Object Relations: A Secret and Undiscovered Murderer

Why am I obsessed with defamatory accusations that were made about me twenty years ago? I am speaking specifically about accusations made by my former employer and the D.C. government that I was potentially violent and even homicidal. Does my obsession speak to a propensity to violence? Am I in fact potentially violent or worse?

An astute psychoanalyst might offer the following observation: "Mr. Freedman is obsessed with defamatory allegations made about him because he has a guilty conscience. He has a guilty conscience not because he is in fact guilty of anything. His ruminations about violence and murder concern, in no way, a disposition to criminality.

Mr. Freedman has a guilty conscience because he was brainwashed to believe, by his family, that he was evil, 'a secret and undiscovered murderer' -- a monster, a 'Caliban.'"

Discussing the work of the psychoanalyst Melanie Klein, Jay R. Greenberg and Stephen A. Mitchell write: "Klein extended the primacy of the depressive position to subsume the Oedipus complex itself, which is redefined and now portrayed largely as a vehicle for depressive anxiety and attempts at reparation. Depressive anxiety is never fully overcome, she suggests: the fate of one's objects in the face of one's own conflictual feelings remains a central concern throughout life. All loss is experienced as a result of one's own destructiveness and as a retaliation for past hatefulness and injuries. Through loss, the world and one's own insides are experienced as depleted and desolate. One's love and capacity to create and protect good relations with others are felt to be impotent and paltry. Good experiences with others, by contrast, augment the belief in the power of one's love and reparative capacities. Hatefulness and malice can be accepted and forgiven; others can be approached with a sense of hope and possibility. Real other people are extremely important in Klein's later formulations. The child regrets the damage he feels he has inflicted upon his parents. He attempts to repair that damage, to make good, over and over again. The quality of his relations with his parents and the quality of his subsequent relations with others determine the sense he has of himself, in the extremes, either as a secret and undiscovered murderer or as a repentant and absolved sinner." Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory at 126-127 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983).

The psychoanalyst Otto Kernberg, M.D. (Cornell University Medical Center), was highly influenced by Melanie Klein's theories. Did you know that Dr. Kernberg's late wife, Paulina Kernberg, M.D., was the Justice Department's expert in the Elian Gonzalez case (the Deputy U.S. Attorney General at that time is the current U.S. Attorney General)? Did you know that the Kernbergs' daughter, Alina Kernberg, Esq. is a friend of -- and coauthored a book with -- Jane Ginsburg, Esq., the daughter of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg? (Am I allowed to say that?) A few years ago I sent an email to Professor Jane Ginsburg -- she's a law professor at Columbia University -- I said: "I think your mother is a great lady." A few years ago, upon the death of Paulina Kernberg, M.D., I wrote a tribute to her on my blog, "My Daily Struggles." Am I stalking the Kernbergs? Will that get me a life sentence in Supermax?

http://dailstrug.blogspot.com/2006/04/gotterdammerung-in-memoriam-paulina.html

And, by the way, according to the George Washington University Medical Center I lack insight. The McClendon Center (Didi Bailey, M.D.) said the same thing about me in an initial assessment written in May 2009. And that, as we say in the trade, is good for business!