Narcissus Rejects – the surrender to Merciless Beauty

“She was dazzling-- alight; it was agony to comprehend her beauty in a glance.”

“There's no beauty without poignancy and there's no poignancy without the feeling that it's
going, men, names, books, houses--bound for dust--mortal--”

“She was beautiful-- but especially she was without mercy.

He must own that strength that could send him away.”

She was beautiful, but not like those girls in the magazines. She was beautiful, for the way she
thought. She was beautiful, for the sparkle in her eyes when she talked about something she
loved. She was beautiful, for her ability to make other people smile, even if she was sad. No, she
wasn't beautiful for something as temporary as her looks. She was beautiful, deep down to her
soul. She is beautiful.

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Beautiful and the Damned

It s eems both a great pity and yet fully plausible that the huge s ignificance of the Aes thetic
Conflict (as propounded by Meltzer and Harris Williams in their co-written book “The
Apprehension of Beauty: The Role of Aesthetic Conflict in Development, Art and Violence” has
not eas ily been ass imilated into “mains tream” ps ychoanalytic theory. In s ome cas es it has
arous ed bemus ement, be wilderment and annoyance. (Grotstein – it’s just because Meltzer
had a particularly beautiful wife.”)

As with Melanie Klein’s theory of uncons cious envy, the theory that the human infant really
struggles seriously with the emotional impact of the beauty of the World - initially that
world being its mother - is a very complex, yet far-reaching concept – affected by, and
affecting, almos t every as pect of the ps yche. Like uncons cious envy, the s tifling of our capacity
to be moved by beauty impinges on the capacity for giving and receiving love – indeed, on the
capacity to maintain faith in the whole world as a benevolent and generous creation of which
we are invited to drink in and to enjoy.
If we are unable to find, or to enjoy, beauty in our daily worlds , then like Iago in Othello, we are
doomed to a faithless life of wrecking, cynicis m, s cavenging and s poiling – a truly joyless and
fringe-dwelling experience.
Marlowe and Shakes peare knew that Beauty was capable of – incapable of not - “provoking”
immensely conflictual feelings of Love, and of Death.

Your beauty was the cause of that effect;

Your beauty : which did haunt me in my sleep
to undertake the death of all the world ,
So I might live one hour in your swee t breast . GLOUCESTER (Richard III)

And Freud intuited, in 1919, that:

“It i s only rarely that a psychoanalyst feels impelled to investigate the subject of aesthetics, even when aesthetics is
understood to mean not merely the theory of beauty but the theory of the qualities of feeling. He works in other
strata of mental life and has little to do with the subdued e motional impulses which, inhibited in their aims and
dependent on a host of con current factors, usually furnish the material for the study of aesthetic.”

The Un canny (1919, p. 219).

Ovid (Metamorphoses) was aware of Beauty’s at once transfixing and (ps ychologically)
metamorphic capability - for if we truly apprehend Beauty – we mus t bear the provocation of
our most intense and raw feelings , without des troying the aes thetic impact – which becomes
the lifeblood of our growing s elves - our capacity for love, hopefulness, gratitude and change.
But the ability of Beauty to trans form, to work its effects in an emotional way, were rarely
mentioned in the trans ference/counter- trans ference field of ps ychoanalytic “nuts and bolts”
clinical work until Donald Meltzer and Meg Harris Williams produced The Apprehension of
Beauty.

“The ordinary devote d mothe r pre se nts to he r ordi nary be autiful baby a complex obje ct of
ove rwhelming inte re st, both se nsual and i nfra-sensual . He r outward be auty . . . bombards hi m wi th
an e moti onal ex perience of a passionate quali ty, the re sul t of his bei ng able to see [he r] as 'be auti ful '.
But the me ani ng of hi s mother's behavior, of the appearance and di sappe arance of the bre ast and of
the li ght i n he r eyes, of a face ove r whi ch emotions pass li ke the shadows of cl ouds ove r the
l andscape, are unknown to hi m.” Meltzer (p.22).

With the s cent of s uch troubling “aes thetic doubt” in the wind, the baby might ins tead
revers e the gears of development and dis mantle (Meltzer thought that dismantling was a key
defense in autistic states of non-mind) s uch a differentiation by s ticking only to the s urface
and appearance of the beautiful mother in what Meltzer calls “adhes ive identification”.
However, this will always interfere with what Grots tein calls the ques t for the Object of
Des tiny, which I take to mean, an aes thetic, loved object which ins pires intens e curios ity
and awe, but which als o reciprocates the feelings, s o that one gathers a s imilar interes t in
one’s own internal mys teries – probably the mos t important factor, apart from mental
s uffering, that brings a patient to analysis . Such an object may never be found externally, but
its beatific, mus e-ical qualities , internally, give not only eternal hope and Faith, but als o
ins pirational fuel to explore and to enjoy the Mys terious , in both the external and internal
worlds .

I will now try to adumbrate s ome primary component hues in the white light of the Harris
Williams -Meltzer concept of “aes thetic conflict”, and then give s ome very condens ed examples
of each of thes e – both clinically and through film and literature. I will als o make a few
comments about the inter-relations hip of aes thetic conflict and Narcissus.

Theoretically, the emotional wells prings of aes thetic conflict can be s egregated,
artificially, although in the real life of the mind, they always mix and flow and congeal in
varying admixtures and proportions for each individual, and in each new moment of
passionate engagement, and its avoidance.

The particularly important strains of aesthetic conflict that I will illustrate here are:

1. The trans ient, evanes cent, ephemeral nature of Beauty invokes depressive pains of loss ,
and an apprehens ion of mortality and limitation in the face of Death and Time and Oedipal
res triction. (* see FSG quote on dust ..)
This might be symbolically expressed in a culture by the celebration of yearly cycles
through festivities, or even more specifically, in many, by the ephemeral nature of fire and
light – such as the bittersweet observance of New Years Eve through fireworks. The light
rises, reaches an ecstatic crescendo, and then quickly fades – as the year it “sees out”.

2. The fear of submitting and helpless ly surrendering, to Beauty – in order to apprehend it.
One mus t s ubmit to Faith in O. (Bion.) and therefore lay ones elf open to “catas trophic”
change. This may often be experienced as a wounding or cas tration, rather than a deeply
poignant life-changing moment – what Grotstein and Bollas would see as facing one’s “destiny”.

3. One always ris ks the yearning, anguis hed pain of un-reciprocation.

To name but a few famous examples from literature: Ophelia, Echo and Jude the Obscure.

4. Beauty may lead to danger – unleas hing the terror of los ing one’s s elf, s oul (Faus t) or
even life. I’ll expound on this via a harrowing cinematic example.

5. Envy and awe of the Creator mus t be born, in the light of a realization of the fearful
asymmetry between ones elf and the “Godhead” - Bion’s awful term for the Creator.)

In order to convey s ome more detailed des cription of thes e components , I am going to use both
 clinical material and a mélange of brief examples from film and literature. Becaus e every
clinical s truggle with aes thetic conflict is highly pers onal and idios yncratically es oteric, I have
taken the ris k of us ing an accumulation of multifarious episodes from all of thes e s ources to
build a composite picture of the above five elements of Aesthetic conflict. But the reader
mus t be prepare d to take a kind of bumpy magic carpet ride, in good faith, rather than be
pres ented with very lengthy, or inappropriate, cas e material from a s ingle s ource.

Two Clinical Examples

Two patients, both of whom had never really felt responded to as warm, lively children.

The first patient had been fighting her own curios ity about us ing the couch for two years -
s aying that s he couldn't poss ibly use it because my room was s o ugly that it was impossible to
properly trus t me. (Further elaboration was firmly res is ted.)

She had arrived as a s omewhat los t s oul – although very confident and ass ertive on the
s urface. There was s omething about he r, and her extremely meandering way of s peaking,
together with a meandering choice of non-career (as a “puppet- mas ter”) that led me to s ee her
as s omewhat indulgent, and this was indeed her wors t fear of how others might s ee her. She
felt very emotionally-deprive d of parental interes t and of phys ical affection of any s ort – yet,
s trangely, I s truggled to feel much pity for her s eemingly quite s ad s truggle to find love in the
world. But, s he had fallen in love intermittently in her twenties , which enabled her to move out
from her cons tricted, ungiving family and make s ome las ting friends hips . This gave her a great
deal of confidence, and s he felt, at las t, that s he was important, as a human being – and that at
least some people in the world might experience her as beautiful.

But, her clos es t friend had recently made a s erious s uicide attempt, and it got her thinking that
her own life was “passing her by”, and that s he needed to know hers elf better, to find out what
s he was “really like.”

She had recently become ext remely interes ted in puppets – that they could help her to “get
things out”. Indeed, I often felt us ed this way by her in the counter trans ference – although s he
often accus ed me of treating her this way. That is , as s omeone to be controlled and at the
whim of another pers on. I s ugges ted that a move to the couch (he r phys ical ges turing had
become
quite s tifling for my capacity to think about what s he was s aying) would deepen that
concern, and s he grinned: “You betcha.”

It eventually emerged that what had really brought her towards help was the s uicide attempt of
her bes t friend. She had imagined that this was becaus e of her own wanting to be with a lover,
(who was felt to have particularly beautiful s kin), and had mentioned a planned holiday with
him to the friend, jus t before the friend’s attempt. She had told he r that s he was “s mitten like a
kitten!”
When, after s everal months work on her confus ion about who wanted to control whom, s he
finally s teeled hers elf to make the “leap into hype r-t rus t”(her phrase), and as s he hit the couch
s he turned to face me – beaming, as s he looked around, and s aid that s he'd been a fool
becaus e from the new pers pective the room looked quite beautiful - and why had s he never
noticed before!

Next session, s he produced a dream.

DREAM
She climbed up into an attic that was "undiscovered" - but, everything was covered in a dusty
decrepit imitation velvet coating which was a lurid green colour, and crawling with parasites.
She knew that the objects under the coating were very valuable and beautiful, and potentially
her own, but she needed someone to help her carefully remove the coverings so that the
objects wouldn't be contaminated - and this reminded her of farm animals who lick the s ticky
s tuff from the womb off their newborn babies , or newborn kittens . She was clearly moved by
the dream, and was crying.

Then s he had a mass ive s neezing fit, and as ked if I had any

tiss ues . She s aid: “Sometimes I jus t feel s oaked in s ad!”

And for the firs t time, I s tarted to really imagine her as loveable - s omething that I hadn’t
really felt s o confident about before that moment - I was n’t really feeling that we were “on the
s ame s ide”. Although, from time to time, I was s till tempted to s ee her as ridiculous ,
particularly when s he des cribed her “performance art” – her lates t project being to dress as a
Dodo, and to flap her wings at pass ing s trangers . She had spent quite a bit of money handing
out protes t s tickers , with quite nondes cript s logans on them, and pas ting them on lamp pos ts
in various s uburbs , including my own. One s uch, for example was : “Birds are beautiful and
us eful.”

EXAMPLE 2
My s econd brief clinical note concerns a middle-aged doctor who s uffered for many years with
what he called a “low-level, grey depres s ion”. His tone of voice was perpetually flat and
deadening,(quite literally, mono-tonous ) and he complained quite bitterly that he had a dead
– grey car, with “no grunt or grace – its boringly reliable … I have grey everything!”
He said that his mind was “s uffus ed” with a very painful, excruciating memory:
It comp ris ed his father coming home from work one night and going s traight to bed,
complaining of an awful headache. He was left (“alone”) with his mother, who explained that
it was a s pecial wedding annivers ary, and s he looked incons olable. He felt utterly “des olate”.

“She jus t kept looking through me.”

Immediately following an incident at a beach, where I had apparently walked s traight pas t him
with no acknowledgement, he brought a “ghas tly” dream of dreading his mother, who had her
back turned to hi m – s he was seen to be nurs ing a very deep gas h in her belly, but the patient
didn’t know whether to walk away, or to help – or whether or not he had in s ome way caused
the wound. She was turning grey, and near death – and he was very relieved to wake up, and
to hear birds chirping “s o enthus ias tically.”

He was very reluctant to ass ociate to this dream, and I was left wonder whether, in fact, his
mother had los t a baby before his birth, s everely impeding her capacity to enjoy hi m, and
be enlivened by him. But, even months later, he was groaningly reluctant to as k her s uch a
potentially “knifing” ques tion.

In my counter-trans ference, over s everal pains taking years , I often felt painfully bored, and
that the relations hip had become a tedious ly contractual relations hip. Every interpretation
s eemed correct, but never particularly enlivened him – and was either met with a robotic “but
. . .” or “yes , but how is that s uppos ed to help me?”If I occas ionally as ked why he wis hed to
continue, he would plead that I was at leas t making things endurable. When I as ked if that was
necessarily a good thing, he s aid that it had to be, becaus e death was “nothing at all” and that
when he left each s ession he felt a little bit better and more “charged up to face things .” He
apologized for not properly expressing any gratitude or s ens e of progress . I had res ponded
by s aying that he found it hard to imagine that he had anything good to offer me that could
potentially enliven us both. He placed his thumb in his mouth, and was s ilent for the
remainder of the s ess ion. But it was a very full s ilence.

In the following s ess ion, clos e to an approaching holiday break, he brought another dream. But
the dream was remembered only after s ome res tless thras hing on the couch and a very
atypical outburs t. He was us ually quite compos ed, but the night before he had watched a
documentary about s ex addicts and Donald Trump.

“. . . Not many people coul d actually stand to look at a be autiful woman and just enjoy her be auty – i t
has to le ad to sex and l ust and wanti ng to DO he r – i t absol utely must, or you can’t be a re al man. I
know this i s sort of fucke d – but be auty is actually de structive , you know – i t stiffs (meant to say
“stuffs”) up pe ople ’s lives and just ruins simple ple asures – i ts God’ worst inve nti on – I me an why woul d
you DO that to us? We ’re just i nnocently trying to enjoy our li ves and the n you get skewe red by thi s
whole ne w dime nsi on – that’s just – just i mpossible to manage ! I can see why peopl e want to be come
soldie rs . . . I reall y can!“ He noted his surprise at seeming to defe nd Trump. The n, imme diately, he
reme mbe red a dre am.

DREAM

The sc ene, he slowly realized, was in Hong Kong, and he realized that h e was on holiday and free to roam
wherever he pleased. He had been th er e many time s in real life, on business, and always found it “sam ey” after
the fi rs t day. But this version of Hong Kong was ”suffused ” wi th stark, purplish El G re co skies – and was utterly
gripping - and every turn of his head brought a ne w and surprisingly stunning vista . There was a mysterious for m
of lightning moving across the city, which kept showing differ ent facets and highlighted eve r new things to look at,
and it was all quite stunning. H e was totally gripped by the scene , unlike ever before in his life.

(He paused tel ling the dream to note that, in fac t, he’d looked up the word vi s ta i n the morning, a nd was
i nterested to see that i t c ould mean either a n interesting vi ew, or a new l i fe horizon – li ke a new c areer path
opening up – a total c ontrast to how he usually fel t – whic h was to be weighed down by sameness and lac k of
interest in anything.)

But then, back i n the dream –

Ther e had been a death, perhaps a murder – and he star ted to f eel guilty and furtive and wondered whether o r
not he should hide from the authorities or “com e cl ean” – even though he didn’t r eally know if had had murder ed
anyone, or not.

The next s ess ion he talked a lot about an old friend from s chool with whom he’ d los t touch,
but who was now s taying with him – and he s poke of how he s aw Melbourne quite differently
when s howing the friend around – the city s eemed much riche r, s ubtle and more interes ting
than when he wandered around aimles sly by hims elf. (He had s pent a lot of time in his twenties
doing s uch in Europe – vis iting many places that he’d thought he s hould s ee, and which s hould
have ins pired or s timulated hi m and literally brought him to life – but he always heard a voice
in his head s aying “Is that all ?”) I reminded him of the dream, and again he put his thumb in his
mouth and became thoughtfully- s ilent. However, this time he was nodding – which let me
know that he was reflecting.

In the ens uing months he began to take more of an invigorated interes t in the relations hip
with his daughter, which had previous ly been mainly a dutiful relations hip – as was his own
“contractual obligation” marriage. He s aid” “I don’t think I ever realized that s he is actually
quite beautiful. I was always s us picious of people saying that about their own children – like
it was part of the deal – you jus t have to s ee your kids as beautiful – to force you to look after
the m . . . I now even feel a bit guilty for enjoying looking at her. I think s he’s noticed, and s he
gives me this s mile. Sometimes it cracks me open.”

I hope that this very condens ed example s hows clearly, particularly with the Hong Kong
dream, that progres s in one’s experiencing the World as containing more beauty and interes t
(K)immediately s ummons the s uperego police and intens ifies anxiety about one’s
(uncons cious ) des tructive “anti-beauty” impuls es and their cons equences . Such impuls es are
arous ed us ually through a very idios yncratic mix of jealous y (as Meltzer s tres s es – the infant
mind cannot t rus t that the phys ical beauty of the object is fully concordant with its inner
“fickleness”, envy, fears of letting go, s eparation pains of dependency and nee ding to s ubmit,
and mas s ive fears of being changed, forever, by experiencing the full thrilling impact of the
aes thetic object.

But, in addition to these psychological hazards, Beauty may be felt as exposing one to
potentially mortal danger.

Dangerous Beauty - The Comfort of Strangers

Ian McEwan (wri te r), Harold Pinte r (scree nplay), Paul Schrade r (di re ctor)

A young-ish couple (Colin and Mary) are revis iting Venice where, four years earlier, they had
fallen in love. They s eem now to be at an impas s e, in the mids t of uns poken conflicts that have
kept them undecided about long-term commit ment to each other. These are mainly about
s truggles with autonomy, commit ment, independence and jealous ies (Mary has children from
another relationship). So, the vis it to Venice is partly for pleas ure, and partly in order to
find s ome reflective thinking s pace about their relationship.
They became entangled (both phys ically and through projective identification) with a
malicious , ps ychotic and sado-mas ochis tic couple who mas querade as good Samaritans –
but who, in fact, are their enthralling executioners .
The centre of gravity of both the s tory and the film is the exploration of Colin and Mary’s
fas cination with the pervers e couple – whos e lack of aggress ive and sexual inhibition is
both aphrodis iacal and terrifying for Colin and Mary. But, the iss ue of concern for this
paper is how the two couples try to deal with the problem of Beauty – how to contain the
urge to cont rol and to des troy the aes thetic object, within the bounds of exciting
s exuality, and sanity.
None of the four s ucceed – but, arguably, the writer, the director and the s creenplay
author (Harold Pinter) do, in that the y allow us a reflective, highly emotional (if ups etting)
s pace to reflect on thes e iss ues .

Both the s tory and the film explore the (literally) knife-edge s truggle between admiring and
enjoying beauty, and its mutual acknowledgement of us , and wis hing to maim or to des troy
it.
 Colin and Mary begin to dis cover the pervers ity of the older couple – it is made very clear to
them that the y are endangered – that they are being “hunted” and s talked and that it is Beauty
its elf which is the prey. But, we s oon learn that encounters with the older couple are
aphrodis iacal to the younger couple, and that the latte r are indeed harbouring quite s imilar, if
not more cruel, and fas cis tic fantasies about each other’s beauty. They do not jus t wis h to
control or maim each other, but to des troy each other in a cruel s exuality of torture.

“They took to muttering in ea ch other's ea r as they made love , stories that came f rom nowhere, out of the dark ,
stori es that produced moans and giggles of hopeless abandon, that won from the spellbound listener consent to a
lifeti me of subjection and humiliation. Mary muttered he r intention of hiring a surgeon to amputate Colin's arms
and legs. She would ke ep him in a room in her house, and use him exclusively for s ex, sometimes lending him out
to friends. Colin invented for Mary a la rge, intricate ma chine, made of steel, painted bright red and powered by
electricity; i t had pistons and controls, s traps and dials, and made a lo w hum when it was s witched on. Colin
hummed in Ma ry's ea r. Once Ma ry was s trapped in, f itted to tubes that fed and evacuated her body, the machine
would fuck her, not jus t for hours or week s, but fo r years, on and on, for th e re st of he r life, till she wa s dead and
on even after that, till Colin, or his solicitor, switched i t off. Afterwards , once they were showered and perfumed and
sat sipping thei r drinks on th e balcony, staring over the geranium pots at the tourists in the str ee t below, their
muttered stories s eemed quite tasteless, silly, and they did not really talk about them. ”

In a s ens e, then, it is ultimately made clear that the hes itation in their commit ment to
each other as a couple is their fear of mutual des truction, in the face of being tortured by
each others ’ beauty. But they need not to have worried – s ince the pervers e couple enacts
murder for them.

So – while Meltzer s tres s es the agony of non-reciprocation, there is als o the (Kleinian) dreadful
anxiety of engaging intimately and pass ionately with the aes thetic object and facing one’s
(uncons cious ) wis h to des troy it – particularly its “unity of form” with its beautiful, if trans ient,
integrity - its capacity to trans fix our s oul, which provokes and mus ters an intens e, us ually
uncons cious , wis h to retaliate. (As the goddess Diana wis hed to hunt the man Acteon, who
hunted he r beauty, res enting his foray as intrus ion, and not foreplay.)

O happiness enjoy'd but of a few!

And, if possess'd, as soon decay'd and done
As is the mo rning's silver- melting dew
Against the golden splendor of the sun!
An expired date,cancell'd ere well begun:
Honour and beauty, in the ownr's arms,
Are weakly fortress'd fro m a wo rld of harms .

RIC HARD II
 Ultimately, I believe this to be (Milton’s ) Satan’s problem with Creation – he is ultimately a very
envious baby who cannot s tand for God and the infant Job to gaze lovingly at each other –
much as Iago cannot bear to s ee Des demona and her twin admirers Othello and Cassius to be
producing s uch an intens e field of admiration of beauty – and Oberon (MSND) is s imilarly
overwrought by thoughts of Titania and her changeling infant. As we know – the Iago part of
Othello is given s way, and together they do des troy their beautiful wives , together with their
rich and rare and much-needed admiration of thems elves as “beautiful babies .”

Uncons cious ly, Beauty - with its perceived capacity to disarm (or dismember) the male and to
humble his conquering, imperialistic intentions (we still ,often but not always) retain this symbolically
in the traditional gesture of proposing marriage) to their knees.
Mark Antony’s inward s word – may be perceived as a kind of “cas tration” of the Will in the
face of Cleopatra’s beauty. In such mythical stories, the male mind mus t either s ubmit, s o
that the s ubmiss ion its elf is both enlivening and beautiful or alternatively, regres s to
narcis sis tic, or autis tic s tates of mindless ness in order to keep the beauty at the s urface,
thereby des troying the inner depths of its mys tery – like Ahab vengefully chasing Moby Dick.
Meltzer thought that this was akin to des troying one’s inner compass , one’s Mus e.
.
Part of the wis h to damage the beautiful object derives from its unreliability and
impermanence. In its original form, the breas t, being the s olution to the potentially
catastrophic rupture of birth, now becomes a ‘traitor’, and is revealed to be part of the
cons piracy of Nature as a cons tantly teas ing and beguiling impermanence and evanes cence.
But, the iss ue of the beautiful object’s fickleness , I think, is often driven by one’s beginning to
notice that one’s own feelings of love can be s omewhat tidal or unpredictably-volatile – and s o
it dawns that perhaps the loved object’s love is jus t as fluid. (This might be illus trated, for
example, by the ever-changing light moving over the vis ta, in the Hong Kong dream.) The loving
eyes of the beautiful mother will always blink.

So – “aes thetic agony” cons is ts of a s trange brew of envy, love, admiration, jealous y and a
passionate, vigorous wis h for phys ical engagement, where the reciprocity cannot be waited
for, th rough Faith. And thus , the knife-edge between s urrendering to Beauty (to let ones elf be
“s lain” by it, and to fully s ubmit to the catas trophic change that it magnetizes ) and s laying the
object by dismembering it’s unity, and therefore dampening it’s aes thetic impact – for
example, from beauty to porn, or from artwork to entertainment. We s ometimes call the
tens ion between the pass ionate impuls e to engage, and the wis h to des troy the beautiful
object of des ire “s exual tension”. But, s exual is only part of it. Similarly, we des cribe the
intens ely aggressive wis h to penetrate the mys tery of beauty, Lus t.
The “remembered form” of Beauty as the breas t becomes a s ource of hope for ne w
relations hips and loved objects – but it is probably never fully trus ted again, especially after
the rude, jolting impacts of birth and weaning.
 The hands that forged the Tyger are always feared – whatever has been created can be re
move d – and the s tory of Job is an attempt to come to terms with jus t that s ort of a God.
Faith in the “renewing power and benevolence ”of Nature, and of Love, takes a lifetime of
love and loss , and runs parallel with one’s internal capability for renewing love in, and from,
one’s good objects .

Envy of the Creator Tyger tyger, burning bright . . .

I noted earlier that Milton’s Satan has a big problem with Creation. But William Blake’s Tiger
poem really lays bare thos e feelings that were unbearable, in the face of infinite creative
might. Of cours e, the fearful beauty of Blake’s little poem is in the way that it creeps up from
out of nowhere, like a tiger, and pounces on the uns us pecting reader, who is thinking that the
poem is about the tiger.
It is not. It is about the Creator, and the divine force which forges - its unimaginable beauty
and truly awesome conceptual power, far outs tripping any fear of a mere tiger.
What i mmortal hand or e ye

In what distant dee ps or skies

Burnt the fi re of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspi re?

What the hand, dare seize the fi re ?

And what shoul de r, & what art,

Could twi st the sinews of thy he art?

What dre ad hand? & what dread feet?

What the hamme r? what the chai n?

In what furnace was thy brai n?

What the anvil ? what dre ad

grasp Di d he smile his work to

see ?

Did he who made the Lamb make

 thee?

Tyge r! Tyge r! burning bri ght

In the forests of the ni ght,

What immortal hand or

e ye

Dare frame thy fearful symme try?

This is truly awe in the face of almos t unimaginably fears ome conceptual Beauty – but not of
the tiger itself.

• * * * * *

I want to paus e here, briefly, to recapitulate the array of cognitive-emotional factors that
demand apprehens ion s o early in life, and that s eem to cons titute the heart of “aes thetic
conflict.”

1. Depressive pain, because Beauty is always experienced as symbolic of the ephemeral,

and therefore presages our own mortality.

As the poignant notes to the Turner Beques t point out about JMW:

"The re seeme d through all hi s li fe to be one mai n sorrow and fe ar haunting him - a sense of the passi ng
away, or else the destructive and te mpting characte r, of Be auty. The choi ce of subject for a cl ue to all
hi s composi tions, the 'Fallacies of Hope ,' marke d thi s strongly". (p.159).

2. We mus t s ubmit by surrendering the urge to poss ess , or to projectively (and protectively)
control the mystery of the
Beauty.
To s ubmit fully to the pass ions of love and hate and curios ity, is to leave our narcis sis tic
infant s elves openly helpless , and, uncons cious ly, we often experience this as a form of
cas tration or disempowerment.

In Shakes peare’s Pericles, brave (or foolis h) knights s ubmit to (likely) death in order to chance
the poss ess ion of beauty. “I live in Hope” Is Pericles ’ motto – and he is neither s lain totally by
beauty, nor wis hes to s lay it. But he has a faith in Goodnes s and “divine will.” Unlike the
torrid, tempes tuous , s tumbling King Lear:

You nim ble lightnings, dart your blinding flam es

Into her scornful eyes! Infect her beauty,

You fen-suck'd fogs, drawn by the powerful

sun, To fall and blast her pride!

King L ear

Even more vengeful cours es are plotted, obs ess ively, by the cas trated captains , Hook (in
Peter Pan) and Ahab (in Moby Dick.) Both, in turn, projectively experience Beauty as a
voracious , devouring and vengeful water-beas t.

3. Toleration of (almos t) unbearable jealousy, together with the gnawing s us picion that
adoring admiration of the beauty may not be reciprocated (and certainly not
continuous ly). It can leave one feeling painfully alone and unlovable, or ugly. (There are
many examples, such as: Iago, Richard III, Beauty and the Beast, Hunchback of Notre
Dame, or Oberon-Bottom – feeling like an “ass”.)

Mitrani (2008), however, notes that:

“In part, as a result of that last conversation with Tustin, I have arrived at the conclusion that the resolution of what
Melt zer called "the aesthetic conflict" might be predicated , at leas t in part, upon the capacity of the mother to
contain the baby's r everence and awe of her, along with he r own capacity for tolerating her baby's hatred, envy,
and terror of loss . It might b e said that the apprehension of beauty (Meltzer 1988) is linked to the existence -- a t the
core of the inne r sphere of the personality -- of a contain er, not just for our painful experiences , but for those joyful
ones as well ; a containing object with the capacity to endure not just our fe elings of hatred toward the object (and
therefore toward the self), but one that i s enduring of and resonating wi th those loving feelings fel t to ward the
perceived external object, one in which the capacity for realistic self-love and esteem are rooted.”

But,

4. Even when Beauty does reciprocate, the impuls es it arous es are felt to be very
dangerous, as they threaten to des troy the object of beauty, and ones elf - as I have
illus trated above, with The Comfort of Strangers.

5. Unbearable envy of the awesome Creator of Beauty –

and/or jealousy/envy of the combined couple.

I have written in more de tail of the latter in a 1990 paper – The Wrecking and Re-Pairing
 of the Internal Couple and see the above Blake poem re the former.

Fortunately, the healthy enough infant will rapidly develop capabilities for s ymbolizing thes e
horns of the aes thetic dilemma, and as Meltzer and Harris Williams have prefigured – it is in
the grip of Beauty that L, H, K and the terrifying but wondrous need for Faith in O are firs t
rous ed and arous ed – and in that wake, dreams may come, and fres h new wholes may be born.
But, under the press ure of the five components of aes thetic conflict that I have outlined, Bion’s
negative grid in is engaged – the world of anti-feeling.

This may even become minus Faith in O – epitomized by Milton’s Satan, taunti ng and
mocking the God who creates even Tigers .

There is a truly wondrous s cene in PJ. Hogan’s film of Barrie’s Peter Pan where the
rep res s ible Captain Hook (us ually depicted as the s plit off envious , jealous , uncoupled father
– forever pers ecuted by a voracious crocodile of Time and ins atiable oral greed - catches
Peter and Wendy in wonderment of their dis covery of a beautiful fairy-like couple dancing in
the centre of a fores t glade. He is not jus t mildly bemus ed by it (the double couple) he is
utterly bewildered – incomprehens ive, and inapprehens ive. All that comes to his
impoveris hed-orphan (los t boy) mind is that he is all alone – while Peter has found “a
Wendy”. Later, in the s ame s cene, Peter and Wendy are ins pired into love for each other and
als o begin to dance. But, when Wendy as ks Peter to s ay what he really feels , he denies that
he has s wooned into love with her, and ins is ts that he does n’t even know what it is , and has
never ever been in love. (Indeed, Never-land could eas ily mean to never fall in love with a
mother who might abandon you, or fall in a love with s omeone other than you, and leave you
feeling like a “los t boy.”) He becomes very Hook-is h in his retreat from unt rus tworthy
Beauty.

But, more hopefully in the “real world”, a budding adult part of the mind will expand its
gras p of Whole objects , and will begin to apprehend a more far-reaching meta-level of
integrated aes thetic appreciation.

[F.Scott Fitzgerald quote … illustrating the extended sensitivity to Beauty beyond the merely
visual. i.e Beyond part object aesthetic impact and beyond “symmetrical” beauty of the
super-model variety.

When feelings of awe foment (as perfectly illus trated in Blake’s trans ferring his awe
of the Tiger into terrified gratitude for the Creator, in his famous poem) feelings towards the
source of the beauty, we experience s ome form of s pirituality, or religious reverence. For many,
this may become a need to wors hip a deity, or Mother Nature – but the true s ens e of awe and
reverence and gratitude and fear that this s ummons in the ever-forming s elf, is always
threatened by the regres s ive, charis matic, s eductive, golden calf pull of a political imposter
(fas cis t) with the shiny, vacuous “s tar-quality” of a magazine/(graven) image idol. Under that
s way, every promis e is excitingly “awes ome” and depres s ive tears are “walled off” in Trump-
is h triumph of a ps eudo-Godhead, who has no head at all. The combined object of ins piration
is replaced by a narciss is tic donkey, promis ing everything and braying “greatnes s ”.

This recalls , for me, the s eemingly odd addendum that Meltzer made to the conclus ion of The
Apprehension …” where he s eems aware that alpha function and mindless ness are als o worthy
of a place when cons idering the “array” of mixed anxiety and ins piration that Beauty provokes
in the growing mind of the baby. I’d s peculate that Meltzer mus t have been increas ingly
aware that the aes thetic conflict underpinned s o many other mental-emotional capabilities ,
and that could only outline an intimation of thes e, by the end of the book. Interes tingly,
nearer to the end of his life he became interes ted in thought dis order. Hook (and Iago and
Ahab) are not jus t annoyed by Beauty – they are als o made s tupid (s truck dumb) in its face –
to the extent that they des troy what they love – their daily beauty. Meltzer’s (1987) paper,
Concerning the Stupidity of Evil indicated that in the face of unbearable Beauty, Iago-Othello
and Ahab-Hook, become s elf-des tructive idiots , s ans K, s ans L and sans Faith in O.

‘Insofar as i ndi vi dual s have sacri ficed thei r capaci ty for passi onate response to the be auty of the worl d,
they are prey to e nvy(i ng) othe rs who have a “dail y be auty i n thei r lives,” an i nne r beauty. But he re
agai n, stupi dity mistakes outward form for inne r be auty and sees “se cre ts of succe ss” i nstead of a
“he art of myste ry.”’

Finally, a few brief comments about the aesthetic conflict and narcissism.

Narcissus Rejects
It is worth noting s omething painfully obvious , by now. The mother who is hers elf
narcis sis tically-damaged, will always find it s omewhat difficult to fall in love with her baby.
The enjoyment of mutual love – s wapping intimate s miles and mus ical phras es - may then be
viewed s us picious ly, as if the baby is “s tealing” love for its own greed or gratification, without
giving its radiant joy and newness back to the mother.

In the cons ulting room, this is often felt to be the greedy, s elfis h therapis t – taking money
and prais e, while denuding and exploiting the helpless baby, who is as ked to give up
everything of value to the therapis t. Furthermore, thes e valuable gifts from the patient are
felt to be s hared with s omeone els e (a partner, or rival children) with great and never-ending
 enjoyment, like s tolen booty from Aladdin’s cave.

Narciss us cannot conceive of hims elf as being an enticing beauty to Echo, or to anyone. He
has not known maternal reciprocation of his infant s elf – and thereby is prey to falling in love
with hims elf, without realizing that it is indeed hims elf. Thus , he cannot identify with Echo’s
falling in love with an other. (Mind you, her communication s kills are fairly limited.)

It takes a great adult maturity – often unachieved – to continue enjoying the beauty of the
loved object in s pite of its indifference to our needs . It is extremely difficult, at times , to
dis cern the difference between s uch maturity and a s elf-des tructive mas ochis m in martyring
ones elf to the object for the s uppos ed s elf-glorification that is s eemingly promis ed -
s ubmission to a mindless tyrant who charis matically s ummons one to “the caus e”.

To enjoy mutual love, we mus t – at leas t s omewhat – be able to enjoy s haring our own beauty
with another – to, however briefly or incredulous ly, enjoy that another being enjoys us. But,
we may try to s poil that enjoyment – being uncons cious ly envious of it – or s ee ours elves as an
ass , beguiling the s pell-bound Titania. Or, we may jus t not believe it, or even s ee it, when we
have never bee n able to identify with, or bas k in the eyes of, an adoring mother, if deprive d of
it in infancy.

This gives rise to an incapacity to (mutually) fall in love, becaus e the narciss is t rejects . But,
the narciss is t is not fully aware of their rejection of love from others – and yet tragically, and
ironically, love s eems to be all that they crave, or want to know on Earth. The uncons cious
projection of rejection into others is a way of attempting to eas e the pain of feeling the
vulnerable infant gaze unmatched in the eyes of the mother. The aim is to unceas ingly
“echo” (projectively identify with) that pain in others , and s ome as fragile as Ophelia do not
s urvive, or are turned to s tone or ice internally, and dead to Beauty and its ins piring pass ion.
I hope that I have begun to s how that the Meltzer-Harris Williams conception of aesthetic
conflict not only extends Melanie Klein’s work on the s tifling effects of uncons cious envy, but
als o puts envy in its place, alongs ide the other s ometimes crippling, s ometimes ins piring,
facets of which the conflict is compris ed.
I conclude with a reminder of the exquis itely apt, yet ambiguous , choice of the word
“apprehens ion” in the title of Meltzer and Harris Williams ’ book.
We mus t live with, or at leas t partly subdue our apprehens ion about what Beauty will bring
about and potentially change in us , in order to at leas t partially apprehend its s ublime
essentiality for our e motional exis tence and development. To do this unceasingly throughout
life necess itates – as Klein (and Robert Louis Stevens on, Dos toevs ky and Melville, to name but
a significant few) knew all too well – a cons tant acknowledgement of the “beas tly” and the
mu rderous res pons es to Beauty in the Ahab-Iago-Hyde of our deeper s elves . Although the ris k
of this knowledge is always breakdown, there is als o the hope, and urgency, of breakthrough –
to a place where fully feeling the incons tant Beauty in our lives trans forms us into creatures
rich and s trange, even if ”s oaked in s ad.”

Kafka’s s tatement that

“He who keeps the idea of beauty never grows ol d.”

might be s lightly amended to:

Without the idea of Beauty, one never grows.