Meltzer and Pinocchio From craft to inspiration as a means of learning by doing, and doing by learning Fun (engagement) being the measure of success in harnessing the libido through K Obsessive grumpiness and priestly omniscience as the indicator of the dominance of –K One must experience lively, convincing examples of psychoanalytic theories that resonate emotionally, (either or both in one’s clinical experiences or Life experiences) in order for them to be adopted as living and inspirational in the mind and practice of the analyst And so, from the limitations of the seminar space, I found a second means of re-presenting Meltzer’s work When I first saw Disney’s early animation classic “Pinocchio” as a small child I was quite stirred up, on many levels Just the pure imaginativeness and daring must have bowled me over, but I’m sure it had a kind of dream-working on me I was haunted by it But then, a generation later, I found myself watching it with my son – probably he was about the same age as I was for my first impression – and I was at the time preparing some talks on Meltzer theory, using the Baron von Munchausen stories, themselves seeming to have been purposely written almost purely for my teaching purposes It became apparent – call it a moment of the emergence of a ‘selected fact’ – that the Pinocchio animation and Meltzer’s ideas were meant for each other I’d been asked to present something for an appreciation of Don’s work marking his 75th birthday, in Melbourne – arguably, the psychoanalytic ‘vortex’ of Australia – if one could ever imagine such a thing – and so I decided on a real-time “Meltzerian commentary” as the animation played to the audience – pausing at various key moments in the action, to link the narrative and dream-like imagery with the theoretical concepts Fearing a total mess, I was heartened and relieved to see that this could actually work as a very effective and alive way of talking about Don’s work, and that it was indeed fun, without diluting the ‘seriousness’ and importance of the psychoanalytic ideas It would prove quite difficult to write up the experience for publication – but, as a way of teaching and learning, it seemed to harness a kind of musical fluidity and rhythm with the visuality of dream theatre that avoided some of the over-reliance on words and texts that teaching usually remains a slave to I’ll give some brief examples here – to capture the flavour of the presentation – but of course, a recent viewing of the now readily-available cartoon is essential for a decent understanding of my drift (Interestingly, when I told Don about the presentation of the Pinocchio to illustrate his ideas he was very approving, and told me that he himself had been taken by the book and film in his youth, and had, in fact, purchased a house in an Italian valley quite close to where the author had lived.) The very first thing that spurred my linking of Meltzer ideas and Pinocchio was the character of the fox This sharp-but-aimless, dapper-but-shabby, guiding-but-tricky dandy of a pseudo-muse laughs mockingly about the “thirsty little minds rushing to the fountain of knowledge ” on his first meeting with the eager but naive Pinocchio rushing off to school on his quest to become a real boy The pleasure in perverting that drinking in of knowledge by children, which he and his even dumber henchman “Giddy” never ingested or digested, becomes a very comical scene, which I will return to below The fox sees Pinocchio as a true puppet for financial exploitation, and he cannot imagine that the latter could ever have a (rebellious) mind of his own that could break free of the “easy life” of acting and performing and that he might hunger for good objects and seek out what feels real and sincere In Meltzer’s seminal Terror, Persecution & Dread (1967) he vividly illustrates, especially through clinical dream material, how an omniscient foxy part of the self may dominate the dependent aspects of the self It offers seductive (but tyrannical) invitations to live under its “generous and knowledgeable protection”, (usually as a “special” protégé), leading away from (perversion literally means the leading away from something needed) the primal good objects – the watchful loving-kindness of Gepetto and the Blue Fairy This foxy is very persuasive in its sales pitch – and always claims to be offering the deal of a lifetime – cleverly concealing its mindless grip on Death-time But, let’s get back to the beginning of the film Jiminy Cricket (JC) is a roving orphan of sorts – yet always optimistic in the face of his poverty and starvation for (aesthetically) reciprocated adoration He is a perpetual outsider, but tells us his story about how he became in insider in the magical transformation of a puppet into a real boy Through his eyes we are taken inside a charming, but somewhat incomplete toy world – Gepetto’s workshop All seems well on the surface – but the little family of Gepetto, with his little cat Figaro, and goldfish sibling rival sister Cleo lack a depth of real connection When we now add in the sexual-romantic insecurities of “big brother” Jiminy to the barely contained jealousy between Cleo and Figaro, the emotional atmosphere becomes quite fraught Very clever dreamlike depictions of Jiminy’s internal Oedipal frustration – especially in a Cuckoo clock sequence where he is rather desperately trying to get the milkmaid for himself - are juxtaposed with the ongoing sibling rivalry between Cleo and Figaro – themselves anticipating another rival in the form of new-baby Pinocchio Jiminy’s ensuing obsessive (paranoid-schizoid) state of mind with all the clock s striking simultaneously (some of which represent alcoholic addiction to the milkbottle breast) becomes too much without sleep being disturbed, until his super-ego (rule driven) guiding light is eventually (literally) superseded by the Blue Fairy’s more loving way of guiding Pinocchio et al, through the instigation of (depressive) thinking) about the welfare of others - not unlike Klein’s focus on Collette’s little boy in L’enfant et les Sortileges She (the fairy) doesn’t humiliate JC’s oedipal flirtatiousness – but (rightly) treats it as an infantile fancy of needing to feel important (much later, she eventually gives JC a gold medal for being a good conscience to Pinocchio) rather than directly gratifying his delusion of oedipal supremacy, which he had earlier manically indulged, in his fancies of seducing the milk-maid displayed in one of Gepetto’s highly crafted cuckoo clocks Pinocchio, however, prefers to learn from his own experience, in spite of the Polonial parental prodding about needing to be a good boy on the straight and narrow road to learning at school It’s an actor’s life for him, as he skips along with his apple for the teacher and no idea at all about what learning really involves Enter the fox, (who goes by the name Honest John) and his idiot henchman, appropriately named “Giddy” – the archangel of stupidity and unthinking The Laurel and Hardy cartoon slapstick between the fox and Giddy is funny, but also incredibly violent It vividly dreams out the quite concrete attacks on the head and brain underlying their total inability to think together, and their hatred of learning that is equivalent to knocking oneself senseless Of course, our probationary conscience Jiminy Cricket tries to explain to Pinocchio about temptation and its dangers But, for Pinocchio to become a real boy he must battle temptation on the stage of real life, rather than through a glib lecturing from the barely-managing-hisown-impulses JC Nonetheless, their seductive stupidity does succeed in flattering and convincing Pinocchio to join the circus – really and enslaving claustrum presided over by the greedy, ruthless and exploitative Stromboli Pinocchio is pushed on stage as an idiot performer – comically sprouting a Cossack moustache after a confused flush of genital excitement from dancing Russian dolls – his first stirrings of possibly oral- genital curiosity, where up and down are confused in a comical way Then, his flirtatious dance with the genitally exhibitionistic female marionettes ends in the ludicrously ironic song “There are no strings on me!” with him slipping, and becoming massively entangled in strings – a prelude to his entering his first claustral cavity – Stromboli’s cage, where he is emasculated by the sadistic, greedy tyrant Brilliantly juxtaposed with this action is Figaro, having to control his own oralcannibalistic impulses toward his little sister Cleo the goldfish, while they must wait for Gepetto to link with Pinocchio again Pinocchio’s own part in this was the disregarding of the protective words of his father and the blue fairy, (symbolically, really the absent good internal mother) reminding him of the L-link and its importance for his becoming a ‘real’ boy, through patience, diligence and learning from experience When the watchful mother rescues the despairing Pinocchio from Stromboli’s clutches, she asks him how he fell into such wayward company, and of course he lies – and thereby suffers a further (symbolically genital) humiliation - his exaggerated nose size This expresses the folly of his desire to feel potent the quick and easy way, rather than through learning But, his lying distortion of Fox and Giddy and Stromboli as “kidnapping monsters” has a kind of truth, internally speaking They monster his intentions to become real, and replace the good internal parents with volatile murderers and exploiters But an even greater (kidnapper of children) monster – the true ringleader of the narcissistic, anti-thinking, hypochondrial gang – appears, very soon after the Blue Fairy releases him from Stromboli’s terrifying claustrum He is a heartless “paedophilic” Coachman, who bundles up wayward children and coaches them away to lose their minds in addictions before being sold on as mules, working as slaves Soon Pinocchio is offered a paradise for children – endless sensual distraction depleting any aesthetic sensibility, hallucinosis, mindless aggression, oral indulgence, including smoking and the wanton destruction of Art Not too surprisingly, this pseudo-banquet leads to physical illness and more humiliation – he becomes a donkey JC tries to mount a rearguard action – but Pinocchio has already entered a new claustrum (in one image he again appears to have a moustache of pubic hair) At last, though, JC and Pinocchio begin to realize just what peril they are in – and very close to losing their minds altogether At this point, repentantly remembering his love for his father,(who has meanwhile gone looking for him) Pinocchio takes over the responsibility for rescuing himself, Jiminy and his father from the belly of a whale called Monstro – harking back to his lying description of kidnapping monsters- from JC, and literally takes a plunge into the ocean – his bravery in facing catastrophic change, if he is to become his real self There is no longer any place for mindless capitulation to cruel and mindless pseudoadults who leave no place for the sincere feeling of love and warm dependence on trusted parents The Whale claustrum –a projection of the longed for, but claustral womb – also recalls Jonah, in his crisis of faith – the leap of faith in O required to transcend (Maizels, Grotstein, 1995) the paranoid and depressive anxieties about survival and love Through a series of escapes from the clutches of the fox, Stromboli, Coachman and Monstro, Pinocchio is increasingly determined to relinquish perverse idealisations and addictions, by seeing their capacity to seriously distract away from his need for love and development (Interestingly, even in the underwater claustrum, JC still goes about trying to seduce young (under-aged) fish – but, at least and at last, says sorry for his presumptuousness.) These include smoking, and all the phallic paraphernalia of performative pseudomaturity And so it is a sharp irony that he is eventually able to transform smoking into the creative means of escaping the whale claustrum and revitalizing his father through true creative invention It is only his new found capacity to think (Gepetto originally called him “wooden head”) that allows him to save his siblings, and more particularly his ailing father, and which frees them from the frightening, all-devouring Whale-belly claustrum Pinocchio’s thought is to light a fire to force the whale to sneeze, and thereby create an orgasmic escape propulsion – one that pushes Pinocchio across the threshold into real boyhood, and on the way to an adult mind – fuelled by real experience and a real creative-reparatory thinking, rather than the poisonous, deceptive hallucinatory gratification offered by the foxy henchmen of idealized masturbatory pseudomaturity When the good objects are restored and presiding, Fate itself can be personalized as “kind” (When you Wish upon a Star croons a more secure and loved Jiminy.) JC’s super ego-ish tendency to lose faith in Pinocchio’s combined object as an alternative to his own oedipal world of flirtation, seduction and rejection had, up until the depressive moment where he believes his wooden charge to have died, threatened eternal “envious scavenging” But, his own tears at that moment bring him as much emotionally alive as Pinocchio is about to become, even if he does fall a little too much in love with his solid gold medal from the fairy for being a good conscience But let’s not forget his own orphan beginnings – he has travelled quite a way, morally, under the aegis of Pinocchio’s combined object ... But, for Pinocchio to become a real boy he must battle temptation on the stage of real life, rather than through a glib lecturing from the barely-managing-hisown-impulses JC Nonetheless, their seductive... link with Pinocchio again Pinocchio? ??s own part in this was the disregarding of the protective words of his father and the blue fairy, (symbolically, really the absent good internal mother) reminding... him of the L-link and its importance for his becoming a ? ?real? ?? boy, through patience, diligence and learning from experience When the watchful mother rescues the despairing Pinocchio from Stromboli’s