Emotional Sustenance Research Articles

Grieving the Loss of Narcissistic Entitlement:

The child deprived of a sufficient and constant supply of emotional sustenance draws upon his or her imagination for relief from emotional pain and anxiety. This “fantasy bond” is addictive in its capacity to provide some repeatable internal gratification. Often the satisfaction achieved through this fantasy becomes preferred to seeking real satisfactions from other individuals. The realities of a relationship, with its inherent limitations, often intrude on the fantasy bond whose limitations are in the control of the one doing the fantasy work. The child who experiences early narcissistic injury attempts to recover these losses later in life by reworking the impaired attachment with the original primary caretaker in other significant relationships or in attachments to significant ideals or institutions during adolescence and adulthood. But the injured child also draws upon his or her imagination creating fantasized attachments for relief form emotional pain and anxiety. The therapist needs to support mourning work for these earliest narcissistic injuries and losses, thus facilitating the client's ability to cope with the vicissitudes of relationships in a healthier and more adaptive manner.

Grieving the Loss of Narcissistic Entitlement: A Case Study*

The child deprived of a sufficient and constant supply of emotional sustenance draws upon his or her imagination for relief from emotional pain and anxiety. This “fantasy bond” is addictive in its capacity to provide some repeatable internal gratification. Often the satisfaction achieved through this fantasy becomes preferred to seeking real satisfactions from other individuals. The realities of a relationship, with its inherent limitations, often intrude on the fantasy bond whose limitations are in the control of the one doing the fantasy work.

Virginia Woolf and the Nature of Communion , and: Virginia Woolf and the Politics of Style , and: The Invisible Presence: Virginia Woolf and the Mother-Daughter Relationship , and: Virginia Woolf and the Real World (review)

Reviewed by: Virginia Woolf and the Nature of Communion, and: Virginia Woolf and the Politics of Style, and: The Invisible Presence: Virginia Woolf and the Mother-Daughter Relationship, and: Virginia Woolf and the Real World Steve Ferebee Betty Kushen . Virginia Woolf and the Nature of Communion. West Orange: Raynor, 1983. 252 pp. $20.00. Pamela J. Transue . Virginia Woolf and the Politics of Style. Albany: SUNY P, 1986. 222 pp. $39.50. Ellen Bayuk Rosenman . The Invisible Presence: Virginia Woolf and the Mother-Daughter Relationship. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1986. 189 pp. $22.50. Alex Zwerdling . Virginia Woolf and the Real World. Berkeley: U of California P, 1986. 384 pp. $24.95. Breaking away from the Woolf pack by writing a book that clearly distinguishes itself becomes more and more difficult. Each of these books, for instance, is well written and intelligently conceived, but to read the four together is to notice some repetitions appearing in Woolf studies. On the other hand, scholars are making better use of some of Woolf's writings, especially the nonfiction, and we are developing a broader sense of her achievement. Most importandy, all these books underline an essential humanity in Woolf that earlier studies often ignored or distorted. Kushen's Virginia Woolf and the Nature of Communion is a psychoanalytic discussion of several important relationships Woolf had with women (Julia Stephen, Vanessa Bell, Katherine Mansfield, Vita Sackville-West, Ethyl Smyth). Kushen wants to reconstruct the relationships and to trace their effects on Woolf's life and art. Her reconstructions are valuable, especially Ethel Smyth's; but I would like to have had more about the cumulative effect—how did each relationship affect the next? Furthermore, if the "emotional sustenance" Woolf derived from these relationships was "a significant stimulus to her creativity," then the more light on the creativity the better, but Kushen does not spend enough time analyzing the effects these symbiotic relationships had on Woolf's writings. I also think Woolf was stronger and more independent than Kushen's thesis would lead us to believe. Kushen's argument that Julia Stephen was too busy, too aloof during Virginia's first years, is convincing. But Kushen only claims—she does not prove—that "the severity of [Woolf's] later psychopathology bears testimony to this tragic failure." In fact, Kushen too often depends on generalizations that she does not support. Her argument is always forceful and clear, but not always supported by specifics. Woolf's final major female relationship was with Ethel Smyth, who pushed her way into Woolf's home and life. The friendship was complicated, volatile, and important for both women, their subjects of conversation ranging from sexual memories to literary style. Ethel Smyth seems to have made Woolf seek to explain her self in a new, more creative way—in her letters, diary, and memoirs—and Kushen's book details this better than any previous work. Kushen also capably describes a thin line between Woolf's need for her women friends and the danger of losing her separate identity to them. Pamela Transue's feminist study focuses "on the ways in which Woolf, who pointedly opposed didacticism in fiction, transformed . . . polemical material into art." Undoubtedly Woolf attempted to write a new kind of novel, but she did so as an individual and as a modernist as much as she did so as a feminist. Undoubtedly Woolf tried to subvert repressive partriarchal systems, but she did so, as Transue herself tells us, not as an attempt to replace them with another separatist system: "The only meaningful feminism, in Woolf's view, is that which moves beyond bitterness into a creative vision of a new and more equal partnership between [End Page 354] the sexes which will benefit both." Undoubtedly Woolf thought masculine consciousness was restrictive and reductive, feminine consciousness open and expansive; but do we need feminism to show us that "key images in Woolf's novels bear a striking resemblance to the function of images in dreams"? Isn't this modernism? The book often conflates the two movements. We need a vocabulary and methodology for feminism that doesn't merely repeat those of modernism. In an interesting chapter, "The Pargiters and...

Shakespeare in Indiana: A Report on the "Shakespeare Meeting" of the Indiana College English Association

HAT Shakespeare remains a vital force in Midwestern America today is a truism which need not be labored. Although Midwesterners may look with longing to the frequent revivals of the plays on the New York stage and deplore the fact that too few road companies refresh their spirits with productions of Shakespeare, interest in the dramatist and his works transcends the mere academic. But with fewer Shakespeare plays on the road today and with the almost total eclipse of elocutionary readings as a medium of culture and entertainment, it has fallen more and more upon the colleges and universities to provide the intellectual and emotional sustenance which Shakespeare offers. It will be the burden of this report to show by example that the schools are meeting the challenge. It may be said that the vitality of Shakespeare is nurtured in the Middle West by the colleges and universities. The occasional road companies performing the plays today-such as the Barter Theater, which excels in ingenious staging and well-edited texts-are frequently sponsored by the schools of this area. Drama departments present the plays on the campuses. And Shakespeare courses hold their prominent place in the curricula of the English departments. At DePauw University, for example, the Shakespeare course rates as one of the best in the department and has one of the highest enrollments. DePauw, a co-educational school situated in Greencastle, Indiana, is largely an undergraduate institution; no pressure is put on its 1700 students to take the course in Shakespeare, and the English majors are not preparing for degree-examinations which would require detailed knowledge of the plays. Shakespeare is an elective course, and students in gratifying numbers elect to take it. One of the active campus organizations, the Shakespeare Club, grew out of this course and keeps its roots in it. It is made up entirely of students who are enthusiastic about the bard and anxious to express this enthusiasm by acting in plays, building model theaters, and in other ways showing their devotion to Shakespeare. A dinner and program celebrating Shakespeare's birthday has become a fixed item on the university calendar. Another Indiana school, again a small one, has led in the establishment of an annual Shakespeare Festival. This is Taylor University, a Methodist-supported school of approximately 500 enrollment at Upland, Indiana. Here the