently to Adrian’s own experiments with this philosophy, as it lived through her own emotional life forming narrative.

Winnicott’s (1971) “creativity of everyday life” blossomed in Adrian as “play” in her writing, as she spontaneously free associated to her memories and emotional experiences in the writing group, as well as in her individual psychoanalysis. Reflective thought, following play, was implied, but purposely not stated, in her fiction writing. Such thought was expressed by her in the writing group. Each moment could live, and become a bead in the string that formed the necklace of the novel. This spontaneous flow of writing could become disrupted by inner compulsions, when Adrian was once again feeling “possessed” by any un-symbolized psychic impulses, which had not yet been formulated in psychic fantasy form. Then she would feel blocked, and ultimately would have to become conscious of unassimilated internal object personifications, such as that of a demon lover, or a controlling mother. When her impulses and their internal object personifications were repressed, she felt depressed, because she was not in touch with her deeper self. She associated it to an early experience of constipation, when

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she was angry at her father, and could not allow herself to be conscious of the feeling (see Kavaler-Adler on the compulsion and blocking of creativity, 1993/2013, 1996/2014).

Another form that Adrian’s creative progress took involved a new synthesis of her business and artistic abilities. Having suffered debt and financial strains running and advertising business, and having overcome all debt through re-owning her emotional power, she now considered a more lucrative business that could be beneficial artistically as well as financially.  By now she was bored with her advertising business and had thought of turning it over to her assistant.  If she could do this, she could pursue the ownership of a theater company, since much of her advertising had been done for theaters. Overall, she hoped this would provide a better income and free up more time to write.

Adrian also had new motivation within the scope of her established advertising agency.  She had choices now that she didn’t have before, because whole new levels of motivation had been opened up. Although Adrian’s potential contacts for initiating such a project had always been there, only after she dealt with her repression, displacement, and projection of her anger through the “developmental mourning” process (Kavaler-Adler 1993/2013, 1996/2014, 1992, 1995, 2000, 2003) could she feel the sustained motivation to write. Such motivation depended on unblocking the flow of Adrian’s love–as in releasing her anger through psychic fantasies, which could serve as internal symbolic containers. Adrian’s contact with her core loving self, which was continually dependent on her awareness of her aggression, allowed Adrian to prosper in her work: specifically to pay off all her debts, to appeal to new clients, and to become increasingly successful financially, as her creativity deepened.  Adrian’s progress illustrated that she had mourned all the losses in her life in depth, which included the primal mourning for her father and mother, and for the death of a sibling.  She had published one profound piece on mourning in a literary magazine.

Mourning loss allowed Adrian to mourn regret as well. She is now more able to grieve the losses promoted by her own defensive processes. She has been learning, through both her individual and group work, about how she blocks her deepest aspirations to create and write. She has been learning that she defensively blocks her capacity to love, by avoiding her anger, whenever she tries to protect her internal mother by protecting her external transference mothers.  Finally, Adrian has learned how her repression and projection of her anger can cause her to convert her aggressive impulses into a cold and critical attitude, which hides her warmth toward others, and also blocks her own creativity, when it is turned against her own self.

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