197

LOVE—MAKING—AN ACT OF MURDER The "Golem" Syndrome (G.S.)

by JOSHUA BIERER M.D., F.R.C.PSYCH., D.ECON. & SOC.SC. (VIENNA), DIP.INDIV.PSYCH. and murder have been connected through history; but what I want to here is a related phenomenon, perhaps even a psychiatric syndrome, which appears to have become significant in our present-day &dquo;affluent society&dquo;. An example which may explain: A psychoanalyst rang me one day, asking for help. He had had a couple in treatment for the past two years. He told me he was afraid that the husband might kill his wife that night. I saw them immediately, but separately, and recommended the &dquo;total separation&dquo; treatment. This is a method of treatment which I had introduced in 1938 and used successfully in certain cases of matrimonial difficulties throughout the years. When one is near to one’s partner one sees only a very small area, generally speaking the negative attributes of that person. When one is far enough away, one has a chance, with some help, to see the total picture: the negative attributes become smaller and the positive attributes have a chance to counter-balance the negative ones. Normally the changeover from fantasy to reality is a painful process, which, in the majority of cases, takes place only after the divorce and not always then. To take husband or wife away from each other or from the family would be strictly eschewed by any official Marriage Guidance Counsellor. The time has come to review their work, to try to find a new way to reduce the number of their failures. Hitherto they have been mainly a marriage &dquo;listening&dquo; service, not being allowed to give active advice as a matter of policy. In this case it was imperative to part husband and wife, in order to prevent possible murder. The husband had been violent towards his wife in the past. She took it in good spirits and with courage, because she loved him and she loved their children, whom she did not want to harm by running away. Whenever he became violent she jumped on his back and tried to protect herself as best she could. This made him all the more furious, as he felt his freedom &dquo;physically curtailed&dquo;. It was already mentally curtailed by her scenes of jealousy and tantrums, which she threw whenever she suspected that he had once again been unfaithful. He had many affairs, all without the slightest commitment-and he was furious that she was the only woman who had succeeded in pinning him down to &dquo;commitment&dquo;. The morning after I separated them he rang me up and said &dquo;Thank you very much, doctor-I am free. I feel fantastic!&dquo; (I saw him in my mind making the movement of trying to liberate himself from the body that was hanging on his back, hindering him in his violence, in his movements and in his freedom.) I said &dquo;I separated&dquo; not because I am proud to have exercised authority but because it is important for the psychotherapist temporarily to shoulder the burden

LOVE discuss

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198 of decision and responsibility, since neither of the two had been able, in the past, to take the responsibility for such a decision. Shortly after the husband rang me, the wife rang me and she said &dquo;You are a cruel man to take my husband away from me and my children.&dquo; I said &dquo;You are right, but have patience.&dquo; About two months later I met the stepmother of the husband and she greeted me with these words: &dquo;Ah, you are the cruel doctor, who has taken my stepson away from his poor wife.&dquo; I said to her &dquo;Yes, Madam, that’s me, but I wish you could have listened to a conversation I had with your stepdaughter-in-law this morning. She rang me and thanked me very much for having taken her husband away. She has sublet a room in her house and has fallen for the lodger-and she is

happy.&dquo; About four months later the husband came to see me and put me into the picture about further developments. (I was not in touch with them as I was only called in as a consultant in an emergency. After the danger was eliminated they went back into treatment with their analyst.) He told me that after having left the family for about two-and-a-half months he rang up his wife, asking her out to dinner. She accepted the invitation, but made it quite clear to him that she had fallen for somebody else. He insisted on coming home, in spite of that, which she accepted on condition that she was free. Christmas came and she took her children to her family abroad. He asked to go with them, but she refused. He stayed in the house, with the lodger, not realising that he was the lover of his wife. Only after her return from abroad did she get the lover to move to other accommodation-and she then told the husband the truth. The wife suffered for a long time, because she felt rejected by the unfaithful husband-now she was trying to show him (probably not quite consciously) how it felt to be on the suffering side. This is a form of &dquo;situational&dquo; therapy, which I described many years ago and which often produces fundamental changes much more quickly than treatment on a verbal level. The couple have started sexual relations again-and although they are not quite as satisfactory as they were originally, I believe the chance of murder has been removed forever and that these two will come together as two mature people, accepting each other as two real people, because they now understand better what love means. The husband’s girl friends considered him a &dquo;great lover&dquo;, not realising that it was a dagger and not a loving penis, which he pushed into them. They did not realise that this man could not love, could not commit himself, was unable to develop a relationship, that he hated all women and wanted to kill them-but to avoid that he ran away as soon as he could. The secret of all this goes back far into his childhood-and it was revealed during his analysis. During the war the husband’s mother, who was a cold woman, unable to show any love or affection, was mainly away. The husband’s father left for abroad when the husband was six years of age, leaving him and his brother, who was then three years old, in the hands of a very cruel nanny. The nanny told him one day that she was going to kill his brother and tell everybody that he had killed him, as people knew that he hated his brother. (This has been confirmed.)

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199 One

imagine the dreadful anxiety this poor boy had to suffer, not being anybody for help, being completely in the hands of this cruel nanny. Everybody needs to experience attention, love and affection., in early childhood, be able to develop the emotional antennae (or love-receiving apparatus). Without

able to

to

can

ask

this one is not able to receive and to accept the three necessary ingredients of emotional life, A.L.A. (Attention, Love and Affection). These people are robots and I have given them the name &dquo;Golems&dquo;. (A &dquo;Golem&dquo; is a type of machine-man in Jewish mediaeval legend.) For our patient (the husband) every woman is a replica of nanny, whom he hated and whom he wanted to kill. He goes from woman to woman, seeking love but as he does not have the &dquo;receiving apparatus&dquo; he can neither accept nor appreciate anything-and not understanding it blames the women for it and he wants to kill them-as they are replicas of nanny! Even his wife is nanny-and he wants to kill them all and his lovemaking is nothing but an act of murder.

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Love-making--an act of murder. The "Golem" syndrome (G.S.).

197 LOVE—MAKING—AN ACT OF MURDER The "Golem" Syndrome (G.S.) by JOSHUA BIERER M.D., F.R.C.PSYCH., D.ECON. & SOC.SC. (VIENNA), DIP.INDIV...
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