The Dark Interval:Inner TransformationThrough Mourningand Memory

KATHRYN MADDEN

ABSTRACT: For D.W. Winnicott, one way the ego defends against the death of the false self isthrough breakdown and emptiness. Melanie Klein says that in mourning, healing occurs throughpsychic restoration of the idealized love-object. Manic defenses prevent us from the fullness ofreparative experience in breakdown and mourning. But Winnicott underestimates what theChristian faith offers in what he calls the ascensive-depressive experience. And Klein, relegatingthe mother to only the psyche, neglects the bodily significance of the Transfiguration and theResurrection. Augustine's memoria and scriptural accounts of the empty tomb serve as a basisfor exploring the difference between mourning and remembering in the unfolding of the interiorlife. Mary Magdalene witnesses to how a perspective that does not consider spirit as integrativeto its developmental schema neglects transformation in its fullest definition.

When we are defending against breakdown, D.W. Winnicott asks, what arewe defending against? Melanie Klein asks, at the depth of our grief, who is itthat we are mourning? Think of these psychological questions in terms ofreligion: In the Christian faith when we face breakdown, when we seek tofind the detail not yet experienced, when we face primitive agony, emptiness,even death, what is it that is lost? Are we intentionally called to the experi-ence of emptiness, suffering, mourning, and remembering as the very meansof our transformation?

That which is lost must be interiorly recognized

Winnicott tells us that fear of breakdown is the fear of a past event that hasnot yet been experienced in the present. Our fear is rooted in an originalagony in which our defense system has failed us and our ego-organization hasbecome threatened. This often gets presented as a symptom. The analysand

Kathryn Madden, M.A., is a psychotherapist at the Riverside Church Pastoral CounselingCenter in New York City and in private practice.

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needs to remember this breakdown, but it is not possible to remember some-thing that has not yet happened.

Traces of the past events are carried around hidden away in the uncon-scious. What is unconscious is the primitive agony that the ego, based uponits immaturity in the infant stage of development, has been unable to encompassand to integrate. A person is plagued by this because the original experiencecannot become past tense unless the ego can gather up all the phenomenasurrounding this original breakdown into its own present time-experienceand into the area of personal omnipotence. One remembers, therefore, by ex-periencing this past thing in the present, for the first time.

Remembering, by this definition, means that the therapist treats the pastevent as already a fact and draws the analysand's attention to the possibilitythat the breakdown has already happened near the beginning of life. In theimmediacy of the transference, the analysand experiences the primitive pastand has the opportunity to repeat the original agony. In the adult experienceof the past event, the maturational process reverses and returns to an unin-tegrated state where one experiences absolute dependence on the analyst-mother as supplying the auxiliary ego function. Through this dependency,the analyst's failures are utilized by the analysand to focus on the deadness,the sense of nothing existing at the core. As catalyzed by these failures, aperson may experience breakdown, madness, deep fear, or the primitive ag-ony which was at one time cast off as the repudiated "not me" and was asso-ciated with the original dependency. The analysand must experience the an-nihilation of this original dependency in the present. There is no end to theanalysis unless the thing feared has been experienced. The "bottom of thetrough must be reached," Winnicott says, to lift the repression of the neuroticclient.

The analyst must allow the pain, suffering, and agony of the analysand tooccur. As the primitive agony encroaches, the analyst becomes part of the "Iam" unit and sits with the sometimes overwhelming anxiety of the analy-sand. Winnicott tells us that what we need to accompany us at this point isfaith, the belief that the psyche wants to go toward this terrain of fear andagony, that it wants to approach the door.

Winnicott applies this view to other fears, such as the fear of death andemptiness, in which somehow a person's continuity of being is interrupted byimpinging environmental factors. Such a feeling can occur in the sense ofabsence as well as of presence. Nothing may have happened when somethingmight have happened. In this sense, a person must allow for emptiness inorder to experience what might have been. Either way, a pattern developedin the way one reacted as an infant, and this agony must be experiencedthrough suffering it in the present or else it will turn up as a state that isboth feared and compulsively sought after.

The withdrawn state is another useful space in which to experience primi-tive agony, Winnicott explains, although in and of itself it does not effect

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change unless it occurs in the presence of another. It occurs only in relation-ship. In analysis, we hold and envelop the analysand in a medium-of-suspen-sion which allows the analysand to regress and to experience small gesturesof the spontaneous self. A state of "non-existence," by which Winnicott meansundifferentiated union, is also positive as long as it is not a defensive enact-ment. He says that only out of non-existence can existence begin.

In sum, Winnicott says we can tolerate the depressive position if we areable to acknowledge object-love, dependence on an auxiliary-ego, and the ex-perience of sadness and hopelessness.1 If we can wait in the silent spaces ofwithdrawal, emptiness, non-existence and breakdown, we can allow ourselvesto remember. This kind of suffering helps the analysand to develop an inter-nal reality. When we can tolerate such states, then taking in can begin,whether this applies to food, feelings, learning, sex, to others or to commu-nity. Even if the feeling that emerges is that of a deep wound, at least we arefeeling awful about something. At least we feel real.

Klein and normal mourning

In Klein, we find an equivalent to the concept of breakdown in her discussionof normal mourning, where the characteristic feature is that we restore thelost love-object inside ourselves. Like Winnicott, she concludes that we arenot doing this for the first time. We are recovering something which has to dowith a specific lost object from childhood.

Mourning, for Klein, means surrendering fully to feelings and crying out insorrow about the loss. Tears help the mourner not only to express feelingsand ease tension, but also to expel bad feelings and bad objects. If we can givegreater freedom to the inner world in mourning, internal objects themselvesare allowed greater freedom of feeling and can share our grief. In theseterms, she says, "Nature mourns with the mourner."2

Like Winnicott, for her the process of healing begins with movement intorelationship. Dependence is also good, as long as it is dominated by love. Theexperience of mutual sorrow, she says, is bound in the trust that has beengained through actual people, the actual presence of another. This presence iscrucial until the good mother is established securely inside. Like the babywho has lost the breast, we must learn to grieve with the maternal presencethat is present, a position not unlike prayer.

As with breakdown, the change that occurs in mourning is that we regainan inner world. If we have fully pined for the lost love-object, we feel lesspersecution. Pining means that we allow love for the object to well up andthus to experience the depths of grief and despair. The love which was buriedcomes more and more into the open. As our anxieties about our own destruc-tiveness are lessened, we gain confidence in our power to restore and pre-serve the good, the love-object. Discovering that the lost love-object can be

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preserved within us, we experience the capacity to love. As relationship toinner objects is strengthened, so is relationship to external objects.

Klein emphasizes that through mourning, suffering can become productive.3It requires struggling with inner chaos, and sometimes retreating to a quietplace where we can recreate our world from an inner core. Pain at this levelcan bring out new creative gifts, productivity, and appreciation of other peo-ple and things. It can make us more tolerant. We become wiser.

The manic defense and the ascensive experience

What gets in the way of overcoming the depressive position for both Win-nicott and Klein is the manic defense. The fact denied in the manic defense isone's overall deadness, the fact that one's inner world is dead. When manicdefenses are in operation, even introspection and intuition are not enough towork them through, Winnicott tells us. Manic defenses prevent breakdown;they also prevent mourning. They prevent our acknowledging that we feeldead inside and that the world seems a colorless place.

In his paper "The Manic Defense" (1935), Winnicott uses the term "ascen-sive" to describe how one defends against the depressive position.4 This in-cludes any of a number of defenses related to omnipotent rantasies, including"flight to external reality, suspension of inner objects, and denial of sensa-tions." These defenses, as means of control, help a person to gain a sense ofreassurance through external reality. Rather than experience emptiness, onefills; instead of being still, one moves; one seeks to know and to understandinstead of entering the unknown and the mysterious. Above all, one deniesdeath as the ultimate fact of life.

Winnicott uses the term "ascensive" specifically to illustrate the signifi-cance of the Ascension in Christian tradition. To him, Christians enter thedepths of sadness, despair, and hopelessness in the Good Friday experience,but he feels the average Christian cannot hold the depression long and goesover into a manic phase on Easter Sunday. The Ascension, in his view, meansrecovery from depression.

Inside the mother's body

Winnicott underestimates the depth of experience that the Christian faithoffers in the form of reparative cycles which help overcome the depressiveposition. He asks, "How can we dive into the inner reality, the inside of thebody, the mother's body unless we can stand, be sure we are alive, and under-stand what we will find inside?"5 For him, diving into the mother's bodymeans having repression lifted at the level of the psyche. For Klein, this pro-cess leads to repair and recovery.

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Overcoming the depressive position, grieving over the original loss and dis-sociation from the idealized object, takes us back to the original wound andculminates in the internalization and restoration of the idealized object in thepsyche. Yet, while intrapsychic restoration of the idealized object is the goal ofovercoming the depressive position, a developmental perspective which con-siders spirit not only includes, but finally transcends internal restoration andoffers much more than mere recovery from repression or depression. Winnicottmisses the potential for regression, dependence, breakdown, and mourning tolead also to spiritual transformation.

The Christian faith, in the fullest implications of the depressive-aspect ofthe Ascension, offers what we will find inside the body when psyche meetsspirit. The depressive-ascensive significance of Christ's Passion illustrates,through history and story, the rich multilayered dimensions of the psyche,not only the impact of psychic internalization, but the potential for transfor-mation when human spirit conjoins with the divine. When we include body,nature, and matter in the death-in-life, life-in-death experience, it is as if inrestoring the internal mother we were taking the whole of nature into us.Such a perspective extends the meaning of Klein's conclusion that "Naturemourns with the mourner" in the process of mutual sorrow.

Memory and metaphor

It is the way of metaphor to transform memory into continuity . . . Throughmetaphorical concentration, therapists can imagine what it is to be their pa-tients. Those who have no pain can imagine those who suffer. Those at the cen-ter can imagine what it is to be outside. The strong can imagine the weak. Illu-minated lives can imagine the dark. Poets in their twilight can imagine theborders of stellar fire. We strangers can imagine the familiar hearts of strangers.6

—Cynthia Ozick

St. Augustine contributes through his own personal experience of interiorityto the complexity of the ascensive-depressive experience and makes claimsparticularly relevant to the process of transformation and restoration. In hisConfessions, he assures us that if we proceed through the deepest layers ofthe psyche, we must inevitably encounter the mystery of spirit. Book Tenspecifically records the ways in which spirit is present to human beings andtraces in some detail the soul's journey to God. His memoria is a metaphor forthe unconscious, where we find ourselves in vast and spacious halls embracedby the imagination and infused with a poetic sensibility as our interior sensesbecome more attentive to the immediacy of things. In the deepest halls ofmemory, we learn that what we mourn for and what memory strives for isthe source of our wholeness. The soul, in these depths, is reawakened to itsprimordial ground.

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Augustine's attestation to the life of interiority finds resonance in an ety-mological study by Carrin Dunne of the word "memory."7 Dunne writes meta-phorically of memory as a great tree whose vast and complex root systemdisappears into an unconscious ground invisible to our sight. Similarly, theword itself has complex roots and has been traced by Dunne to a single Proto-Indo-European root, mer-. The basic meaning of this root is "to mourn." Inreduplicated form, it becomes "memory," as in the Latin memor, and the verb"to remember." The structure of the reduplicated form gives an image ofsomething folding back upon itself, as in our duplicating reflexive pronouns,such as "I, myself." Analogous to Augustine s journey inward, the concept ofinfolding serves as a guiding metaphor for how memory works and is paradig-matic for how we may obtain fundamental awareness of the self.

Similarly, Klein and Winnicott indicate that in mourning and breakdown,there is a folding back upon the self and the beginning of a convergence to-ward a center. What begins as withdrawal in the presence of another mayculminate in a process of infolding which may become a replication of thewhole self upon itself, leading through layers of mourning to an originalwound, an original loss, and dissociation. This is the authentic self of normalmourning, where for these two theorists an individual who has overcome thedepressive position, restored an idealized object, managed to integrate and tosecure a good internal world, has developed the capacity to love.8 They claimthat at the root of the self in the unconscious is a self who can mourn. Basedupon the complexity of the self, however, a self that mourns should be distin-guished from a self that remembers.

The maternal headwaters

The root of the word memory in its most reduced form is mr, Dunne explains.Closely associated to this root is the Egyptian m r'. M-a is the root of thesound a child makes when it desires nourishment. The reduplicated form ofmr is "murmur," which Dunne associates with the sound water makes. Thetwo roots combined become a metaphor for the source of one's nurture, amoist, soothing, maternal, watery reality.

The letter R originally meant "head." It is close to the Proto-Indo-Europeanroots a r-, o r-, and e r-. Ar-, which means "to fit together," gives us the Latinordiri, the root of "primordial," which refers to the original order of things, toat-one-ness and harmony. It also refers to that which fuels inspiration, whichWinnicott tells us emerges from developmental maturity, that is to creativityand art.

The basic meaning of e r- means "to set in motion." From e r- comes theLatin o r i r i, which means "to be born," or "origin." If we put the m and the rtogether again, we arrive at an image of maternal headwaters giving birth to

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us, setting us in motion, setting us afloat toward our origins. We sail thesewaters because they provide a center from which we can unfold generatively,a center which receives, holds, and renews us.

Could it be that what we mourn for and what memory strives for is thissource? Winnicott says sometimes we can only experience the source we longfor as an absence. When we cannot "re-member" the source of our being,when we have externalized or projected it in order not to lose it entirely, wemust construct a door or window where there was not one before. Throughthis opening, we can make our way into the deep and spacious caverns ofmemoria, tracing its whispers and murmurings throughout the treasure-house of the imagination as we make our way into the headwaters. When wereach the shoreline, we can stand and reflect upon these waters from theinside of the mother's body, secure in the certainty of our image-world, or wecan cast these images upon our vessel and push offshore to take our chanceswith the wind and the sea.

Our journey requires a vessel sturdy enough to brave the tempestuous,deeper waters, a frame strong enough to endure years of waiting, a shipwhose bow is constructed "like the two joined hands of a suppliant, handswhich advance before the tears of one's face."9 These hands are the point ofthe ship itself. They signify our willingness, the recognition of our individuallimitations, our need for otherness, and the beginnings of transformation. Itis the point of the folded hands which advances us toward the source. Like abeautiful cutwater, our ship can be moved by the invisible words on our lips,by secret and silent pleading, by impulses which begin in our toughness andemerge through our tears. Our tears bolster our sails and buoy us up, carry-ing us into the depths of memory, mourning, and mr'.

Memory, mourning, and mr'

One who constructed such a vessel and traveled this vast sea, and became aliving vessel for others to sail, was Mary Magdalene, the first witness to theResurrection. The Hebrew form of the name Mary, mirjam, derives from theEgyptian mr' (to be loved) and from raa (to see, the seer).10 This derivation isechoed in the myrrh Mary Magdalene carried to anoint Jesus in an act oflove.

Her own name and the names of the healing spices she carried offer insightinto the character of Mary Magdalene. She is one who seeks passionately,whose seeking begins in externals, with the senses, and moves interiorly.Where the root of ma- is relevant to what Winnicott and Klein refer to as thearchaic maternal, or "diving into the mother's body," mr' in contrast leads usto ground level, to the empty tomb where we find the source itself in motion,rising and coming to meet us.

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We can only speculate upon the specifics of the Magdalene's life. It is evi-dent in the scriptural accounts that something had caused a breakage in herinner world, creating a sense of fragmentation and loss for which she soughthealing. Augustine tells us that what we long for is the soul we have beenseparated from at birth. We remain dissociated until God belongs to the soulin totality—"O truth, everywhere."11 He claims that when we come to it weare capable of recognizing the missing thing which will restore our nature.Drawing upon Augustine, we see that Mary had become a stranger to herself,possessed of demons, dispossessed of an authentic self. She needed someoneto help her mourn and remember, to re-collect that part of herself that hadfallen off along the way into the deep waters of memoria. She needed help togather what was missing from her own resources, and thus to become a wholeperson. Jesus offered all of this.

In relationship to Jesus, she was swept into a new state of being. He tookroot in her psychic soil and led her to her own rich, full femininity. Throughhim, she was able to confront the contraries of dark and light in her struggleto cast out demons. In learning to yield to the antinomies within her psyche,she prepared a soil for the spirit.

Indwelling passionate love

The relationship between Mary Magdalene and Jesus shows us what itmeans to live passionately in the image of the Trinity. The theologian Rose-mary Haughton describes such love as "breakthrough and exchange." In con-trast to breakdown, breakthrough is an impulse of love or need that encoun-ters an obstacle or barrier. At that encounter, one feels a need to breakthrough to something else, to a new sphere of experience.12 Winnicott speaksof that experience as an "indwelling," although his reference is to personaliza-tion. For him, psyche, not spirit, comes to dwell in the body, leading to an"integrated unit self." In an evolving self which encounters the full movementof love in the Trinity, there is further transformation, as spirit encountershumanity in the flesh.

To live in the image of God, we begin by making ourselves receptive to thepassionate inspiration of the imagination which in turn forges a window tothe soul, a portal through which ongoing correspondence can occur.13 We ob-serve these beginnings in Mary Magdalene when she flattens herself on theground before Jesus to bathe his feet with her hair.

Forging a portal does not preclude suffering, however. Our suffering andbrokenness at times of crisis, emptiness, withdrawal, or breakdown may bethe very factors that provide the point of entry and widen the portal so thatthe experience of the trinitarian exchange can become conscious in us. Toreconnect with the lost part of our nature, Augustine says, we must "practicethe presence of death at the core of our being." This has to do with the death

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of the ego in its old form, the space of dead-nothing. The biblical example weare given in the depressive-ascensive experience richly informs our under-standing of the space of this dark interval. It is a matter of waiting, remain-ing open to the experience of the ineffable at the empty tomb where we aredrawn into deeper and deeper layers of truth.

Mary Magdalene is one who willingly and openly waits at the tomb. As inthe Old Irish extension of the root memor, or miraim, which translates as "Iremain," Mary remains, at the tomb, even though the disciples and otherwomen have departed. Remaining provides the necessary period of prepara-tion and formation for interior feelings in relation to evolve to spirit. Sheshows us what it means to enter "the gap," to venture into the dark interval,to mourn and to i-emember, a journey where one becomes transfigured throughthe act of loving."

Jesus leads her into the interior provinces, into the multifaceted dimen-sions of the psyche, through the great halls of resplendent, feeling-toned im-agery, and beyond to an even deeper treasure-house where she is gathered upfinally in a fully recollected unity of body, mind, and spirit.

The empty tomb

In John's account of the Easter story, it is Mary Magdalene who arises theday after the Sabbath and comes alone to the tomb "while it was still dark,"to anoint Christ's body before his burial.15 After the disciples depart, Marystands vigil. Bearing in mind Winnicott's image of breakdown and Klein'sconcept of mourning, we find her suffering from loss and separation and atthe point of emptiness and breakdown. Jesus's crucifixion has caused such aprofound reaction that the event of his death is experienced as a void.

In Winnicott's terms, one who feels "dead, empty, nothing" has not arrivedat the stage of security Winnicott calls the "I am" state of being. Unclaimedand repudiated parts of the self still accompany the individual into adult-hood, preventing wholeness, for these parts are still unintegrated bits of be-ing. The ego suffers tremendous anxiety and threat upon nearing integrationof these bits, fearing what feels like certain death. In order to prevent what itperceives as its own annihilation, it sometimes defends itself by breakingdown or falling into the gap of madness.16

Behind the defenses of the person is a "something else" which when inte-grated can lead to the development of a "unit self," the self which throughdissociation has become split off from integration. The goal is to get to theexperience of emptiness and nothingness, to discover the true self which iscreatively alive and real. Only by entering into the original anxiety and expe-riencing the primal agony can one re-collect the missing bits of being andbecome alive again.17

In the process of integration, Winnicott speaks of the importance of transi-

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tional objects in conjunction with healing the injured core. If one's develop-ment of object-relating skills has been impaired, so has one's ability to befully alive and creative. In many cases, one has not experienced sufficienttrust in the early environment. As Klein tells us, trust is developed in theobject-world first in connection with a few loved people, Jesus's role for MaryMagdalene. A facilitating environment with a maternal presence adaptive toone's needs enables one to undergo a series of synthetic transitions towarddevelopmental maturation.18 It is important that one be allowed to create thisgood-enough object to establish a foundation of omnipotence, for the ability tocreate one's world is preliminary to symbolic consciousness.

The stone had been removed

The Magdalene is left facing the depths of dread, of an emptiness amountingto non-existence. Fearing the body may have been stolen, she turns first toexternal sources. The two disciples could be thought of as metaphors for theidealized false-self reality (Peter) and the manic defenses (the disciple whooutruns Peter). The second disciple runs ahead, looks and sees the linenwrappings in their objectified form, but he does not go in. He is blind-sightedand cannot enter interiorly.

As Klein tells us, our manic defenses keep us in a defensive posture andout of touch with good objects. When we recover from "blind sight" and pro-jection, we are able to see through the false self to the interior layers. Seeingthrough requires clarity, but clarity comes only in steps. When it comes, itimpels us toward a position of maturity where the ego is no longer the centerof its own arena.

Simon Peter follows the other disciple and goes into the tomb, showing thecharacteristic boldness of the ideal self. He sees the wrappings and cloth witha depth of perception that leads the other disciple to believe. Yet, neitherunderstands scripture. They return to their homes, and do not explore thedeeper reaches of the psyche. Neither can see through the visible to whatinforms it, spirit. The Magdalene, however, waits. Her willingness to sustainthe tension of longing and suffering continues to effect change. Jesus, as theportal to death-in-life and life-in death, has brought her to the juncturewhere the false external self must die so that she might come to know herselfin deeply subjective terms, the consummate subjectivity of undifferentiatedlove.19

Woman why are you weeping?

Mary's tears at the empty tomb express grief, loss, and suffering in Jesus'sabsence and yet are also a way of seeking, desiring, and restoring. No longer

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defending manically, she remains at the tomb in the place of withdrawal andbreakdown. Bending over to look inside, she confronts the darkness.

As one enters the empty tomb of one's own subjective interior, the self sud-denly feels very vulnerable. The ego fears the depths of the unconscious andthe pain it must encounter. An extreme form of isolation can occur whenprojection ceases, lending credence to Augustine's words, "man is a strangerto himself."

Believing that the body has been stolen, Mary begins to move beyond thevisible realm toward the internal. Winnicott's understanding of internal real-ity relates specifically to the historical and physical experiences of infancy.For him, "inner" is equated with the limiting membrane of the psyche-soma.The disappearance of the body recalls what he has identified developmentallyas the holding place where the child first achieves "psychosomatic indwell-ing." If the psyche is properly mirrored and held, one regains a bridge back tothe whole self, and the psyche can come to dwell in the soma. The body doesnot disappear.

Failure at this stage, however, can cause "unthinkable anxiety," whichWinnicott associates with going to pieces, falling forever, having no relation-ship to the body.20 One might attempt, for instance, to keep both the innerself and one's ideals alive by splitting them off, never suffering the loss ofthe original ideal object in and through the body. The result is that thesplit-off primordial energies do not get integrated into the overall psyche-soma.

When she had said this, she turned around

This is the first "turning."In psychological terms, the first turning still belongs to the transitional

imaginal arena. When one is aroused through imagination, that which arousesbuilds its image into an individual by depositing a seed in the one desiring it.This seed is the living spiritual image which exists midway between thepurely ideal and the real existence. This seed causes that which is desired tobecome part of one's essence. One "fixes" the inspired image internally andeventually something new is born of the two.21 If one corresponds with theinspired image, one becomes like that which one desires. Rejection of theinspired image may result in foreclosure, in which case one will have no win-dow to the soul.

Jesus sustains Mary through a long phase of absolute dependence as partof the "I am unit," until she is ready to turn around. In the therapeutic rela-tionship, eventually the analysand has a glimpse of that which is "not me"and must begin to come to terms with the loss of the idealized object. Thisthing of the past, the primal agony, begins to make itself known consciously.The alliance and the protective holding environment contribute toward al-

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lowing separation to become a restorative rather than a traumatic experi-ence. We are brought to the critical and difficult juncture of maintaining adelicate balance between illusion and reality in an ongoing dialectical move-ment.22

This entails reaching the pain and disappointment of what the analysandhas experienced as an absence, as a nothing where something could havehappened. One of Winnicott's primary illustrations of such absence is the in-jury that can occur to a child when it is not reflected by the mother. Themother's face and eyes are the first mirror-image of the self. If the mother isguarded and unresponsive, the child looks and does not see herself. She seesonly a face. Her spontaneous gestures create nothing.

If the child does not see itself being seen by the mother, but only perceivesan absence, then she does not develop with a sense of an other. A lookingglass becomes an external thing to be looked at but not to be looked into.Without an internal world, a flower is just a flower instead of a multiplicity ofcolor, texture, light, form, spines, and stamen emerging from and plummetinginto the dark depths of an invisible center. As a reparative mirroring pres-ence is recovered in the analysis, and the analysand begins to experiencebeing seen, she must also begin to experience being other. At some point shewill experience the sacrifice of old projections, the dying of former introjectsin exchange for new internal realities.

This transition is expressed metaphorically in the play Mary Magdalen bythe Belgian Symbolist Maurice Maeterlinck,23 who writes of the Magdalene asseeking truth but also as one who is captured by surfaces. Until she is drawnby the teachings of the Nazarene, she has never looked beyond her love forthe figure of Verus, who is a mere shadow of true love and reality. At theclimax of the piece, Verus, who has arrested the Nazarene, gives the Mag-dalene a choice: to yield to him and save the Nazarene, or to refuse him andwitness Christ's death. On the one hand, yielding to Verus means yielding toexternal semblances, to a false, superficial love. On the other hand, her re-fusal to sell her body means the Nazarene's death. Without foreknowledge ofthe Redemption, she chooses the latter, concluding humbly that "one seesonly little by little."

The absent non-reflective face, represented in the superficial love of Verus,is dashed like a broken mirror as the Magdalene relinquishes the shadow-godand turns to the true God. This is also a moment of anxiety and dread. Theego has relinquished the old, but the new has not taken up residence as inter-nal structure. This moment is represented in the Maeterlinck play when theMagdalene must witness the Nazarene being led to his death.

Seeing through old images and introjection is the work of the first turning.Facing the death of all that we know in the image-realm can evoke intensedepression or deep sadness. As one suffers the primal agony in the present,the ego re-experiences loss and separation from a conscious rather than anunconscious position, but feels initially as if it has been crushed.24

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Woman why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?

"Weeping may tarry for the night but joy cometh in the morning." (Ps 30:5)

At this point in Scripture, Mary Magdalene sees Jesus standing there but shestill does not recognize him. Jesus asks, "Woman why are you weeping, whomare you looking for?" The first question might be addressed psychologically:We mourn the self we have never known and have never been able to be. Wemourn for our lost home which includes a long and painful withdrawal ofprojections. We struggle to gather up that which is lost and to communicatethis loss.25 Importantly, however, Jesus asks Mary, not only why she is weep-ing, but whom she is looking for, the distinction being that remembering isdifferent from mourning and has to do with spirit.

To remember, the Magdalene first mourns the dead Christ and seeks "theliving among the dead," in order to anoint him. In mourning the dead Christand seeking his living presence among the dead analytically, we begin withwithdrawal, regression, and absolute dependence, starting from a state ofemptiness and non-existence. Like a child with its mother present, the analy-sand grieves so that out of emptiness, nothingness, and non-existence mightcome psychic restoration.

Remembering, however, means not only the long process of internalizingparental imagos. It means remembering the essence of what we have forgot-ton, the loss of the soul and the soul's origins. Augustine says we seek whatlies beyond our images. We seek to remember what may first be experiencedas a nothing, as a privation, something so long forgotten that even the act offorgetting itself must be recalled. We can refuse and turn away, or we canallow our desire to spur us onward. To seek something, to desire it and to longfor it to the degree that the soul does in seeking spirit, we must have knownabout it once. Our fullness is grounded in the transcendent.26

It is not until the Magdalene waits by the empty tomb of death and descentand faces its depths that she can anoint the dead Christ. She grieves for hersoul lost, for the brokenness and dissociation of that which has its roots his-torically, in the psyche, as well as in the deeper layers of memoria.27 Mourn-ing gives us our history and leads us toward the core of our self; rememberingleads us toward the eternal.

Tell me where you have laid him and I will take him away

For a moment, the Magdalene thinks Jesus is the gardener. It is significantthat Mary sees Jesus as a gardener. A gardener plants seeds, tends the soil,and works the ground so that things take root. In a thirteenth-century Easterhymn, Christ is depicted as a gardener sowing his seed in Mary Magdalene'smind. He tells her, "The true Gardener is here, the cultivator of minds; seek

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in the garden of the mind the worker of the mind. The relief of your pain ishidden within you, and you do not know; you have it inside, and look outsidefor the remedy. . . ."2S Jesus is also the soil from which the seed will grow. Heis the ground which inspires the Magdalene's final transformation.

Mary!

Jesus calls her by name. As Augustine says, the realities of the psyche arewaiting to be drawn out by some force of attention, drawn forth by the adviceof another.29 As Mary is named with an identity specifically her own, she isempowered to respond and to name Jesus, to see him in his separateness.

Naming as a factor of transformation involves correspondence with a sig-nificant, reflecting other. This is a crucial point analytically. The experience ofthe void makes the analysand realize more than ever that she is dependentand that she must rely upon and borrow from the ego of the analyst. Theanalyst names the analysand by initiating the process through person-to-per-son presence. If the analyst does not receive this force of attention, then theanalysand's name is not called. The poverty then is in the fact that transfor-mation at this level does not happen. This is painful and tragic because theanalysand cannot transform herself in isolation.

To remember beyond history first requires a movement out into history andrelationship much like the movement of passionate and generative love be-tween the persons of the godhead. When we mourn, we mourn not in isola-tion, but through an other. As analysts, we take on a very specific kind ofloving and dying like that of a mother who devotedly loves her child. WhileKlein may not have adhered to the trinitarian model, the wisdom of herwords, "Nature mourns with the mourner," begins to take on new meaningwhen looked at in trinitarian forms.

If we fully honor the concept of absolute dependence, and if the transitionalstage is negotiated properly through the attentive presence of another, thennaming builds and sustains a receptive vessel where the self is created firstin the space between two persons until internalization and transformationtake place.30 Further, it is the container in which spirit can enter.

She turned and said to him, "Rabbouni"

And now in vast, cold, empty space, aloneYet hidden deep within the grown-up heart,a longing for the first world, the ancient one . . . .

Then, from His place of ambush, God leapt out.31

—Rilke

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The phrase "she turned" is interesting, because scripture does not indicatethat she has ever turned away from Jesus. She must still be facing him. Incontrast to a bodily act, the implication is of a turning of a different sort.

In the Maeterlinck play, up to the point that the Magdalene delivers theNazarene to his death, human effort is clearly involved, in the characters'experience of the reflected self, of suffering and seeing through the illusoryshadows. Becoming, however, is more complex than simply relinquishing oldimagos, discovering new ones, achieving separation from the object and inter-nalizing structure.

In his final scene, Maeterlinck has the Magdalene stand completely still,"motionless in the dark," as Jesus is led to his death. Verus looks back andsees that she is "illumined with the light of the departing torches as thoughin ecstasy." The Nazarene has been the guiding light through whom she hascome to know the divine potentialities of her soul. In her rejection of Verus,she delivers the Nazarene to his death but finds real love in acceptance of theunknown. The Nazarene is never seen in the play, but interacts in the Mag-dalene's life three times from offstage, as an everpresent light.

Light is used similarly in The Conversion of Mary Magdalene by the painter,Caravaggio (c. 1600), where she stands at her moment of transformation, armresting on a large convex mirror which reflects her hand pointing to a lightcoming from a window. Unlike the face of a non-reflecting mother, this look-ing glass reflects only true reality, the source of the light. The mirror is themeeting-point of the divine and the human. As her understanding becomesilluminated by the source, Mary focuses her contemplation entirely upon thislight which continues to return to her and surround her.

When we turn the second time, we come to know that we are separatebeings but related to the divine source which comes to meet us in the darknight of our suffering, loss, and emptiness. When we meet God face to face,we find that there is no one other than God who is capable of being such aperfect mother-mirror. We know what the light is, that it is unchangeable,that it is love, and that this love is eternal as "we with open face are trans-formed into the same image." As this light penetrates us, we come to knowourselves as we are known. We see ourselves being seen.32

Anselm of Canterbury grasped the truth of what is hidden deep within thelayers of memoria when he said of Mary Magdalene that "Christ was hidinghimself from you when you were seeing him and revealed himself to youwhen you were not seeing him; until he whom you were seeking askedyou whom you were seeking and why you were weeping" he could not beanointed.33

We can look into the psyche and think we "see him," but he is hidden fromus, because for reasons of manic defense or other complications, we have notyet gathered all our scattered bits or the past details of our original break-down. When Christ does reveal himself, we are not "seeing him" because weare in a shut-down state, in emptiness and breakdown, at the bottom of the

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trough of mourning. Perhaps this is a kind of kenosis that will allow us toreceive. But the pivotal point is that when the angels ask Mary why she isweeping, she cannot recognize Jesus as the risen Christ. She thinks he is agardener. She sees him still according to her own projections. Her seeking theliving among the dead, her mourning, has been the necessary prelude to mak-ing the descent into remembering. It is not until the risen Christ makes him-self present to her actually, flesh resurrected in spirit, and anoints her thatshe recognizes him and moves beyond "the foot of the ladder" to see into thereaches of the eternal." She turns the second time in one great transfigura-tive moment to see Christ—as Augustine tells us we may come to see allessences—in his restored, eternal form. It is the eternal Christ that Marygreets as "Rabbouni."

Master!

When the act of mourning is brought to its fullness through remembering, wearrive at what is meant by Augustine's expression "the hand of the heart" or"learning by heart." The Magdalene teaches us how to return again and againto the place of the heart in silence and in hope.35 Retuning again and againrecalls our starting point, memor, and the image of something folding backupon itself. The Indo-European translation of memor is "mindful." Further,the Greek martus (hence "martyr") gives us "witness." We mourn to remem-ber and our remembrance in memoria gives us mindfulness. Mindfulness en-ables us to recognize that all we have become is related to the true source andto witness to this as Mary Magdalene does in paying tribute to Jesus with thetitle of "Master."

Do not hold on to me

The relationship between the disciples and Jesus in John 14—17 reflects"original dependency." Jesus instructs the disciples: "No one comes to the Fa-ther except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also" (John14: 6-7). In saying this, Jesus lays out a map for what is possible if thedisciples are willing to experience Him in his complexity of being. He is nevermerely an image of God, nor just a psychic internalization. He is Jesus in theflesh as well as the portal to the mysteries of the Trinity. He promises toreturn again and again as truth incarnate: "From now on you do know himand have seen him" (John 14: 7). It is a matter of trust and absolute depen-dence which will bring them to this truth as he indicates in the conditions hesets Peter when he begs to follow Jesus: "Will you lay down your life for me?"

Jesus's words, "do not hold onto me," translated in the New English Bibleas "do not cling to me," urge Mary Magdalene to submit any disbelief and

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doubt to confidence and faith. She is not to hold onto Jesus because he hasnot yet ascended to the Father. Yet she must not deny what she has wit-nessed. Her effort to cling to the old is to be abandoned for a new relationshipof ongoing trust and reliance with the ascended Lord.

I am ascending to my father and your father, to my God and your God

Jesus includes Mary Magdalene in his final transformation, indicating thepotential in others to become incarnate as whole selves. Both he and theMagdalene are dependent on the Father. She is able to be dependent becausehe is dependent. This kind of dependency is to be distinguished from "originaldependency," which keeps us captive to old imagos.

In order to be alive and creative, with a sturdy capacity to love, we need tobe dependent in the sense Jesus is suggesting here. Dependency is necessarybecause we are always limited. The farther along we go on this journeybetween land and sea, the more we find we can never fully give up our limita-tions. We are never truly free unless we can allow ourselves to become depen-dent upon the grace of spirit, as is said of the Magdalene in a thirteenth-century Easter hymn, "The feet of Christ which you washed are the washedsource of that grace which you received from him."36

Becoming dependent upon the grace of spirit leads inevitably to the cross-roads of life and death. At many junctures, we must consciously die to theother. We may descend into an uncertain and painful hell as a loved onedisintegrates from a virulent cancer. We may wait alongside the tomb of anemptying mind while a father struggles to recover some portion of memorydepleted in a stroke. We cannot help but modify one another when conjoinedin the dynamism of trinitarian love. This love can only be generative.

When we surrender to the full force of passion, imagination, and sufferinginherent in the experience of trinitarian exchange, we come to understandhow the ascensive-depressive experience includes the entire self in a develop-mental unfolding. Mutual dependency means dependency in the body, in theflesh. Dependency in the flesh leads to transformation in the flesh. At eachlevel of incarnation, in our willingness to offer our bodies as living bread wefind we are not only internally restored but transfigured.

The ultimate exchange in mutual dependency is to suffer a fleshly deathand descent relying upon the grace of spirit. Dependent upon the Father,Jesus descends into hell in the flesh and rises from the dead in the flesh. Inso doing, his body becomes a living vessel which supports upon its bow thepoint of the folded hands which advance us willingly toward the source.

When we "dive into the body" of that which is eternal, when we die in him,we receive not only his introjected presence but his actual presence, his resur-rected presence. His death becomes our death his resurrection our resurrec-tion, which we sustain as we partake of the mystical body in the sacrament

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even after his death. At the first turning-point of breakdown and transforma-tion, we encounter a new psychical reality. In the second turning, we encoun-ter a new spiritual reality where we find in making the transition frompsyche to spirit that we cross into the invisible and return.

What Mary Magdalene finds when she dives into the inner reality, theinside of the mother's body, is distinctly more than the restoration of the lostobject in the psyche, much more than the integration of psychic contents. Inthe first turning, she mourns the loss of the idealized object beginning inrelationship to the historical person of Jesus. She clings passionately toChrist, having found her window to the Tree of Life and draws from the treeher own root and branch. Grafted to his side, she remains. Even in the void,in the darkness of the tomb, she remains, not knowing, but always loving

As this love comes back into the world, into the flesh, we find a motherrestored. Our deeply buried love leads us into the maternal headwaters to themother before the mother, the object behind the object, who becomes a subjec-tive interior reality, as well as a lived, embodied reality. Mary Magdalenereturns to her community as a child of nature, one who carries all of naturein her soul.37 True to the derivatives of her name, she becomes "ra a," a seekerand seer of internals and eternals, a woman of multiple realities, one whoparticipates in two worlds, an inner and an outer world which leads her toexclaim that she has seen the Lord.

"I have seen the Lord"

Christ teaches us that glory is more than just a temporary contact with di-vine presence. Glory is a reality that can be expressed only as recognized byan other. The entry into glory is at the juncture where the opposites of other-ness meet and are suffered. In other words, the glory of Christ is not visiblein itself. He has to be glorified by one who sees from a position of well-honedinteriority. The impact of this is that Christ dies and rises in a way that isvisible to others and which others can attain.

Mary Magdalene not only witnesses Christ's second birth, she rises withhim. She sheds the skins of her former self at the tomb just as Jesus shedshis burial cloths. In the fullness of their relationship, Jesus gives her every-thing that is already hers. She dies unto him whose body disappears but onlyto rise again, and in his return she is born with a physical meaning of herown. His return returns her to herself. Spirit conjoins with flesh and fleshreturns to life, incarnate. Her resurrection is different from his; her responsehas its own characteristics, but all of "nature has mourned with the mourner."Darkness has been brought into recoil by the fingertips of light. Mary, too,has risen.

The core of the Christian faith attests to the redemption of human naturein Christ. In the coming together of human spirit and divine, matter is re-

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deemed. In the analytic space, this might be configured as two persons inrelationship who comprise opposite but complementary terms. A third con-stituent arises from the psychic vessel they create together. Leading from theconciliatory power of this coterminous vessel, the opposites undergo the pro-cess of transformation and restoration. This threefold vessel needs to begrounded in time and space, however. In its completed form, as the buriedmaternal essence is restored, a fourth element arises, that of spirit in matter.This becomes the basis for the triad's unity and grounds its placement inspace and time, in the form of history.38

As our relationship to material reality changes in the process of returning,we participate in a redemptive historical process. As nature is redeemed, so isthe creative feminine element. Potentially, we can become second mothers toour clients, mothers, and god-bearers.

Mary Magdalene shows us that beyond our internal and external persecu-tors, our projections and introjections, our regressions, and our recoveries,beyond history but in history—when we mourn, when we remember—firstwe anoint, but we must wait to be anointed. Our waiting will be rewarded notonly with a restoration of inner reality and an inspired capacity to love, butwith eternal life. When we are asked "Why Weepest Thou?" perhaps we willturn again and know Him for the first time.

Bearing the Promethean fire

You called, you shouted, and burst in on my deafness. You flared into light andgleamed brightly at me and dispersed my blindness. You breathed forth fra-grances and I drew in my breath, and still I pant for you. I tasted much, and stillI hunger and thirst. You touched me, and I burned with desire for your peace.39

—Augustine

As Mary Magdalene ventured forth early on the day of the Resurrection, shelighted the way with a torch. The torch is a living symbol for what might becalled a Promethean principle where the fire of spirit, the pulse of new life,new creation, new being, is constantly brought into the world as an illuminat-ing, transfiguring, and liberating force.40 The flame of the torch is a livingsymbol for the deeper life which flows beneath the surface of a day and distin-guishes us as psychotherapists who participate in the dialogue betweenpsyche and spirit.

It takes an act of faith to become torch-bearers like the Magdalene, to availourselves of that which simmers at the depths of us. Waiting involves suffer-ing. Everything that has remained unlived, all our dissociated bits, must bedeposited in the space of the tomb at this crossroads of being. When we con-front our external images and false realities, our manic defenses, our split-ting and fragmentation, our inability to mourn, suddenly our former skins

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may fall away, leaving us sitting in the darkness with the dread of annihila-tion that the ego must face in confronting its finitude. The tomb of emptiness,withdrawal, and breakdown feels cold and colorless, devoid of human pres-ence. There is very little air.

We have a guide, however, who has traveled this terrain before us. TheMagdalene shows us how to wait in this space between land and sea, psycheand spirit, the space which stretches beyond the shadowy reaches of the mindinto the autumnal skies of twilight where we receive glimpses of that whichwas lost so long ago, the rustle of cloth in a dimly-lit room, the soft "mur-mur-ings."

Mary Magdalene teaches us, as she teaches the disciples, that if our jour-ney into wholeness is to come full circle, we must struggle to awaken fromour childish sleep and recognize the light that is there before us, so that whatwe remember when we remember at the depths of our being is that we are ofspirit.

Navigators of passion

To remember at these depths is to become a navigator of passion who sets outon the great psychic sea open to the exchange between imagination, experience,and spirit. From the bow of our vessel, we watch attentively for glimpses ofthe transfigured body and the glorified, resurrected body, a body we firstmeet in our imagination. The space of imagination is a truly transitional,transformational space, and the images and objects we meet can lead us tothe transcendent. In the end, even our images must be relinquished, however,and we must turn and rely upon spirit to light the way to the other side.

Turning imaginatively and passionately is a creative response and contrib-utes to the intrapsychic dynamics which usher us toward the primordial, to-ward the definable character of essences and the undifferentiated openness ofthe moment. Such a response means accepting the tension of the oppositesand the unexpected. The passionate trembling of our imagination allows us tofall into the space of the unknown, into dark but spacious intervals where thesoul emerges "in a profound recollection where laughter and tears pulse to-gether."41

The analytic hour may become the vessel which houses our dark intervals,our breakdowns, and the paradoxical union of laughter and tears. We mayfind ourselves immersed in the nexus of life and death where the pain andsuffering of our fellow human beings seems overwhelming. In the pattern ofthe Trinity, however, we are brought to greater awareness of how this suffer-ing may be held and transformed by love. Death and the little dyings weundergo daily may actually become gifts of life as we partake of that lovewhich moves the sun and the other stars, that love which keeps us open tothe possible impossible in our clients.

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Passionate love is synonymous with the person of Mary Magdalene. Havinghad her demons cast forth, she gives Jesus all that she is, anoints him withher hair, and is rewarded for her loving with the harmony that comes withknowing the source of all light. This love, even as it fails total fulfillmentevery day, as we confront what is sometimes experienced as demons by ourclients, and as we face our own limitations, culminates finally in the point ofthe folded hands in prayer which advances us toward the source.

This point, at the juncture where we must face the darkest darkness, thecolorless void of remembering, remains our faith. But we have learned alongthe way how to push offshore, how to cast our nets beyond superficial veneersinto the deeper layers of the psyche. We have been prepared and supported bywhat Cezanne, calls "a colored state of grace."42 With such support, suchspirit, we are able to turn toward the darkness and to receive it. One mightencapsulate the Magdalene's response in this way:

He turned to me, this strangerAnd said, "mr!" I cried, "Master!"And I knew joy,Light.

The moon has passed the sun. All was given out and gathered in.Darkness was recoiled by the fingertips of light.

I have passed through the fireChild of the Light. Fire of the Son. Mother of the Flame.Mother of the Flame. Fire of the son. Child of the Light.

The mystery of a life that opens.

References

1. See D.W. Winnicott, Collected Papers: Through Paediatrics to Psychoananlysis. London: Tav-istock, 1958, and Psychoanalytic Explorations. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989.

2. Melanie Klein, Love, Guilt, and Reparation. New York: Delacorte Press, 1975, pp. 359-369.The cure in Klein's terms means that if we can lessen the anxieties of destructive and per-secuting internal parents, these inner objects can be rehabilitated. The goal is to set up trustin good parent figures who can mitigate the fear of bad objects. The analysand needs toexperience the emotions of sorrow, guilt, and grief, as well as love and trust, to go throughmourning and, ultimately, to overcome the infantile depressive position.

3. Ibid., p. 360. Suffering for Klein means we suffer terrible pain in mourning. In the process ofdetaching libido from the lost object and placing it in the light of reality, the ego has to facethe fact that this object no longer exists. The ego feels it too may die.

4. Winnicott, op. cit., pp. 134-135.5. Ibid., p. 140.6. Cynthia Ozick, Metaphor and Memory: Essays. New York: Knopf, 1989, pp. 282-283.7. See Carrin Dunne, "The Roots of Memory," Spring, 1988, pp. 116-120.8. Klein says we may encounter the infantile neurosis and have to negotiate the depressive

position on more than one occasion. The point is that we become able to mourn in contrast toconstantly having to defend against it.

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9. Charles Peguy, from "A Vision of Prayer." in God Speaks. Trans. Julian Green. New York:Pantheon, 1945, p. 51.

10. See Carla Ricci, Mary Magdalene. Minneapolis: Fortres Press, 1994, p.129.11. See Saint Augustine's Confessions. Trans. Henry Chadwick. Oxford: Oxford University Press,

1991, Book Ten, 26: 37.12. See Rosemary Haughton, The Passionate God. New York: Paulist Press, 1981, pp. 18-47.

The correlation in Winnicott and Klein would be the tension that arises in one's inability tomourn because of the rage against lost love objects, the tensions between the two sets offeelings and defenses—persecution and pining.

13. See Susan Haskins, Mary Magdalen. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1993, p. 290. She offers oneaccount where the Magdalene is associated with Venetian charities, one of which is the guildof the f inestr ier i , or window-makers.

14. See Ann Ulanov on "the gap," in The Wisdom of the Psyche. Cambridge: Cowley Press, 1988.See also Haughton, pp. 60-65, and Wilfred Bion. Elements of Psychoanalysis. New York:Basic Books, Inc. 1963. Bion speaks of the unknown factor "O" as the means to ultimatereality.

15. See John 20: 1-18 in New Oxford Annotated bible.16. Physical or mental breakdown can work very well, Winnicott tells us, if it includes under-

standing and insight on the part of the client.17. For Winnicott, cure entails building belief in good internal objects, lessening the manic de-

fenses which, in turn will shrink depressive and persecutory anxieties. In this, one developsa belief in goodness and kindness, a linking up of fantasy and physical experiences, lessdevaluation, new object relations, lessening of obsessional self-protection, more risk-taking,and the experience of guilt.

18. Winnicott, Psychoanalytic Explorations, pp. 145-148. Developmental maturation is hinderedby trauma. Winnicott's definition of trauma is a failure that relates to dependence. Traumaimplies a breaking of faith. The child builds up a capacity to "believe in" and the environ-mental provision first fits this and then fails. In this way, the environment persecutes bygetting through the child's defenses. The child does not get to experience omnipotence andexperiences independence without gradual weaning from absolute dependence. In response,hate is generated toward the good, idealized object who the child destroys, but this is experi-enced as being persecuted and hated by good objects.

19. Winnicott believes oneness with God to be a defensive posture if it repudiates communityand avoids responsibility at the depressive position. On undifferentiated union," see NicolasBerdyaev's Spirit and Reality. London: Geoffrey Bles, 1946, and Bernard Lonergan's Methodin Theology. New York: Herder and Herder, 1972. Both speak to the point that union leads tocommunity.

20. See D. W. Winnicott, The Maturational Process and the Facilitating Environment, New York:International Universities Press, 1965, pp. 58, 61.

21. Franz von Baader, Samtliche Werke. Ed. Franz Hoffman. Leipzig: Bethman, 1850-1860, vol.8, p. 96.

22. See, for instance, Stephen Mitchell's Relational Concepts in Psychoanalysis. Cambridge: Har-vard University Press, 1988, pp. 204-234.

23. Maurice Maeterlinck, Mary Magdalen, London, 1910. See also John H. Miroslav, Mae-terlinck's Symbolic Drama: A Leap Into Transcendence, Louvain, 1974.

24. The inherent problem with many constructivist developmental positions is that many do notconcern themselves enough with the ascensive-depressive experience of "waiting," the neces-sary correspondence with the imaginary realm during and after the process of loss and sep-aration. It is the ongoing experience of illusion that Winnicott tells us builds and sustainsrelationship to the transcendent. There needs to be an openness on the part of the analyst tothe world of the imaginal, the borderland country which, he hopes, he has come to knowhimself. Our desire for continued renewal means we must develop the capacity for illusion sothat the future will not be such. See, for instance, Donald Kalsched, "Narcissism and theSearch for Interiority," Quadrant, 1974, p. 52, and Carol Savitz, "Healing and Wounding:The Collision of the Sacred and the Profane in Narcissism," Journal of Analytical Psychol-ogy, 1986, Vol. 31, pp. 319-340.

25. Or, as Freud says, we will live the loss out behaviorally until we remember it.26. St. Augustine, Confessions, 15:23-22, 32.

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27. In contrast, see Winnicott in Through Paediatrics, p. 133. He says some people do not recog-nize that the people who inhabit them are a part of themselves and act as if God speaks oracts through them as agents of God. They deny their parenthood of the internalized object.

28. Haskins offers the Latin and the complete translation of the original hymn by Philippe deGreve, the thirteenth century chancellor of Paris, pp. 218-219.

29. Confessions, 10:17-11:18.30. Haskins, pp. 217-18, speaks of Mary Magdalene as symbolized from the Middle Ages on as

container. The Magdalene's most common attribute was the vase, or alabastron, a symbol inancient and modern times of the Eternal Feminine, the container of both life and death. Thevase is associated with "the innermost sanctuary of the heart full of faith and charity" and is"the receptacle of the spiritual life." The myrrh carried within the vessel represents "the deepenticements and secrets of the heart."

31. The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke. Ed. and trans. Stephen Mitchell. New York: Vin-tage, 1984.

32. 2 Cor 3:18: "And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though re-flected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory toanother; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit." See also Augustine, Confessions 7: X:16,and Letter 147 in Augustine of Hippo. Trans. Mary Clark. New York: Paulist Press, p. 399,where he draws from 1 Cor 13:12: "Now I know in part then I shall know even as I amknown." In Winnicott's terms, this would be a moment when perception gives way to apper-ception, when "object" turns into a "subject."

33. Haskins, p. 194, provides the text of a lyrical prayer by St. Anselm of Canterbury.34. George Santayana, Platonism and The Spiritual Life. New York: Scribner, 1927, pp. 73-74,

says, "spirit. . . comes to life at the foot of the ladder ... by knowing the thing above it." LikeWinnicott's on "purity," Santayana claims that spirit needs a "pure essence on which contem-plation can feed."

35. Francisco de Osuna, The Third Spiritual Alphabet. Trans. Mary E. Giles. New York: PaulistPress, 1981, pp. 478-479.

36. Haskins, pp. 218-219.37. Paintings of her throughout the centuries depict her sitting on the banks of a body of water,

sometimes beneath the moon, or at an entrance to a cave, often reading a "book of nature."38. Baader, Vol. 2, p.243.39. Barry Ulanov, The Prayers of St. Augustine. Minneapolis: Seabury Press, 1983, p. 70. Drawn

from the Confessions 19, xxvii, 38.40. Berdyaev, p. 56 ff.41. Santayana, p. 86.42. For the full citation, see J. Gasquet: Cezanne as quoted in Joanna Field (Marion Milner), On

Not Being Able to Paint. New York: Putnam, 1957, pp. 24-25.

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