‘Black holes’: escaping the void

Abstract

The ‘black hole’ is a metaphor for a reality in the psyche of many individuals who have experienced complex trauma in infancy and early childhood. The ‘black hole’ has been created by an absence of the object, the (m)other, so there is no internalized object, no (m)other in the psyche. Rather, there is a ‘black hole’ where the object should be, but the infant is drawn to it, trapped by it because of an intrinsic, instinctive need for a ‘real object’, an internalized (m)other. Without this, the infant cannot develop. It is only the presence of a real object that can generate the essential gravity necessary to draw the core of the self that is still in an undeveloped state from deep within the abyss. It is the moving towards a real object, a (m)other, that relativizes the absolute power of the black hole and begins a reformation of its essence within the psyche.

Translations of Abstract

Le « trou noir » est une métaphore pour une réalité psychique chez de nombreux individus ayant vécu un trauma complexe en bas âge et dans la petite enfance. Le « trou noir » est créé par une absence de l'objet, l'objet-mère, si bien qu'il n'y pas d'objet intériorisé, pas d'autre dans la psyché. A la place, il y a un « trou noir » là où l'objet devrait se situer, vers lequel l'enfant est attiré, pris au piège, à cause du besoin instinctif, intrinsèque, d'un « objet réel », un objet-mère intériorisé. Sans ceci, l'enfant ne peut se développer. Seul la présence d'un objet réel peut susciter la pesanteur essentielle nécessaire pour tirer le noyau du soi, qui est encore dans un stade non-développé, des profondeurs de l'abysse. C'est le mouvement vers un objet réel, un objet-mère, qui relativise le pouvoir absolu du trou noir, et entame une transformation de son essence dans la psyché.

Das ‘Schwarze Loch’ ist eine Metapher für eine innerpsychische Realität vieler Menschen, die in ihrer Kindheit komplexe Traumata erlitten haben. Das ‘Schwarze Loch’ entstand durch die Abwesenheit des Objektes, der Mutter bzw. des Anderen, so daß kein internalisiertes Objekt existiert, keine Mutter, kein Anderer. Genauer: dort, wo sich das Objekt befinden sollte, auf das sich das Kind beziehen könnte, ist ein ‘Schwarzes Loch’, das, wegen eines intrinsischen instinktiven Dranges nach einem 'realen Objekt, einer internalisierten Mutter / eines Anderen, zur Falle wird. Ohne solches kann sich das Kind nicht entwickeln. Nur durch die Gegenwart eines realen Objektes kann sich die notwendige Tiefe herstellen, die gebraucht wird, um den Kern des Selbst zu erreichen, der sich noch in einem unentwickelten Stadium tief im Abgrund des Inneren befindet. Es ist die Bewegung hin auf ein reales Objekt, eine Mutter, einen Anderen, die die absolute Macht des Schwarzen Loches relativieren und die innerseelische Umgestaltung seiner Essenz in Gang setzten kann.

Il ‘buco nero’ è una metafora per una realtà psichica di molte persone che hanno fatto esperienza di un trauma complesso nell'infanzia o nella prima fanciullezza. Il ‘buco nero’ è stato creato da una assenza dell'oggetto, la non-madre/il non altro (the (m)other), così non c'è alcun oggetto interiorizzato, nessuna madre nella psiche. Anzi c'è un ‘buco nero’ laddove avrebbe dovuto esserci l'oggetto, verso il quale il bambino è spinto, intrappolato da questo, per via di un bisogno istintivo e intrinseco di un ‘oggetto reale’; una interiorizzata non-madre. Senza ciò il bambino non può dei evolversi. E’ solo la presenza di un oggetto reale che può generare la gravità essenziale necessaria per avvicinarsi al centro del sé che è ancora in stato embrionale nel profondo dentro l'abisso. E’ il movimento verso un vero oggetto, una madre/altro, che relativizza l'assoluto potere del buco nero e inizia una nuova formazione della sua essenza all'interno della psiche.

«Черная дыра» – это метафора для некой реальности в психике многих людей, перенесших комплексную травму в младенчестве и раннем детстве. «Черная дыра» создается отсутствием объекта, матери, так что нет никакого интернализованного объекта, нет матери (другого) в психике. Вместо этого есть «черная дыра» – там, где должен быть объект, к которому тянется младенец, захваченный ею вследствие свойственной ему инстинктивной потребности в «реальном объекте», интернализированной матери, (в другом). Без этого младенец не может развиваться. Лишь присутствие реального объекта способно породить первичное тяготение, необходимое для вытягивания ядра самости, все еще находящейся в неразвившемся состоянии, из глубины бездны. Именно движение к реальному объекту, матери (другому), делает абсолютную мощь черной дыры относительной и начинает переформирование ее сущности в психике.

El ‘agujero negro’ es una metáfora para le realidad de la psique de muchas personas que han sufrido complejos traumas infantiles. El ‘agujero negro’ se crea ante la ausencia del objeto, la madre, de tal manera que no existe ese objeto no se internalizar, no hay madre en la psique. Lo que hay es un ‘agujero negro’ donde la madre debería estar, hacia donde el niño es absorbido, atrapado en él, por el hecho intrínseco e instintivo de la necesidad de un ‘objeto real’ la madre internalizada. Sin esto el niño no se puede desarrollar. Es sólo la presencia del objeto real lo que puede generar la gravedad esencial necesaria para poder atraer, desde su profundidad abisal, al centro del Self que aún no se ha desarrollado, Es la movilización hacia el objeto real. La madre, lo que relativiza el poder absoluto del agujero negro e inicia su reformación de su esencia dentro de la psique.

In writing this paper I am using the astronomical classification of a ‘black hole’ as a metaphor for exploring the devastating impact of complex trauma in infancy upon the individual. By trauma I am referring to an experience that causes the infant unbearable psychic pain and/or anxiety. Since the trauma, occurs before a coherent ego and its defences have been adequately formed, the intense effects are too overwhelming to be integrated into the psyche. For this reason, early infancy trauma has devastating effects on the traumatized person's body, mind and spirit (Kalsched 1996, p. 1).

The accepted astronomical definition of a ‘black hole’ is: a region in space-time ‘where it is not possible to escape to infinity’ (Hawking & Penrose 1996, p. 39). By this definition, a ‘black hole’ is a region of space where not even light can escape. The notion of an area in space where the gravitational pull is so strong that not even light can escape is complex and multifaceted and, as such, is a poignant metaphor for describing phenomena that I have observed in working with individuals who have experienced early infancy trauma.

Metaphors are useful because they provide a framework by which we can explore our experiences and formulate meaning. The metaphor of a ‘black hole’ has already been used widely in psychotherapy and analytical psychology. In their paper ‘Failed empathy’, based around work with survivors of the holocaust, Laub and Auerhahn argue that traumatic states operate like a black hole in the psyche. In a traumatized state there is an absence of structure and representable experience in a significant region of the self and, as a consequence, the initiating trauma cannot be adequately represented and therefore cannot be adequately comprehended or addressed (Laub & Auerhahn 1989, p. 390). Internal representation of interactions is necessary to meet basic emotional needs. Where this is absent, there is no basis for symbolic, goal-directed behaviour and interaction.

The character structures of many survivors show a surprising mosaic of areas of high level psychological functioning coexisting with the potential for severe regression. It is as though we see ‘black holes’ in an otherwise throbbing, pulsating and alive galaxy.

(ibid.)

In her work with autism, Frances Tustin proposes the concept of a ‘black hole’ as a metaphor for describing certain phenomena that she observed in her work with autistic and psychotic children. She portrays a premature separation as devastating for both mother and child and uses the depressing imagery of a ‘black hole’ to describe this experience (Tustin 1986, p. 43). She further postulates the existence of a mutual ‘black hole’ to describe the painful level of depression occurring when mother and baby have not been able to make the necessary emotional connection between each other. The experience of disconnection becomes both an internal and external dynamic (ibid., p. 65).

James Grotstein argues that Tustin's ‘black hole’ represents the place where the mother used to be, the place from which she has been prematurely ripped away (Grotstein 1990, p. 43). In the internal world of the patient it is a universal image involving a ‘hapless or precipitous fall into endless space’ exacerbated by the ‘terror of nothingness and boundarilessness’ (Grotstein 1990, p. 39). The aetiology of this dynamic is severe maternal deprivation or abandonment.

Branka Pecotic, in her paper ‘The black hole in the inner universe’, uses the metaphor to describe

… Not that of a hole in the self resulting from premature separation, but the hole in the object that the autistic or psychotic child is relating to – or, rather, turning away from.

(Pecotic 2002, p. 41)

In his paper, ‘Changes to the experience of inner space’, Harold Stewart writes of a patient's feeling of having an empty space inside herself, an empty space that no matter how much she tried could never be filled. The patient also spoke of being caught in a capsule in outer space. Stewart writes, ‘Not only was her inner space empty but also her outer space, apart from the private space capsule’ (Stewart 1985, p. 256). He reflected on how his countertransference mirrored these experiences by being interested in her ‘metaphorical talk and ideas but I would then find that I felt bored, that my interest had wandered and that I was no longer with her’ (ibid.). He said it was as if he had drifted off into the blackness of empty space. The pressure of this profound feeling of emptiness reverberated in both the internal and external worlds of the patient.

There is a correlation between this and Hester Solomon's description of an ‘as if’ personality. She observes that some patients experience a sense of emptiness at the core of the self, a condition resulting from the patient never having had an object from which to separate (Solomon 2007, p. 211).

Giles Clark, in his paper ‘A black hole in the psyche’, describes his clinical work with a patient, Robert, a 29-year-old man who was struggling with something that seemed incongruent with conventional psychodynamic theories. Clark describes a dream of Robert's in which there is an image of a ‘black hole’ into which the whole world disappears. Robert's dream was followed by a series of disturbing images and debilitating physical symptoms. Clark reports images of a ‘stillborn baby’, a ‘mutant or monster birth’, ‘an abortion’, and a ‘miscarriage’ (Clark 1982, p. 69). He argues that the image of the ‘black hole’ is connected to the failure of psychic life and to something that is an unassimilable and intolerable object of anxiety and dread. He writes:

We are dealing with a threatening nothingness that cannot be integrated, a quality that is anathema to the life instinct, a death instinct that must be distinguished from death anxiety or phobia (or even fear of dying). Paradoxically this apparently bad object is actually no object; … this ‘actively not there bit’ has to do with the unconceived and unconceivable, therefore the unborn and unbearable … As one patient called it: ‘a nothingness that vaporizes the meaning of life’.

(ibid., p.67)

Clark connects this experience with a kind of chronic psychic atrophy that can sometimes be literally fatal. He writes that his patient Robert ‘developed migraines, his eyesight suffered, his sense of taste and smell atrophied, and his legs tingled and ached’. Finally Robert became seriously ill and died of cancer (Clark 1982, p. 70). Clark's paper illustrates that to stay in stasis in a ‘black hole’ is dangerous and potentially life threatening.

‘Black holes’ in the cosmos: exploring the metaphor

In astrophysics the most common genesis of a black hole is the collapse of a star that has expended itself during a supernova explosion-implosion event; however black holes can also be formed by the merging of two neutron stars. It is also theorized that black holes were formed in the primordial density of the early fireball of the big bang event. Black holes can come in a huge variety of shapes and sizes; some rotate, others do not; they can look like rings, helices or take the form of the Jovian ringed planets of our solar system. Although black holes come in a variety of masses and sizes, their structures all share this common feature: a black hole's entire mass is concentrated in an almost infinitely small and dense point called a singularity. This point is surrounded by the event horizon which is a one way membrane around the black hole, a point of no return. However, if the black hole is rotating, there is another force at work, the ergosphere, a region from which it is theoretically possible to extract energy and mass (Hawking & Penrose 1996, pp. 37-60).

When black holes were first discovered, it was thought that not even light could escape because of the strength of the gravitational pull. According to the theory of relativity, if light cannot escape then neither can anything else; everything is dragged back into the object generating the gravitational field (Hawking 1998, pp. 89-90). Nevertheless, Stephen Hawking has established that black holes are not quite black; they emit low-level radiation. This has been termed ‘Hawking Radiation’. As a black hole radiates, its mass decreases with a concomitant loss of gravitational pull. As a result its radiation emission increases, so generating an increase in the speed of diminishing mass. Stephen Hawking writes:

How is it possible that a black hole appears to emit particles when we know nothing can escape from within its event horizon? The answer: the particles do not come from within the black hole, but from the ‘empty’ space just outside the black hole's event horizon!

(Hawking 1998, p. 113)

The discovery of ‘Hawking Radiation’ is a significant development in our understanding of the origin, nature and potential demise of black holes. Hawking has said that black holes ‘glow like a hot body’ (ibid., p. 111). A black hole, far from being simply an eternal freezing abyss in space, is a dynamic phenomenon that alerts the observer to its presence through heat rather than cold.

‘Black holes’ in the internal cosmos: relating the metaphor

In my work I have often reflected that an absence of a mother or mother figure in early infancy generates a deep wound – a ‘black hole’ in the psyche. This psychic ‘black hole’, although experienced as a no-thing or no-place, is not inert; the gravitational power from the ‘black hole’ constantly threatens to drag the individual past its event horizon into its gaping maw. The absence of a maternal environment is cataclysmic for the development of a baby. When mothers are psychologically absent from their babies, even if physically present, babies as young as six weeks become distressed, attempt to elicit from their mothers some response towards them and eventually give up and become distant (Murray 1992, pp. 543-61; Trevarthen & Aitken 2001, pp. 3–48).

André Green describes this phenomenon in his paper ‘The dead mother’. The mother is not actually dead but rather psychically dead, that is, transmogrified from a source of vitality into a ‘distant figure, toneless, practically inanimate’ (Green 2001, p. 170), whilst still being physically available. This creates confusion and terror in the child's psyche. The psychical non-presence of the mother becomes an object that leaves an indelible mark on the child's developing psyche and through dys-identification with the mother, the child consequently renounces her own connection to life (ibid.). This absence often begins in utero. The physiological events that result in the conception and birth of a child leave long term imprints on the mind. Despite the role that genes play in orchestrating brain development it has become clear that environmental factors modulate the process from the start of embryonic life. The quest for individuality and survival starts in the earliest moments before conception when the individual sperm, one varying from the next, competes for access to the egg. The egg, however, is not a passive partner in this drama; it entices the sperm by releasing a chemical that ‘attracts the sperm and influences its swimming motion’ (Jones & Lopez 2006, p. 238). Some of the sperm are attracted to the egg, some are not but when egg and sperm come together for fertilization it is a mutual process; the egg receives a particular sperm and embraces it; the sperm and egg in fact choose each other and this results in a unique individual.

From the earliest moments of conception the prenatal environment is more than just the mother's hormones and uterus. It consists of all the influences, direct and indirect that impinge on the human organism as it moves from fertilized egg to embryo to foetus to birth and the first physical separation of the baby from the mother. Nor is the developing foetus passive in the womb; it is not immune to the knowledge of whether it is wanted or unwanted. An unwanted pregnancy has a profound impact on the developing foetus. Even in utero the developing foetus has a response to being in the womb and experiences sensations that come from the external world, including sound and movement, an awareness of the mother's body and emotions. As the unborn child grows, experiences enter through the rapidly developing senses: hearing, taste, smell, touch, motion, and sight. The foetus reacts to stimuli both from the mother's body and from the external world. Researchers have long linked unwanted childbearing with low birth weight, high infant mortality, and poor health and development. Drs. Bunstan and Coker, epidemiologists from the University of Kentucky, found that infants born out of unwanted pregnancies are more than twice as likely to die within a month as compared to those born from wanted pregnancies (Bustan & Coker 1994, pp. 411–14). Also, the unwanted infant is statistically more likely to bear a higher percentage of emotional dysfunction (Hayatbakhsh, Najman, Khatun, Al Mamun, Bor & Clavarino 2010, pp. 200–04).

Attachment and development

Neuroscience has helped our understanding of the importance of early attachment in brain development. Significant structures in babies’ brains are shaped by their social and emotional experiences. The physical structure of the brain is affected by the hormones that are generated within attachment relationships during the first two years of life (Schore 1994, pp. 9–21); if these are connected to their primary attachment figure these changes will be more significant. Therapists working with patients who have experienced early childhood trauma need to be cognizant that the treatment has to also address biological contigencies.

Jean Knox argues that an infant discovers his or her self by exploring the reactions that are created in others as response to their own actions. She writes,

In the first few months of life, the infant's developing sense of self as a physical and social agent depends on a perfectly contingent response from the physical environment…. So, for example, the perfectly contingent response of the infant's own hands as he or she moves them enables the infant to distinguish between self and the external world.

(Knox 2011, p. 32)

Knox suggests that a social biofeedback model of parental affective mirroring is not static but evolves and that whilst initially a very close or perfectly contingent response seems to be paramount, the infant's attention shifts as the development of self-agency progresses (Knox 2011, p. 32). This enables the infant to explore the impact that relating has on another's behavioural response. Mothers first talk to their children about the child's own desires because the child has direct internal experience of those as bodily states, such as hunger or thirst. By describing these states in language, the parent helps their child to connect these bodily experiences to mental states. The mother produces intentionality through complex linguistic and interactional processes, primarily behaving towards the infant in such a way that it leads to the child's growing awareness that behaviour may best be understood in terms of ideas, beliefs, feelings and wishes that determine others’ actions and reactions. For children to receive maximum benefit, mother-talk must be appropriately timed to fit with the child's existing understanding. Only talk of this nature can help to make explicit a child's underlying implicit understanding of mental states, thus playing an active role in the construction of the infant's mind by attributing intentionality to responsiveness before the child has any sense of intentionality towards him or herself. So the meaning that the child attributes to their actions is not exclusively their own but reflects the meaning given to them by the mother.

In the paper ‘Stepping stones to others’ minds’, Taumoepeau and Ruffman write

Although it is not clear precisely how mother talk helps, what appears central is that mother language rather than any other aspect of maternal connectedness to the child (e.g., attachment, warmth, and general parenting style), is the key component in the relation between mother input and later child social cognition.

(Taumoepeau & Ruffman 2008, p. 284)

What is proposed is that the mother, her intention, her emotive response to the child, however it is physically expressed, ascribes to the child a mental state that is ultimately perceived and internalized, so generating the development of a core sense of mental selfhood (Taumoepeau & Ruffman 2008, p. 286). Jean Knox argues that people constantly search for meaningful links but trauma reverses this process by creating dissociative defences which fragment an unbearable experience into parts so that its full horror is mitigated (Knox 2003, p. 129).

Bessel van der Kolk, explores the particular ways in which complex trauma within the primary care-giving setting imprints and lodges itself in various aspects of a person's make up (van der Kolk 2005, pp. 401–08), particularly affecting difficulties with authority and attachment and resulting in poor impulse control, attention deficit and impairment in cognitive functions, for example geographical orientation, differentiating between left and right, spatial awareness, literacy and numeracy. I have observed another rather curious phenomenon; in most of my patients who fit this category there is a predilection towards viewing the same films or television series or reading the same books over and over again, sometimes for years on end. This repetitive action seems to become even more pronounced under times of stress or physical illness. These patients are often highly educated and creative individuals who present as compliant and gentle. Most of the films viewed have been very violent, about vampires, the walking dead (zombies), gangsters and also historical films where the hero, a seemingly very ordinary character, is unexpectedly called upon to face a dark foe with insurmountable odds. These patients speak of this repetitive viewing as spending time with old friends, of stepping inside where they belong, into a world where they know their place; the repetitive viewing is perceived to produce comfort and a sense of predictability, a sense of power over the story; they know the script. When this behaviour is probed a little deeper, what emerges from the patients is that for them it is like entering a dream world, a place of solidarity where the world is known and reliable. When a patient has no centre, the repetition of story is an attempt by the psyche to fill the void created by the absent other, to create an illusion of connectedness and a world in which there is no ‘black hole’ – a world that is complete, in which they are omnipotent; they know the plot, they know the outcome and the world is predictable even if it seems tenuous.

Children raised in a frightening atmosphere of hostility, whose parents are chaotic, emotionally remote and mentally disturbed or absent, where shouting and physical violence or neglect are the order of the day: these children have experienced being silenced, sometimes even before they have taken their first breath. This silence takes the form of withdrawal into a private world, a choice to not communicate because it is not safe to do so. The ‘black hole’ created by the absent object (mother) begins a process whereby, in a desperate attempt to thrive, the individual splits off and through the mechanism of projection, becomes its own parent. This is an act of violence to the self which separates one part of the self from another, resulting in a chasm between an undeveloped premature foetal state and a seemingly creative, well-functioning individual. From this perspective, violence within the self can be seen as linked to ‘acts’ that have to do with separation.

The repetitive viewing of violent but heroic films, whilst seeming to produce comfort, cannot address the genesis of the chaos that the patient is seeking to escape. It is always a projection, always a synthetic replacement. What is necessary is an actual person to absorb the projection, not a two dimensional flat production that cannot interact. In analytical work with these patients it is not only the psychic attunement and thinking capacities of the analyst that are vital but also the analyst's physical presence, the analyst's responsive body-self, the breath and body heat. It is this multifaceted and intricate interdigitation between analyst and patient that has the capacity to rouse the undeveloped core of the patient's self and allow it to emit itself from its incarceration inside the ‘black hole’. There needs to be an appropriate gravitational pull to counteract the massive power of the absence at the heart of the abyss, and only something that has the same quality of what should lie at the heart of the absence can generate the force necessary to allow the radiation to begin to escape from the vortex.

Clinical implications

The patient, Judy, a 47-year-old woman, came for therapy three times a week for ten years. Judy had a complicated history of emotional and sexual abuse for as long as she could remember. This abuse continued well into her adult life. Her mother was overly critical and ran a tyrannical regime in the home. Judy felt she could never get it right, that she was a constant disappointment. Judy's father had sexually abused her from her earliest memories until she left home at twenty-four to get married. She felt trapped in between her parents, as if they wanted to squeeze the life out of her. She had an older brother to whom she was emotionally close and was devastated when he left home to work in another part of the country.

Her early social and school life had been difficult. She was bullied at school but dared not speak to her parents because she felt that she would be blamed for causing the difficulties, just as she had been blamed at home for the myriad problems in the household. Despite all this, upon leaving school Judy was able to maintain employment and took some pride in being good at her job.

Judy and her husband, although they lived together under one roof, also lived quite separately. He busied himself with his work and his motorbikes whilst she worked in an allied health profession. She enjoyed the company of animals more than humans and had a menagerie at home: two horses, three dogs, four cats, two rats and a parrot.

There was very little sexual activity between husband and wife. It took Judy four years to be able to find the courage to consummate the marriage. She suffered from terrifying dreams where there was no human world, only a jungle full of wild animals where she was an orphan brought up by wolves. Judy woke every morning exhausted from these particularly vivid dreams. She recalled that in the mornings, before she got out of bed, she felt as though she was standing at the edge of a swirling vortex, terrified that she might be sucked in and disappear.

What brought Judy into therapy was a feeling of disintegration. She woke one morning and prepared to go to work as usual but couldn't leave the house. She was overwhelmed by the terrifying thought that she was alone, an orphan in the world; there was no one who ever loved or wanted her for herself. At this critical juncture Judy began to self harm, to burn herself with matches and cut her arms with razors. In a sense Judy had always self harmed. She had a history of accidents for as long as she could remember and, describing herself as accident prone, would reel off a lengthy list of accidents from the minor to the serious. This capacity to self harm frightened her and she was embarrassed at the scarring on her body which she hid from others. Perversely she wanted the wounds and the pain because they were a tangible sign that she was ill. She spoke of a terror, of an inner emptiness and being engulfed by a black cloud. Judy had always lived with a private hidden fear that she did not really exist, that the world did not exist, that she was living in a nightmare. This private nightmare became public when she was admitted to hospital suffering from a complete mental collapse. She was referred for intensive long-term therapy by her family doctor.

Judy came to her first session accompanied by a close friend. She almost fainted when I suggested that her friend wait outside in the waiting room. She came into the consulting room slowly, almost falling into the chair that was offered. She was wearing a T-shirt with jeans and riding boots, her close-cropped dark hair spiked. When she spoke, she whispered with a look of terror in her eyes. She kept apologizing, saying that ‘she always did something wrong, she could never get it right’. There was no eye contact during the entire session. My experience of her was of someone who, like a frightened animal, would be startled by any sudden movement or change in tone of voice.

Judy came unaccompanied to the second session. She whispered ‘Hello’ with her head down as she came into the room and sat, her eyes averted to the floor. She began to tell me about her animals, how she enjoyed their company and how frightened she was being with people in a confined space. I acknowledged how frightening it must be for her to be in a confined space with me. She sighed, looked up, smiled and nodded. She said that in her social world she was the life of the party. She had a quick wit, an adventurous character and was competent at her job. She felt at war with herself and wanted help to get rid of what she called ‘the pathetic me’. My reaction was a feeling that I was being invited to perform an abortion.

During the first six months Judy was almost always in crisis. She did not care for herself; her bathing was irregular and she did not clean her teeth. She self-harmed on a daily basis; it was both conscious and unconscious. Consciously she would burn herself with matches or cut herself with a razor blade; unconsciously she would have accidents and take frightening and unnecessary risks on her horses. She would come into the sessions, tell me what she had consciously done to herself and narrate her accidents whilst apologizing for ‘letting me down’. At one level in the transference she looked to me, her therapist, as someone who would rescue her and put a stop to her self-harming, her dangerous enactments with these large animals. At another level, she wanted a therapist who would tell her what to do and when to do it so she could escape from the pain and terror of her internal world and have what she considered a normal life. I suggested to Judy that the accidents were not arbitrary or accidental but, like the burning and cutting, had meaning. It was interesting to note that when Judy narrated tales of her numerous accidents and self-harming there was no affect whatsoever. She was split off from her feelings but conveyed the level of despair, pain and bewilderment through projective identification. My countertransference to the emotionless narration of these stories of self-abuse was disquiet and fear. It was frightening to hear someone so cold and callous about their own pain and suffering. I experienced these feelings at a somatic level in the form of palpitations and light-headedness.

Judy appeared cold as ice in her disregard for herself and her experiences of abuse and yet, deep beneath the ice-cold exterior, the river of lava rolled on relentlessly. As a child she said she had been ‘spoon-fed’ on guilt. She was enraged that her sacrifice had not been appreciated by others, particularly her parents but also her husband. She had given up everything, her desires and ambitions and spent her entire life trying to fill a depthless void. She would speak of feeling empty, of being an orphan given to the wrong family. She spoke of a fear of falling into a dark pit and of a feeling akin to being a steaming pot on the stove. Judy felt that she had never really lived and was nothing but a stinking pile of horse manure. She had no experience of anyone other than herself ever being present to care for her or moderate her overwhelming feelings of despair and panic. Conversely, she was competent at her job. She had developed and maintained long-term relationships, both at work and with friends and yet she felt isolated and lonely; her parents didn't love her and her father's usage of her as a sexual object left her feeling dirty and ashamed. She constantly berated herself for being pathetic and helpless, just as her parents had berated her when she needed to be cared for or comforted or attempted to assert personal boundaries.

In the transference Judy demanded that I treat her harshly, that I punish her for being pathetic. She was so callous with herself during these times that I found myself wincing internally at the harshness of her self-attack. It was very difficult to sit with the aggression of these assaults. At times it felt like an exhausting, endless uphill climb but then, slowly, perceptibly, there was a sea-change, at first almost indistinguishable, but I began to notice a feeling of warmth in the room. I had been seeing Judy three times a week for three and a half years when this change occurred. It was as if the first stirrings of trust in the (m)other's capacity to be there and contain the volcanic power of this infant's feelings of love and hate had begun, a quickening in the womb. Although ingested by the ‘black hole’, the baby was alive and viable. For Judy there had been no (m)other and so her development had been halted. Outwardly, superficially, she was an adult woman but internally she had remained in a foetal state. With no parents to monitor the power and complexity of her feelings she had substituted herself for the missing object and had become in effect a parentified pseudo-self, replacing the desperately needed (m)other with the substitute. I came to realize that Judy's love of animals was an attempt to have nourishing experiences so that she could internalize them. It wasn't only with the animals that she found nourishment. There were a schoolteacher and a neighbour who was like a ‘grandma’ to Judy. There was also a Minister of her church who heard her pain and treated her with respect and compassion. This seeking out of nourishing experiences is a notable aspect of what Hester Solomon refers to.

She writes:

None of these figures, or experiences of culture, or of nature could stand for the enormity of the loss of ordinarily devoted, caring, and loving parental figures, whose psychological and physical absence had created such an experience of void … But they were sufficient in catalysing an archetypal self experience which then made subsequent helpful experiences possible.

(Solomon 2007, p. 207)

Because physiological and psychological dimensions of the infant's development are deeply dependent on the relationship with the mother, the psychobiology of attachment is an extremely complex area. The baby has an inborn expectation of a mother who will recognize, acknowledge and enhance the delight of living as well as the handling and moderating of fear and aggression, a mother who will make meaning of the baby's internal chaos. It is excruciating, painful and terrifying for a baby to have an absence in the place of the mother. Judy's response to the void that had engulfed her psyche was dissociation and an attempt to do everything by herself as if she had no need for a (m)other. But inevitably this led to re-enactment of her traumatic experiences and a desire and need for punishment. Judy attempted to parent herself and over the years she also put her schoolteacher, her Minister, her neighbour and her animals into that role. But these not insignificant substitutions could not satisfy her internal void's voracious appetite.

According to Judy, animals, particularly her horses, were safe. Her animals had all previously experienced abuse. In many ways, Judy envied the capacity of animals to accept life as it is without reflection or memory of past events, without the arduous and torturous working out of why they were abused and neglected. She had rescued them from their abusive situations and because of this she felt the horses and other animals understood her experiences as a child. They would look after her and help her keep safe.

Her attempts to replace the absent nourishing internal object with other relationships, with horses and other animals, provided some relief to Judy but ultimately failed because the very act of replacing the missing inner (m)other with her animals left her feeling further impoverished. They could never be more than projections of split off, internalized good, bad and needy aspects of herself. Therefore, the more she absorbed, the less of herself was left to feed the hunger and the stronger the desire for more became. This internal cannibalization of her unformed self could only conclude in annihilation, unless the origin of the absence which was driving the hunger could be fulfilled with a real object.

Despite the empathetic nature of animals they cannot replace what is missing. What is required is an empathetic and cognitive response, more specifically, mother-talk, a meeting of Judy's needs in a human way to address her human lack. The patient needs a (m)other whom she can have an impact on and who can experience emotions on her behalf but will also confront her projections with an ‘other’ autonomous self that can challenge and affect the projections. The (m)other is not the missing object because the missing object can never be replaced, not even by the analyst; the past cannot be undone but its effects can be ameliorated. This amelioration can only be achieved through an intimate relationship with a (m)other, that is someone who is real and can help process and moderate the overwhelming feelings of love and hate. It is our peculiarly human psycho-social capacity and our cognitive ability to recall, reflect on and make meaning of our experiences as humans that make us so vulnerable to the situation where we are traumatized by our own internal worlds (Kalsched 1996, p. 5). It was imperative for me, as Judy's therapist, to not be the blank object in this. Being the blank object would only force her back into the abyss. To mirror the non-reflective object is to exacerbate the very problem at the core. In her psyche, Judy attempted to replace the blank object by putting herself into that place, thus creating a pseudo-maturity. For this reason it is critical that the therapist is a real and responsive object.

The worst nightmare of the person who has been traumatized is that the moment of horror will recur, and this fear is frequently realized in victims of chronic abuse. The effect of complex trauma is to split the archetype in its own centre by dissociating affect from experience (Kalsched 1996, p. 92). The force from this violent rupture acts as an anaesthetizing agent but, furthermore, it brings normal development to a halt. It is the genesis of the psychic situation where the nascent self vacates the individual's developing ego and seeks sanctuary within itself. The ego is left to its own devices to adapt to its external environment (ibid., p. 4).

This absence of an internal reflective object creates a vacuum whose gravitational pull drags the core of the self into its depths. This situation is the genesis of an ego not rooted in the person's being but an ego that is a split off, outer orientated, functioning, focused on thinking and being in the external world. It is often dissociated from feelings and their unconscious internal world. Peter Fonagy argues that

A self whose own constitutional state has not been recognized is an empty self… Emotional experience will be meaningless, and the individual might look for powerful others to merge with or extraneously caused (drug-induced) physical experiences of arousal to fill the vacuum with borrowed strength or ideals.

(Fonagy 2002, p. 196)

Judy had a history of becoming obsessed with people whom she perceived as powerful: a doctor, a hypnotherapist, a riding instructor. She had been on prescribed medication for over 30 years and any suggested change to prescribed medication brought an anxious, angry response. She would ride her horses at breakneck speed. She went onto a speedway and rode a motorbike with total abandonment. She craved the adrenalin rush but later fell into depression and the craving for further extreme sporting activities began again. All of this to fill the vacuum, an attempt at finding a way to experience the absent feelings, that which is missing at the core of the self, to provide some substitute for the absence that is instinctively missed and hungered for.

The undeveloped core of the self makes its presence known and attempts to communicate its experience through a complex myriad of signs and symbols which present at times as prescience, intuition and supra-cognitive awareness. At times, Judy seemed to know too much about me. She seemed to have an uncanny ability to see inside me. It was as if Judy could at times understand and make interpretations of my motivations and experiences. Because the unconscious is so powerful and present in patients like Judy, they can appear to have an uncanny gift, almost a telepathic or clairvoyant talent. It is, I believe, a consequence of living not between but within two different worlds. The undeveloped core of the self lives but remains hidden in the uterus, the unconscious world, whilst the outer personality lives in the conscious world. Judy often complained of being bombarded by precognitions, and they frightened her. She had a feeling that her horse was going to jump the enclosure about a week before it happened, putting at risk the accommodation arrangements which were scarce in her area. She had an overwhelming sense that her best friend had breast cancer two months before the illness was diagnosed.

Michael Robbins, in his study of this phenomenon, uses the term Primordial Mental Activity (PMA) to describe a way of knowing and thinking that is not based upon a Western model which sees rational cognitive processes as superior, or the norm. He argues that PMA is a normal aspect of our mental processes but is qualitatively different from conscious thinking and serves a different function (Robbins 2011, p. 6). The activity of the primordial mind is inherent in each of us and has a more profound impact on our being and on our relationships than is generally appreciated in the West. In the primordial mind, meaning is generated and assimilated as a forceful sense-perceptual happening or belief… It is enacted in the world rather than contemplated in the mind. ‘It is driven by somatic sensation, and affect creating sensations that are ominous, prescient and intuitive’ (Robbins 2011 p. 208).

In the West, PMA is active in early childhood but suppressed as the child develops in deference to rational thought. For people who have been traumatized, because they have had to rely on their senses from early childhood and because the rational world is unbearable and unthinkable, PMA is much more active. But because it is active and unmoderated, and develops in an unsafe environment, it functions in a hyper-vigilant state at all times. This creates two problems. The patient is constantly distressed and has no framework in which to comprehend the function of the distress. At the same time, they are operating in a way which is atypical and acultural, so placing their sense of being isolated and out of step into a context which reinforces that sense of isolation. Robbins makes the point that we have an assumption in the West that rational thought is superior. He writes:

As a consequence of this cultural myopia, it is easy to get the two mental activities confused and to speak of the primordial mind in the language that gives thoughtful mind a pride of place and unwittingly implies that this other process is deficient because it ‘lacks’ some of the essential aspects of thought; it is labelled un-conscious rather than different-conscious.

(Robbins 2011, p. 10)

For a person like Judy it is imperative for the therapist to recognize that the patient may sometimes be operating at a Primordial Mind level and can often only express themselves in terms of sensations. Logical and sequential expression may not be a viable means of conveying what they are experiencing. Difficulties around issues of timing and confusion of days may be significant indicators of this manner of processing, and the pathologizing of these may collaborate with the original trauma.

The more removed a society is from traditional lifestyle, the more such capacities are thought of as extraordinary or are disavowed as nonsense, delusionary, demonic and outright lying. Jung recognized this type of phenomenon as being an experienced reality for some individuals. In traditional societies, the cognitive processes are not so much about directive thinking; they are more about experiencing thoughts, ideas and images which seem to emanate from beyond themselves (Jung 1933, para. 750).

Individuals who have experienced complex trauma in childhood and early infancy are very adept at the art of altered consciousness. Through the mechanism of dissociation, voluntary thought suppression, minimization and outright denial, they learn to alter an unbearable reality. These individuals have the ability to hold contradictions inside themselves simultaneously and this capacity is one of the signifiers of the presence of dissociative states; the ability to alter perception and create their own reality is another. To survive Judy has learned to live with a powerful and hypervigilant unconscious whilst also operating at a cognitive level even though what has been imposed upon her is rationally untenable. There is another way in which Judy holds dissonant realities to survive. While raging against the injustice of her exploitation she has learned to assimilate the projections of her abusers.

In his paper ‘Confusion of tongues between adults and the child’, Sandor Ferenczi argues that in abusive sexual relationships the power difference between an adult and a child causes paralysing anxiety in the child. Where this anxiety reaches a certain maximum, it compels children,

To subordinate themselves like automata to the will of the aggressor, to divine each one of his desires and to gratify these; completely oblivious of themselves they identify with the aggressor. Through the identification, or let us say, introjection of the aggressor, he [the aggressor] disappears as part of the external reality and becomes intra- instead of extra-psychic…

(Ferenczi 1955, p. 162)

This identification with the aggressor is a different concept to that proposed by Anna Freud who saw the identification with the aggressor as a defence mechanism commonly observed in the normal development of the super-ego. Ferenczi argues that because the personality of the sexually traumatized child is still undeveloped and dependent on adults for all basic emotional and physical needs, the child seeks to gratify the perpetrating adult's desires. What the child identifies with is not the adult, but rather an image of itself created by the adult: the child intrapsychically assumes an identity or representation of herself that is created for the child by the adult.

Judy's hyper-vigilance and her capacity for PMA were collaborating to discern what it was that I, as her therapist, was expecting her to become and so enable her to fulfil this perceived desire in me. This dynamic was the means of her uncanny ability for precognition and prescience, both in her other external environments and in her analysis.

There was another dynamic at play in my work with Judy. It was as if I was being drawn into the gravitational pull of the ‘black hole’ that had engulfed my patient. Her capacity for precognition was infectious and she used it to draw me into a place where I could feel the intensity of her fear and experience of violence, a violence she wanted to do to her father but which she physically turned in on to herself and sometimes psychically projected on to me. I often felt knocked to the ground by these vicious attacks and frightened by the torrent and level of violence. And yet, as I was able to find my feet and withstand these explosive barrages, little by little these self-destructive enactments began to feel a little less intense. There was no moment when everything clicked. At first there was a reduction in the self harming; the burning reduced and the accident frequency reduced, and then it would burst into life again. However, as the months passed, the gaps between incidents increased and the intensity of the incidents slowly diminished. Although the analytical work with this patient was at times fraught and extremely slow, an island gradually began to emerge from the murky swamp of unconscious existence. This was imperceptible at first, much like glimpsing the initial sighting of a ship's masthead on the horizon before the sails and the hull appear in succession. The healing was not just about symptom reduction but was also evidenced in the growth of interest in making creative use of her life. She sold her horses in order to have more space for a growing romantic attachment and to take up other interests. Her sense of despair and hopelessness which had accompanied every difficulty began to be replaced by a capacity to think about how to address the complications of life.

This sea-change in Judy was not a dramatic turn-around but rather akin to the feeling of the first gust of wind on the face when one has been caught in the doldrums. I understood this slow turn-around to be in part the effect of my withstanding and containing her aggressive attacks and loving feelings which were often eroticized due to her experience of sexual trauma as an infant but it was also due to her developing capacity to receive my interpretations. This turn-around was not only brought about by me and my ability to contain a myriad of complex feelings; it was also brought about by Judy's courage and sheer determination; what she termed ‘to become myself and to live my own life’. It was the volcanic power of this resolve which impelled Judy to attend psychotherapy three times per week for nine years, often in the most difficult of circumstances. It was this resolve and courage that allowed her to move out of the dark hole that was her prison and begin (I say begin because it is a process) to give birth to herself. The same ‘black hole’ with its death-dealing properties also served to keep her embryonic self in a contained if frozen state, waiting for warmth, transplantation, gestation and birth (Waldron 2010, p. 75). The black hole is a creative response to an insoluble situation; as such it is not a solution nor a dysfunction but a temporary response which needs to be seen for its genius as well as its imperfection. It becomes a dysfunction and an impediment when it is permitted permanency.

Conclusion

In their various descriptions of a ‘black hole’ Tustin, Grotstein, Pecotic and Clark, all grapple with the death dealing effects associated with this psychic phenomenon. However, this gaping void does not have to be an eternal fixture, and like the protons and neutrinos at the entrance of the event horizon, positive and negative forces are in perpetual flux and the rate at which the particles escape is very slow. Some protons and neutrinos escape from the abyss, others fall back into it. This is inevitable but does not negate the process. For Judy, finding a person who could moderate and give meaning to her unthinkable feelings enabled her to begin the slow process of experiencing the black hole as more than just an entity that simply sucked in everything in its path. She was able to find a catalyst, another gravitational pull to begin to draw something of herself out of the deathly frigidness of the black hole.

In astrophysics ‘black holes’ are a complex and multifaceted phenomenon. They are paradoxical: they do absorb matter, they are incredibly cold but they emit particles and heat. They also serve a function in the cosmos; the energy they release power quasars and other nuclei. In my work with this patient I have come to an awareness that in a similar fashion to the phenomenon of ‘black holes’ in the cosmos, ‘black holes’ in the psyche are not merely places of isolation and stasis; they have their own functional dynamism which can be integrated and utilized. What I have proposed is not so much about symptom reduction as it is about the formation of a solid centre around which the self can coalesce. In the psyche, ‘black holes’ have the potential not only to absorb the undeveloped core of the self but also to release the self from its incarceration. ‘They do not have to be eternal prisons’ (Hawking 2008, p. 239).