'Ambivalence − a Love-Hate Story'

Th: You seem to be ambivalent about this person

P: Mmm …. Yes and no.

Ambivalence is one of those words that began its career in the psychoanalytic world and came to be used in everyday language, although often used in a way that has strayed from its original meaning. The true psychoanalytic meaning of ambivalence is opposite or conflicting emotions, usually love and hate, which were previously split off from one another and which stem from the same source, but now exist there simultaneously. In everyday language, the term has come to mean mixed feelings, which may be based on a realistic assessment of the object, and are therefore not necessarily in conflict with one another. (Rycroft, p.6)

It would appear that the person answering the above question is altogether confused about the meaning of ambivalence, or perhaps not, if we consider that ambivalence is about that which is unresolved, not quite fused together, and so continues to contain the good and the bad, the yes and no.

Ambivalence holds a central place in understanding the development of the psyche. Perhaps this is because it is to do with the oldest of conflicts, that is, between love and hate and the struggle to resolve this conflict and bring about integration, which is basic to the growth of a person. It is also the crucial stage between splitting and integration.

Understanding the relationship between ambivalence and splitting is made possible with Klein’s work, particularly the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ breast and the move from the paranoid-schizoid position to the depressive position.

In early infancy a baby is aware only of sensations, the sensation of feeling good such as being fed and being satisfied, and the sensation of feeling bad when a feed doesn’t come quickly enough or is unsatisfactory in some way. Klein says that the infant splits the breast, which is the first object, into the good and bad breast and thus keeps the good breast free from contamination of the bad. This is also the split between love and hatred. At the same time the infant splits the ego by projecting the destructive impulses into the bad, frustrating breast and introjecting the good and gratifying breast. This is the ‘paranoid-schizoid position’, so called because of the persecution felt to come from the bad breast and the resultant split. Between the fourth and fifth month the infant begins to realise that the good and the bad, the loved and the hated objects come from the same source and there begins the complex process of integration, of wholeness.

When the loved and hated aspects are felt to be closer together the infant begins to experience a strong sense of guilt and anxiety. Guilt, because the aggressive impulses that were exclusively for the previously split-off hated object are now in danger of harming the loved object and anxiety, because of retaliation by the projected destructive impulses. Grief and a fear of loss of the loved object are also experienced. This is the stage Klein has called the ‘depressive position’ where the infant wants to repair the damage done in fantasy to the actual mother and to the internalised mother. The process also involves introjection of the damaged mother and thereafter the repaired one, adding these objects to the inner world. The crucial aspect in the development of the personality becoming organised with its normal and psychotic parts, is the infant’s ability to negotiate the conflict between love and uncontrollable hatred. This is what is meant in the quotation from Juliette Mitchell, that the split has to be overcome before 'true' ambivalence can be experienced.

So it is in the depressive position where true ambivalence comes into play. Ambivalence can be seen as a stage between splitting and integration or, to put it another way, the split between the good and bad is still there, but they are now in the same arena, not cut off and unaffected by one another. Ambivalence is therefore an important achievement in the development of the ego, for it is here that the struggle between the opposing instincts takes place.

All infants have experiences of anxiety which are psychotic in nature and in relation to this, both Freud and Klein view infantile neurosis as normal, only varying in degree.

In Freud's case of Little Hans, his neurosis was on the further, more extreme end of the spectrum in that he developed a phobia for horses and was reluctant to leave the house for fear of an encounter with one. The real fear, of course, was of his father, whom he thought in fantasy would punish him for his affection towards his mother. Little Hans loved his father dearly whilst also holding feelings of jealousy and hostility towards him, the result of which was a conflict due to unresolved ambivalence, that is, split love and hate. His phobia was his effort to resolve this conflict, to be in the presence of his father without fear of castration by him. There are several important events leading to the choice of horses being the feared or hated object, but the significance of the phobia and the enormous advantage to Little Hans was that, by replacing his father with a horse, he dealt with the split feelings. He could be with his father without fear and only experienced fear when the object was around; therefore he avoided the object.

Another common way to resolve conflict due to unresolved ambivalence is through a mechanism Freud called reaction formation. When there is a threat of, say hatred (as is usually the case) coming through into awareness, the person overwhelms the consciousness with exaggerated love feelings and the hate disappears. The intensity and “compulsive character” (1926, p.255) of the evident feeling indicates a vigilance to keep the banished feeling concealed. It is fairly common to see this happening with parents who feel ambivalent about their children and as a result of their repressed hatred, idealise and overstate their protection of the child, projecting the hated part onto a teacher or the other parent.

To return to Klein’s depressive position, we can perhaps guess that Little Hans’ early experience, prior to the oedipal situation, was one in which he had not yet reached a secure enough feeling with his mother, making him more vulnerable to a more severe neurosis.

Freud gives us a brilliant insight into what happens when the conflict between love and hate is not resolved in infancy and a neurosis is formed in adulthood. The case of the Rat Man differs from Little Hans in that it is an account of the development of an obsessional neurosis as the result of conflict experienced internally, rather than from the outside world, such as with Little Hans and his fear of castration. (Melzer, p.58). The Rat Man’s illness began when he was unable to make a decision to marry the woman he had loved for a long time or another woman. His inability to decide lay in his “conflicting choice between his father and his sexual object” (1909, p.117), a conflict he had been labouring under all his life. In infancy he had repressed his hatred of his father, resulting in the neurosis taking control and causing him to behave in contrary ways. An example of this was when he removed a stone from the road on which his loved one was to travel, with the intention of preventing her from coming to harm. Then he replaced it, unwittingly motivated by his unconscious hatred.

The conflict between love and hate we have seen is normal and the stage of ambivalence healthy. However when the love has not been successful in overcoming the hatred, the hatred is repressed (Freud) or split off (Klein) where it can live comfortably and even grow in strength (Freud,1909, p118). It can look as if love is dominant, even for a long period of time, maybe forever, but as in the case of the Rat Man; the non-integrated hatred can emerge in the form of an illness.

In its embryonic state love cannot easily be distinguished from hate. Freud says that during this time, which he describes as ambivalent, “the two opposed feelings may subsist side by side for a while as though in rivalry with each other.” Normally one feeling, usually love, emerges as dominant, but when there is a continuous existence of opposing feelings, with equal intensity and directed at the same person, this is then a characteristic of neurotic people.

We learn from the Rat Man the danger of repressed hatred and particularly the impact of such on love relationships. One wonders what would have developed in his relationship with the woman he loved if he had married her and had not yet been cured of his neurosis. It could be said that there are many unions, which, after the tempestuous beginnings of love, attempt to resolve their ambivalence, by repression of the hatred, instead of finding a place for it and coming to love “warts and all”. It may be that many long-term marriages end, perhaps not in a divorce, but in continuing to fulfil, due to repression of hatred. It is not uncommon for couples who have been together for years to openly express their dislike and even repugnance for one another. This could be the breaking down of a reaction formation and then feelings of disappointment and anger breakthrough.

We seem to have an innate understanding of the ambivalence which accompanies love, in the romantic sense. We expect love to be confusing, a struggle, even to hurt, especially in the beginning until there is a settled and established relationship. The poets and songwriters would certainly have suffered a dearth of material if it were not for the agonies of love. Here is an example of such agony by Thomas Wyatt:

Description of the Contrarious passions in a lover

I find no peace, and all my war is done;

I fear and hope, I burn and freeze like ice;

I wish to perish yet I ask for health;

I love another, and I hate myself.

I feed me in sorrow, and laugh in all my pain.

Lo, thus displeaseth me both death and life;

And my delight is causer of this strife.

Another poem by Thomas Wyatt delights in the freedom from terrible love:

The Lover rejoiceth that he hath broken the snares of love

Tangled was I in Love’s snare,

Oppressed with pain, torment and care’

Of grief right sure, of joy quite bare,

Clean in despair by cruelty.

But ha! ha! ha! full well is me,

For I am now at liberty

As adults, we are seldom comfortable acknowledging our feelings of hatred, and split feelings can cause us great anxiety. However ambivalent feelings in children, such as those in the oedipal situation, don’t usually cause them conflict and children mostly resolve their opposing feelings for parents quite easily. As adults we rarely use the word ‘hate’ to describe how we feel about others, whereas children use the word freely, finding no discomfort in doing so.

G, a five-year-old boy was referred because of his hatred of himself and his attraction towards death. His parents spoke about G feeling “obliged” to list all the people he knew and say whether he loved or hated these people. In therapy he appeared to be attempting to grapple with his ambivalence and with an emerging understanding that an object has more than one part:

G – I had some Milo today. Why do they call it that? Mi – lo, my (points to himself) low, my high. Why do they make it sound horrible?

Th – It sounds horrible to you and you’re wondering why it’s like that

G – I wonder what hot chocolate would be like mixed with Milo?

Th – I wonder too

G – When you mix milk with Cocoa Pops it doesn’t look like milk anymore, it looks like something else…..my dog’s a mixture, he’s nearly a Great Dane, but not really one. When you mix something with something else it’s not the same anymore.

Th – You’re thinking about all the different mixtures of things and how they change when they are put together. People are mixtures too, a mixture of things you like about them and things you don’t.

In a later session he entered the therapy room backwards and then spent the bulk of the time expressing his dislike of me, his aggressive fantasies and his wish to go home. His words and actions however lacked the energy that usually comes with anger. Instead he seemed to want to be closer to me, wanting me to catch him when he tried to leave the room, behaving mostly in a rather coy and teasing manner. In response to his wish to hurt me, I said that he was perhaps wondering if I could keep myself safe and keep him safe too. I also referred back to his ‘mixtures’ and suggested that he was trying to work out what sort of mixture of person I was. It is evident here that his feelings are in conflict, they are split in that part of him wanted to go into the therapy room and part of him didn't want to. In order to resolve his ambivalence, he would have to realise that I was the therapist he liked and disliked, bringing him to the depressive position.

We can use the example of G and his ambivalence towards the therapist in understanding what a mother does or doesn’t do to ease her baby’s anxieties and help towards integration. Bion’s concept of container is important here, as too are the qualities of the mother (Alvarez, p.117). Her ability to bear attacks, to be consistent and hold firm, to protect and keep safe, all contributes significantly to the infants’ knitting together of experience and establishing the necessary mechanisms to overcome the splits.

Ambivalence with adults in therapy manifests differently than it does in children, although Klein would relate adults’ ambivalence to their early experience with the breast. Forgotten appointments, arriving late and a vague lack of commitment to the process can give clues to the person’s experience as an infant. For instance, a good session could be seen as a good feed, but if there are unresolved feelings of guilt within the person, he or she may not be able to receive it easily, hence the need to sabotage or oscillate. It is generally helpful to bring the behaviour that is getting in the way of integration, into the centre of the therapy. The ‘hated’ part of the therapeutic process is usually the greatest opportunity for psychical growth.

In thinking about ambivalence and where it arises in everyday life, religion, Christianity in particular, comes to mind. The concept of God as a father figure to be both loved and feared fits perfectly into the original split between love and hate. My idea of course is not original, in fact Freud got there first in his paper about the 17th-century painter Christoph Haizmann, who suffered from a demonological neurosis after making a pact with the Devil (1922). The usual motives for selling one’s soul to the Devil are for power or pleasures or material gain, but Christoph Haizmann wanted relief from depression or in Haizmann’s own, translated, words “that I should seek diversion and banish melancholy” (p.80). This was unusual in itself and what added to this unique pact was that the painter wanted, in return for his soul, that the Devil become a substitute father to him for a period of nine years. After this period the ‘payment’ of his soul would take place. The painter became depressed after the death of his father and lost interest in his work, the latter being a consequence of the former. The motivation for a father substitute is understandable, but why the Devil, particularly as it can be assumed the lost father had been loved and was missed? Freud said that it was “only at first sight” (p.85) that the Devil seems a strange substitute for a loved father and draws a parallel between a small child’s concept of father with that of an individual’s concept of God, that is, an ambivalent concept or relationship. It is probably safe to say that Christoph Haizmann’s complicated mourning for his father was due to his unresolved hatred of him, or, in other words, his ambivalence. This is further borne out by the fact that he chose the Devil as a substitute. “If the benevolent and righteous God is a substitute for his father, it is not to be wondered at that his hostile attitude to his father, too, which is one of hating and fearing him and of making complaints against him, should have come to expression in the creation of Satan.” (p.86)

Little Hans, the Rat Man and Christoph Haizmann all suffered neuroses that were dramatic and rather extreme, but what about people we come across in our everyday lives and, of course, ourselves? We all have our paranoid-schizoid and depressive anxieties which emerge during times of vulnerability, and then there are people for whom these states of mind are predominant. Someone functioning from a paranoid-schizoid position, where the split has to be maintained to keep anxiety under control, would show characteristics such as rigidity of thought, intolerance of ideas that do not fit with their own, a black and white view of the world, feelings of persecution. This is a picture of a person suffering in a fear-filled world, fear being greater than any other feeling. In the depressive position, the anxiety is about damage done to other or to internal objects through excessive aggression. It is here, where love has not been greater than hate, we may see the person caught in a cycle related to ambivalence in that he or she attempts to repair, or love, but the reparation is too fragile, breaks down and the person goes back to the anger and hatred, feels guilt, attempts to repair and so on. “Love has to be stronger than hate in order to overcome depressive anxieties”. (Alvarez, p.117).

Freud and Klein have provided us with profound models which bring us closer in our striving to understand the mysteries of the psyche. They have made it possible to have some insight into the highly complex workings of the mind, but perhaps more importantly, what it is that happens between infants and mothers that sets the path for health or not.

As clinicians our purpose, as I understand it, it to assist those who seek our help to find and bring together the non-integrated parts of themselves, drawing ever closer to wholeness. In order to do this we need to understand where the fragmentation has occurred before integration can take place. As brilliant as Freud and Klein’s theories are, they remain controversial and I wonder if that is because they have shown the unflattering, offensive and therefore hated aspects of being human? The New Age perspective is one of love and goodness prevailing, whereas in reality people are a fusion of good and bad, usually with the good being dominant. In fact, the strength is in the fusion as opposed to ignoring or repressing the less desirable parts. Therefore, true health or wholeness is when we can acknowledge and find a place for the hated, unloved parts of ourselves and others and come to be able to love, warts and all.

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