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Potpuno razumijevanje nekog stava zahtijeva vrednovanje svih onih svjesnih, a naročito, nesvjesnih procesa, koji se zbivaju u pojedincu i izazivaju potrebu za upravo takvim stavom, te stvaraju uvjete za njegov razvoj. Dok je u humanističkoj religiji Bog slika čovjekovog višeg bića, simbol onog što čovjek potencijalno jest ili mora postati, u autoritarnoj religiji Bog je jedini posjednik onog što je izvorno pripadalo čovjeku: njegovog uma i ljubavi. Što Bog postaje savršeniji, to nesavršeniji postaje čovjek. On projicira u Boga ono najbolje što ima u sebi i tako se osiromašuje. Tako Bog ima svu ljubav, svu mudrost, svu pravdu - a čovjek je lišen tih kvaliteta, on je prazan i siromašan. Počeo je s osjećajem neznatnosti, a sad je ostao sasvim bez snage i bespomoćan; sve su njegove snage projicirane u Boga. Taj mehanizam projekcije isti je onaj koji možemo zamijetiti u međuljudskim odnosima podložnog mazohistièkog karaktera, gdje jedna osoba živi u strahu od druge, te joj pripisuje svoje vlastite snage i težnje. To je onaj isti mehanizam koji navodi ljude da vođama čak i najnehumanijih sustava pripisuju kvalitete kao što su nadnaravna mudrost i dobrota.
Kako se odnosi čovjek prema tim svojim najvrednijim snagama, pošto ih je projicirao u Boga? One su se odvojile od njega i u tom procesu čovjek se otuđio od samoga sebe. Sve što je imao sada pripada Bogu, a njemu nije ništa preostalo. Njegov jedini pristup samome sebi vodi kroz Boga. Obožavajući Boga on pokušava doći u dodir s onim dijelom svoga bića što ga je izgubio uslijed projekcije. Pošto je Bogu dao sve što ima, on moli Boga da mu vrati dio onoga što je prvobitno bilo njegovo. Ali izgubivši sve vlastito, on ostaje sasvim na milost i nemilost Bogu. On se nužno osjeća kao »grešnik« budući da se lišio svega što je dobro, i samo pomoću božje milosti može zadobiti ono što ga jedino čini humanim. I da bi nagovorio Boga da mu dade nešto svoje ljubavi, on mu mora dokazati kako je potpuno lišen ljubavi; da bi nagovorio Boga da ga vodi svojom većom mudrošću, on mu mora dokazati do koje je mjere lišen razboritosti čim je prepušten samome sebi.
Otuđenost čovjeka od vlastitih snaga ne čini čovjeka samo ropski zavisnim od Boga, nego i lošim. On postaje čovjek bez vjere u sebe i svog bližnjeg, bez iskustva svoje vlastite ljubavi, svoje vlastite moći uma. Posljedica je toga razdvajanje »svetog« i »svjetovnog«. U svojim svjetovnim aktivnostima čovjek djeluje bez ljubavi, a u onom sektoru svog života koji je rezerviran za religiju on se osjeća grešnikom (što stvarno i jest, budući da živjeti bez ljubavi znači živjeti u grijehu) i pokušava ponovo osvojiti nešto od svoje izgubljene ljudskosti uspostavljajući kontakt s Bogom. Istovremeno, on pokušava zadobiti oproštaj ističući vlastitu bespomoćnost i bezvrijednost. Tako nastojanje da se dobije oproštaj rezultira aktiviranjem onog istog životnog stava iz kojega njegovi grijesi i potječu. Ukliješten je u bolnu dilemu. Što više veliča Boga, to prazniji sam postaje. Što se osjeća prazniji, to se više osjeća kao grešnik. Što se osjeća grešniji to više veliča Boga - i to manje je sposoban da sebe sama ponovo zadobije. Analiza religije ne smije se zaustaviti na razotkrivanju onih psiholoških procesa u čovjeku koji su u osnovi njegovog religioznog iskustva, ona mora poći dalje, sve dok ne otkrije uvjete koji omogućuju razvoj bilo autoritarne bilo humanističke karakterne strukture, odnosno iz kojih izrastaju različiti uvjeti religioznog iskustva. Takva sociopsihološka analiza odvela bi nas daleko izvan područja ovih poglavlja. Ipak, mogu se ukratko iznijeti osnovne tvrdnje. Ono što ljudi misle i osjećaju ima svoj korijen u njihovom karakteru, a njihov je karakter oblikovala sveukupna konfiguracija njihove životne prakse - preciznije, socioekonomska i politikča struktura njihovog društva.
U društvima u kojima vlada moćna manjina, koja mase drži u podložnosti, pojedinac će biti toliko prožet strahom, toliko nesposoban da se osjeća jak i nezavisan, da će njegovo religiozno iskustvo biti autoritarno. Obožava li on nekog neumoljivog zastrašujućeg Boga ili slično shvaćenog vođu - prilično je nevažno. S druge strane, tamo gdje se osoba osjeća slobodna i odgovorna za svoju vlastitu sudbinu, ili spada u onu manjinu koja teži za slobodom i nezavisnošću, razvija se humanističko religiozno iskustvo. Povijest religija pruža obilje dokaza ove korelacije između socijalne strukture i raznih vrsta religioznog iskustva. Rano kršćanstvo bilo je religija siromašnih i potlačenih; povijest borbe religioznih sekti protiv autoritarnog politièkog pritiska uvijek iznova potvrđuje to isto temeljno pravilo; židovstvo, koje je imalo snažnu antiautoritarnu tradiciju - budući da svjetovna vlast nikad nije imala dovoljno prilike da vlada i izgradi legendu o svojoj mudrosti - razvilo je humanistički aspekt religije do zavidnog nivoa. S druge strane, kad god se religija udružila sa svjetovnom vlašću, nužno je postajala autoritarna. Stvarni pad čovjeka je upravo njegovo otuđenje od samoga sebe, njegovo podvrgavanje sili, okretanje čovjeka protiv sebe, pa makar to bilo pod maskom obožavanja Boga.
Iz duha autoritarne religije proizlaze dvije pogreške u zaključivanju koje se svejednako koriste kao argumenti za teističku religiju. Prvi argument glasi: Kako možeš kritizirati isticanje zavisnosti čovjeka od sile koja ga transcendira; nije li čovjek zavisan od sila izvan sebe koje ne može razumjeti, a još manje obuzdati?
Zaista, čovjek je zavisan; on podliježe smrti, starenju, bolestima; čak i da je u stanju ovladati prirodom i potpuno je iskoristiti, još uvijek bi on i njegova Zemlja ostali male točkice u svemiru. Međutim, jedno je uočiti zavisnost i ograničenje, a nešto je sasvim drugo prepustiti se toj ovisnosti, obožavati silu o kojoj zavisiš. Shvatiti realistično i trijezno do koje su mjere naše snage ograničene, bitan je dio mudrosti i zrelosti; obožavanje toga je mazohističko i samouništavajuće. Prvo je skromnost, a drugo samoponižavanje. Razliku između realističke spoznaje naših granica i uživanja u podložnosti i bespomoćnosti možemo proučiti u kliničkom istraživanju mazohističkih karakternih crta. Nailazimo na ljude koji pokazuju sklonost da navuku bolest, nesretni slučaj, ponižavajuće situacije; ljude koji umanjuju i slabe sami sebe. Oni vjeruju da upadaju u takve situacije protiv svoje volje i namjere, ali analiza njihovih nesvjesnih motiva pokazuje da ih zapravo vode najracionalnije tendencije koje se mogu naći u čovjeku, naime nesvjesna želja da se bude slab i bespomoćan; oni nastoje da pomaknu os svoga života prema silama nad kojima nemaju kontrolu i tako izbjegnu slobodu i osobnu odgovornost. Nadalje, nalazimo da mazohističke tendencije obično prati njihova potpuna suprotnost, tendencija da se vlada i dominira nad drugima, i da mazohistička i dominirajuća tendencija čine dvije strane autoritarne karakterne strukture. Takve mazohističke tendencije nisu uvijek nesvjesne. U otvorenom obliku susrećemo ih u seksualnoj mazohističkoj perverziji, gdje je ispunjenje želje za vlastitim poniženjem i povredom uvjet za seksualno uzbuđenje i zadovoljenje. Nalazimo ih također u odnosu prema vođi i državi u svim autoritarnim svjetovnim religijama. Tu je eksplicitni cilj odreći se vlastite volje i podvrgavanje vođi ili državi doživjeti kao pravu nagradu.
Druga pogreška u teološkom mišljenju usko je povezana s onom koja se tiče ovisnosti. Tu mislim na argument da mora postojati sila ili biće izvan čovjeka, budući da u čovjeku nalazimo neiskorjenjivu čežnju da se poveže s nekim izvan sebe. Zaista svako zdravo ljudsko biće osjeća potrebu da se poveže s drugima, osoba koja je izgubila tu sposobnost potpuno je nenormalna. Ne čudimo se da je čovjek u mašti stvorio likove s kojima se povezuje, koje voli i mazi, budući da oni nisu prevrtljivi i nedosljedni kao ljudska bića. Da je Bog simbol čovjekove potrebe da voli, jednostavno je i lako shvatljivo. Međutim, dokazuje li postojanje i intenzitet ove ljudske potrebe tla postoji neko biće izvan nas, koje odgovara ovoj potrebi? Taj zaključak isto je tako bez dokaza kao što naša najjača želja da volimo nekoga ne dokazuje da postoji osoba u koju smo zaljubljeni. To dokazuje jedino našu potrebu i, možda, našu sposobnost da volimo.

Ovaj tekst opisuje vjeru kao psiho poremecaj, sto vjera naravno nije. Opet ateista pokusava da dijagnosticira vjernike

Ma meni je muka od nekih "vjernika" kad ih vidim...

e sada bi za tebe "ljudi od nauke" rekli da projektujes neko svoje nezadovoljstvo na te "vjernike"...

OK, znaci ja sam prosvjetljen.

ne vidim u cemu je razlika, mislimo na "vjernike" sa navodnicima...

a ovo je sada nova teza "ljudima od nauke" sta se sa google lazarevic desava?!

Ala pretra ti nas sa tom psihologijom

Belief and Imagination is written within a contemporary Kleinian framework, but it should be accessible to analysts of any persuasion. The starting point for these explorations is a set of questions that unify and inform a wide range of subjects of analytic interest: 1) What is “the status of phantasies in the mind of the individual? … When are they regarded as facts, probabilities, possibilities or mere fancies?” (p. 1); What is the “internal relationship of subjectivity to objectivity” (p. 1) and how does it originate and develop in the primitive oedipal triangle; and 3) What and where is the Imagination, and how is it to be construed in any modern model of the mind?

Intrinsic to these questions is the individual's relationship to knowledge, the search for which Britton accords full instinctual status: “I regard the epistemophilic instinct (Wissentrieb) to be on a par with and independent of the other instincts"

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“Know then thyself, presume not God to scan,
The proper study of mankind is man.”
(Alexander Pope – from Selections from an “Essay on Man”)

The book starts with an introduction that tells us about the main issues that will be dealt with and the psychoanalysts the author acknowledges as his source of inspiration. Freud, Klein, Bion, Winnicott (unusual for a Kleinian, Winnicott’s presence floats in the atmosphere where not explicitly mentioned), Betty Joseph, Herbert Rosenfeld, O’Shaugnessy, Steiner, are the most frequently quoted.

Then there is Thomas Kuhn (author of ‘The structure of scientific revolutions’), who is the source of the mathematical formula that comes up in chapter 6, ‘Before and after the depressive position,’ where Britton introduces some new ideas regarding Klein’s established theory of psychotic positions. Kuhn is also the theoretical frame of reference for ‘Publication Anxiety,’ which is the theme of the last chapter. Last but not least there is a list of poets. Mainly Wordsworth, Milton, Coleridge, Rilke and Blake. Why do they appear in this book?



The author lets us know that poetry has been a passion of his (needless to say when you have read the book) and that he also believes that poets, together with philosophers and theologians, have explored the same areas psychoanalysts have. What anyone can draw from this is that Britton is a widely open-minded author and analyst who is concerned with the study of man.
Though the book is based on papers that have been written over a period of some fifteen years, its structure is one of a well-integrated unit. The issues that Britton presents are related to one another like pearls on a thread along the different chapters.

Thus belief, counter-belief, imagination, phantasy, as-if syndrome, borderline syndrome, fear of chaos, complacency, containment, countertransference, daydreams, fictions, epistemic narcissism, illusions, malignant misunderstanding, thin-skinned and thick-skinned narcissism, the ‘other room’, objectivity and subjectivity, pathological organisations, defensive organisations, third position and triangular psychic space, and visions, are developed continuously as you go on reading. In order to gain clarity, Britton takes you through a winding way that goes from concepts to theory, from theory to case material and from there to poetry, in cycles that resemble the growth of a helicoid. You are never brought back to the same place, even if you have the false impression that you are. This is the feeling the reader gets when travelling with the author through the following chapters.


‘Belief and psychic reality’ is an overture to this work with definitely new melodies. What long has been established as psychic reality is minutely examined and deconstructed into phantasy, belief, counter-belief, disbelief, knowledge and disorders of the function of belief. Belief seems to be in the realm of psychic reality, the counterpart of religious beliefs in the external world. Without beliefs in what is going on in your internal theatre and in what your perceptions tell you about the external world, you are in a psychic and social unreality. But if you cannot relinquish (another term that comes up many times here) your primitive beliefs for new ones as you go on living and gain in experience, you remain what the author later on explains further, an ‘epistemic narcissist,’ like Blake. In order to attune your thinking apparatus, it is necessary to go from the paranoid-schizoid position to the depressive position and to relinquish and mourn for your previously established beliefs. Only then will one be fit for living in the world and finding one’s way through thinking. Belief, says Britton, is in the realm of knowledge (K in Bion’s term) - what attachment is in the realm of love (L link for Bion).


‘Naming and containing’ departs from Bion’s container and contained concepts and the function of mother's reverie, in order to achieve the internalisation of an object that, through containing notions and emotions internally, helps recognize them, symbolise their meaning, and finally operate with thoughts. If one lacks such an object (as borderline and psychotics certainly do), one cannot keep precursors of thought in mind. There are three routes through which these primitive and non-symbolised elements can exit: through the body causing psychosomatic disorders, through the sense organs causing hallucinations, or through the muscular system by means of symptomatic action. Miss A is the patient through whom Britton illustrates his points with interesting clarity.


‘Oedipus in the depressive position’, ‘Subjectivity, objectivity and triangular space’ and ‘Before and after the depressive position’ are linked together. The main issue here is that the Oedipus situation is connected with the realisation that one is not the only possessor of each one of the parent’s love separately, and that the Oedipus complex is an illusion, a counter-belief in Britton’s language, utilised as a defense against the former realisation. To come to terms with the Oedipus situation requires the working through of the depressive position, and in order to achieve this, the Oedipus complex has to be worked through. One seems to depend on the other. This gives us a new perspective to differentiate what we usually see as one single issue: Oedipus situation and Oedipus complex. Certainly if this realisation is not tolerated - for it implies the negative realisation about mother’s and father’s separate single love for only the child - the whole thought can be attacked from inside and evacuated, as Bion taught us, into a degraded product. This may happen through any of the three exits mentioned above; a thought or even a precursor of a thought can be evacuated from the mind. This is close to what Freud has called Verwerfung.


Triangular space is also related to the achievement of the depressive position and its working through. Triangular space seems to be an imaginary conceived space that allows one to be observer of him or herself while being oneself. The integration of subjective and objective experience is also an aim of the depressive working through, relinquishing all previous monocular vision and knowledge. Blake, as Britton shows us in the last chapters of the book, was far from achieving or willing to achieve this aim. Schizoid and borderline patients seem to have developed different means of keeping the integration of subjectivity and objectivity at bay. Schizoid, called thick-skinned patients by Britton, remain hyper-objective and look at themselves as if they were a third party (the analyst, for instance), while borderline thin-skinned patients remain hyper-subjective and reject the third position view of themselves. This picture reminds us of Bion’s reversal of perspective as a defense against depressive pain. It is either/or instead of either/and. Integration is what has to be avoided for fear of chaos.


The suspension of belief and the ‘as-if syndrome’ deals with defensive manoeuvres, in order to achieve a rigid balance instead of integration and psychic (catastrophic) change. In Before and after the depressive position, Kuhn’s concepts of scientific new paradigm and post-paradigm states are in the background. It presents a more general theory about the belief system as a counterpart of scientific knowledge applied to the working through of the Oedipus complex into the Oedipus situation. This requires mourning and depressive relinquishment of previously established beliefs (like the early Oedipus complex itself) and later on all other beliefs that have to be tested in the inner as well as the external world. Thus, this chapter is an extension from sexuality to epistemology. Bion’s epistemic Oedipus vertex is at hand here.
Complacency in analysis and everyday life is about another variety of patients that seem to utilise their intelligence in order to hinder the analyst and the analysis from reaching them. Here, too, catastrophic anxiety is menacing the self of these people who know well (unconsciously) why they have become experts in allowing their analysts to develop their analyses, making them believe that everything progresses while nothing happens (impasse). Complacency is a kind of passivity used defensively in order to convince the analyst that there is no resistance, and possibly, I believe, that both could analyze some nonessential issue and abandon what is being really dreaded for fear of chaos; that is, psychic change. This picture is a variation of the as-if syndrome.


The analyst’s intuition: selected fact or overvalued idea is an application to the analyst’s mind, while at work with his or her patient, of what has been said about beliefs in the first chapter. Britton quotes Balint’s (almost mean) assertion that Kleinian analysts act omniscient, causing their patients to passively submit to them. He reminds us that this is not what one would think of a true Kleinian. Perhaps there is something in Kleinianism or in Kleinian technique, however, that can either cause this impression, or actually develop into a misuse in the realm of omniscience. It is sad to say, but this criticism is familiar to us in different latitudes. Bion’s suggestion to suspend memory and desire in favour of intuition, (Klein herself was undoubtedly a great “intuitionist”) made the employment of intuition valuable but risky. The risks we run under this technique are addressed here. One would only wonder why Meltzer’s Routine and inspired interpretation (1973) and Delusion of clarity of insight (1976) have not been quoted as they are important contributions to the theme.


In Daydream, phantasy and fiction, a further development of belief, imagination and phantasy is presented. There are phantasies that express psychic reality and others that, in a defensive mood, express psychic unreality. Super-realism can also be employed to avoid psychic reality. Thus the aim here is avoiding or denying psychic reality. This theme returns in one of the chapters on William Blake, when Britton tries to solve an apparent paradox: why is it that a misguided belief can be the basis of a great poet or poetic creation? He answers that Blake (like other artists – Dali?) is truthful when he describes his follies poetically, and that it is this sad truth that we aesthetically appreciate as art.


The other room and poetic space reminds me of André Green’s (1974) discrepancy with Freud’s position, who thought that the Wolf Man had actually witnessed his parents’ intercourse. Britton, like Green, takes as a starting point in this chapter that the development of phantasy takes place only when the parents’ room is closed to the child’s eye. Hence ‘the other room.’ The primal scene is a construction of the mind and belongs to a phantasy, according to Freud, rooted in Urphantasien that are inborn to the human species. The ‘other room,’ the space of imagination where phantasies can grow, has to be necessarily a blank space, like Bertrand Lewin’s white screen onto which dreams can be projected.


Four further chapters are Britton’s divertimento before this beautiful book comes to an end. He has already confessed that he is an amateur of poetry. And here we meet Wordsworth, Coleridge (briefly), Rilke and Blake. Analysing the infant babe lines of Wordsworth’s The Prelude, he offers that Klein’s findings on early infantile development were already present in the poet’s mind. And why not? True poets are in touch with human nature (even with psychosis as Blake proves), and Britton seemingly loves poets and poetry as much as he loves Melanie Klein. He utilises here, again, his formula borrowed from Kuhn, to reach the conclusion mathematically that Coleridge and Wordsworth had collapses in their creative lives at different points of the depressive position (and formula): one before and the other after the depressive outcome. Rilke, the German poet, poses a psychoanalytic riddle: how is it possible that someone with such an unfortunate infantile background becomes such a wonderful creator? We are familiar with people who, having had dreadful infantile experiences, become outstanding personalities, while others with a seemingly favourable background, collapse. I said Britton wrote these chapters as his personal divertimento, and the reader will enjoy following the author in search of a scientific solution.


When reaching Milton’s Paradise Lost and comparing it to Blake’s Marriage of heaven and hell, Britton plays his best game. He thinks in the way of a double perspective (the inverse of reversal of perspective) and so makes us look at Milton on a tandem with Herbert Rosenfeld, competing against Blake with Winnicott. What seems a well-achieved object related self for Rosenfeld-Milton (and probably Wordsworth and Rilke too), is an adaptive false self with a split off true self for Winnicott-Blake. The former team considers destructive narcissism to be what the latter consider the true self. What is the expression of a true self for one team is taken as a psychotic breakdown for the other. Extrapolating these ideas one could reach a stunning conclusion (and why not?): psychosis is more real (true) than neurosis and there is no way of remaining one’s own true self outside primary or psychotic narcissism. So what the majority call sanity is nothing but alienation. The reader can make his own choice in the game.


Britton closes his creative opera with a chapter on Publication Anxiety, probably rooted in his own experience as the writer of this book. Repeating a melodic theme he has developed earlier, but this time in a different tempo and orchestration, he tells us what human anxieties are to be faced when making private knowledge public. He takes us from personal experiences to literary authors and to theoretical conceptualisation. For instance, utilizing Kuhn’s ideas on the life cycle of a paradigm from rise to fall, he comes to the conclusion that the nature of publication anxieties will depend on the phase the paradigm that is in the background of the ideas made public, is going through. Two growing fears are put forward here taking Charles Darwin for illustration: (1) The paranoid fear of being destroyed by the audience (the Establishment in Bion’s terms); and (2) The depressive fear of being held responsible for the destruction of the Establishment the new ideas may cause. ‘Distortions’ of one’s own ideas in one’s publications may appear as a neurotic symptom.



They are intended to satisfy both the desire to communicate one’s own thoughts (perhaps an innate drive rooted in the Id?) and the desire to be complacent with one’s own persecutory or depressing Superego.
The result of Britton’s attempt to publish his thoughts has been successful, and the reader will enrich him or herself both with a good piece of true psychoanalytic creative ideas, as well as literary and poetical culture. The profoundness of the developments in the book requires a thoughtful reader who can take his time to mentally digest what the author is offering.

Doktorice google, zadnjih godina imam problema sa hronicnom vjerom, s vremena na vrijeme mi dodje neodoljiva zelja da zapjevam a nekako mi se snaga utrostrucuje tako da mi nista nije tesko i osjecam potrebu da se oduprem tromosti i konformitetu uma. Posebno me uznemiravaju navike poput hronicnog nepusenja, nepsovanja, izbjegavanja alkohola, crnih i izopacenih misli, te zdravog razmisljanja i zelje da cinim dobro. Najsimptomaticnija mi je ipak dugotrajna upala nade u buducnost koja povremeno dovodi do oticanja i nabreknuca samopouzdanja u mene i vjere u sretan ishod svega sto cinim jer duboko i hronicno vjerujem da je Bog uz mene svakog trenutka, 24h dnevno, znaci cak i kad ja spavam - on ne spava. Sta da radim doktorice google? Imate li neki frojdovski savjet kako da se vratim u NORMALU?