Accentuate the Negative

I went to see the movie Bridge of Spies recently. It’s really good by the way – see it if you haven’t already. One of the things I liked about it was the way it approached the problem of negative projections. A lawyer in the late fifties, played by Tom Hanks, is required to defend a Soviet spy, played by Mark Rylance. This is the height of the Cold War of course, so the spy is a hated figure in the USA, and by association the lawyer is too, for a while. In order to do his job with integrity, he has to be prepared to withstand this irrational hatred. He refuses to collude with it, and treats the spy as a fellow human being. This is the core of the drama, and is part of what makes the film really interesting and unusual. There are echoes of 12 Angry Men, The Shawshank Redemption or Erin Brockovich in this – one person’s resilience in the face of others’ hostility. One person who is able to think rather than act out. Some people have a talent for this. Others don’t. Jeremy Corbyn seems pretty good at it. ‘Dave’ Cameron – not so much, always seeking approval… JC seems a bit tetchy at times, but he does seem to be able to stick to his principles, to stay focused. I like the way he continues to ask questions from the public, despite the sneers of the Tory backbenchers.

I’ve written before about the role of the therapist, particularly in school, as an outsider, about how there can be something useful about this. Not for the first time, I’ve lost a couple of school contracts in the last few months. On both occasions this seemed to be linked to a key member of staff leaving (the head or deputy head) and being replaced by someone who wanted to make some changes (i.e. cuts). This is always difficult, because as the drama plays out, you have to stay focused on the sessions. The clients shouldn’t suffer because of my feelings of disappointment, resentment, hatred etc. Actually this is ok, because in my experience music therapy sessions are so much more intense than ‘normal life’ (whatever that is) that staying focused on the work while it is happening is perfectly manageable. What’s trickier is maintaining the professional relationships during this time of adversity, not acting out, but keeping an overview, seeing myself as one part of the system rather than the centre of the universe. If other people are able to develop fictions, for example that music therapy sessions are ‘just a bit of fun’ and so dispensable, then I am equally capable of inflating my own importance in my own mind. Understanding why people attach certain assumptions and fantasies to you, and why they project onto you, is essentially about adopting this broader perspective.

This was all brought into sharp focus by the BBC’s recent documentary about Camila Batmanghelidjh and Kids Company. I worked for the charity in 2008-9 and was aware at the time of certain flaws in the way it was being run. Camila was clearly being idealised by a lot of her staff and service users, and even more so by the media. Her big personality and flamboyant dress sense had certain advantages, enabling her to get the media exposure she needed in order to raise money from various high profile sources; the government, big time celebrities and so on. She also had a lot of very able people volunteering for the charity, giving their time for the cause, and it was a noble cause. There was a lot of great work being done and Kids Company had a strong therapeutic ethos. I was out on the edges of the schools’ programme, a newly qualified therapist grateful for the work and getting some valuable experience and support. But it appeared that Camila bought into the idealisation, both from the media and from the vulnerable people Kids Company was working with. The charity has been criticised for creating ‘dependence’, but this is inevitable when you are providing for the most needy in society. In a sense, they’re already dependent. What didn’t work out, and seemed to be part of her undoing, was the assumption of invulnerability, and that the idealisation could be sustained. Negative or positive, you need to take people’s projections with a pinch of salt, because they can quickly reverse their polarity. Jeremy Corbyn is being very careful to steer the narrative away from himself and to focus on more important topics. James Donovan (the lawyer portrayed in Bridge of Spies) takes the brick through his window philosophically.

A client told me ‘I like you’, then said ‘I want to have music therapy every day’. He’s struggling in school and is seen as a problem. This made me feel great. What a fantastic therapist I must be – the only person who really understands this child and gives him the space he needs to be creative and expressive. On the other hand, he only sees me once a week. If I accept the projection then I’m in danger of giving him the message: me=good, everyone else=bad, which is hardly helpful. Ultimately he needs to understand that the good things he sees in me are really coming from him. I’m just giving him the space to discover aspects of himself. I also need to try and share this with others, and to encourage them to see him in this way, that he can help them find the solution to the problems that they perceive in him, if only they give him the space to do this. Winnicott ends his chapter on adolescence, in Playing and Reality, with an address to the parents, saying “you won’t be thanked”. The satisfaction of a job well done won’t necessarily come from others, neither for parents, nor for therapists. We can’t wait for that pat on the back. But if we’re sceptical about idealisation, then we can also live with the negative projections and see them for what they really are, and understand the process.