The Unconscious experience of being a lecturer and the Oedipus Complex at work: A psychodynamic approach
2nd December 2006
INTRODUCTION
This essay aims to examine the emotional and unconscious experience of being a lecturer in private universities in London including life changes and transformations that the author encountered by practicing his profession. The transformations are summarised in the unconscious and conscious behaviour coming from a change in understanding myself as an “individual” and as a “person” and by adopting a psychoanalytic approach. A psychoanalytic approach that enables the author to explore aspects of himself and his subjective experience of an external reality as opposed to an internal psychic reality. On the one end, an external reality, a private university that has been experienced as hostile and, on the other end, as a friendly and safe environment.
The overall experience of being a lecturer did have an impact on my self-esteem as unconscious phantasies were evoked and acted out thus mirroring an unresolved Oedipal situation experienced during my childhood.
Being a lecturer in private universities involves sharing knowledge with students, nurturing them in their painful experience of learning as well as helping them to achieve academic goals and boosting their self-beliefs. A lecturer might be unconsciously experienced and perceived by students as an authoritative parental figure nurturing and containing students’ projected feelings of hate and love. Hostility is experienced and projected onto a lecturer from those students expecting higher grades even if they are under-performing in their final exams. Projections of those unconscious feelings are internalised by a lecturer and they would evoke early infantile Oedipal conflicts experienced with parental figures during early childhood.
It is in this conflictual situation that a relationship develops between a lecturer and students thus giving birth to an unresolved Oedipal illusionary situation. An Oedipal situation in which students experience and perceive a lecturer as a mother or father figure representing their primary object of love. Feelings of being loved are unconsciously experienced in the class and feeling of hate and anger are projected toward a lecturer thus splitting him/her in bad and good parts of objects 1 .
This unconscious process is so deep and out of awareness that revokes, in a class environment, infantile idealised relationships with parental figures. Early memories and forgotten experiences are unconsciously acted out in a classroom in which a lecturer perceives students, in his/her unconscious, as when he or she was a student himself and found difficult to cope with the painful learning experience of studying for a bachelor degree. Relationships between lecturers and students create situations in which unconscious transferences and counter-transferences are projected onto each other’s thus evoking on both sides’ early-unresolved Oedipal conflicts. Those unconscious conflicts often manifest themselves by projections of anger, rivalry, hostility, love, hate and jealousy.
Since I came to live in London in 1991 I was introduced to an Anglo-Saxon culture almost dissimilar from an Italian culture. An Italian culture with strong family values and perhaps with less social classes boundaries compared to an Anglo-Saxon one. It was the first time that I could possibly beginning to understand and make sense of how emotions and feeling are experienced and repressed in an unconscious mind of a person, somehow differently, because of inherited and learned family’ values and beliefs deeply rooted onto an Italian family system. The life experience I have gained out of my permanence in London has also contributed to my understanding of being an individual with unresolved and unfulfilled unconscious needs and wishes as well as being perceived by others as a person. The author posits that a lecturer would perceive and experience a private university as a good enough mother, because of its educational purposes, and the management as a father figure imposing its authority.
BECOMING AN INDIVIDUAL AND A PERSON
We can define a human being like an “individual” and a “person” or we can use other definitions like psyche, mind, ego, ego ideal and super-ego. My concern in this essay is the subjective experience of the author who feels about himself as being a person (or individual) and how others experience someone as a person (or individual). To experience oneself like a person makes one aware of a sense of participation and experiencing others, with a feeling of empathy and participation and the experience of an external reality. To experience oneself as an individual makes a human being aware of his/her own unique needs and interests and becoming aware of one’ identity and emotions like joy, love, fear, greed, anger and envy. John Heron 2 (1992) postulates personhood as an emergent state of being and that the individual is one psychological mode of the emergent person.
The focus of this essay is on an individual and personal experience of everyday life in relation to others as well as to how my past and childhood life experience continues to influence my adult life and my role as a lecturer in my professional endeavours. I am constantly learning and reading about myself in my reactions to others, and I do this by using the concept of person and individual because they describe different aspects of life experience which in turn have and had an impact on my own and others behaviour while lecturing in private universities in London.
Being perceived as a lecturer might be considered as being in a privileged position while exercising authority on others as well as sharing knowledge and helping others to acquire that knowledge in their personal growth. The author proposes that authority is an initial and significant factor to exploring aspects of the “individual” who is alive within myself. An authority linked to an internalised father figure always present here and there with identification with an authority figure that resembles to the role of being a lecturer. Being a lecturer can also be perceived as a judgemental and powerful profession and perhaps is not by any chance that the author aims to analyse what lies under the surface of pursuing a career in higher education.
A CAREER IN HIGHER EDUCATION
The roots of pursuing a career in higher education may derive from my early childhood unconscious life experiences. A childhood experience surrounded by an authoritative father-figure that influenced my personal development to become an individual and a person in society. An internalised father figure who was present in my inner world and that was phantasised as an internalised good but powerful object of love. An internalised object that was bad and good but also protecting myself from an external dangerous world. An authority figures that I tend to emulate unconsciously in my adult life in a profession like being a lecturer.
On the other end the maternal figure that emerges from a recollection of my childhood was that of a very young feminine figure with its roots in an aristocratic family. A perceived absent maternal figure acting as a container of my emotional outbursts that eventually would become an hostile internalised object, sometime loved and at other times hated There were twenty years age difference between my father and my mother as well as the existence of two different social classes. A family system with rigid boundaries between a parents’ subsystem and a siblings’ subsystem with an inexistent permeability between those boundaries. A family system in which a father authority figure was almost present in all its aspects. The result was a strong siblings’ rebellion against authority in a family systems with strong values based on honesty, integrity and respect for others.
THE OEDIPAL SITUATION
It is almost difficult and perhaps impossible to recall consciously various aspects of an Oedipal situation in which my thoughts may or may not come together in order to explore, from the outside, the existence or the inexistence of an idyllic love relationship between my father and my mother. An Oedipal incestuous situation in which I have struggled to be part of, because of my unconscious unfulfilled needs and wishes to create a loving family boat cruising toward an eternal and omnipotent sea of love. An omnipotent safe boat that resembles to a safe intra-uterine maternal womb environment in which all my immediate needs for survival were or weren’t gratified.
A gratification that if missed in early infancy would have its repercussions in adulthood in which all human beings, unconsciously, struggle while searching for a good enough mother in their workplace. That is the working environment; in particular the management that might be able to gratifying immediate needs of its workforce. A workforce in need of being nurtured in order to survive in an hostile and dangerously perceived external reality similar to that of an infant’s experience after birth. A working environment that is unconsciously experienced as an Oedipal illusionary situation in which our early infantile emotional injuries and feelings of love are unconsciously evoked and acted out toward and against leadership figures. Leadership figures representing a parental father authority and a good enough or bad mother figure (D.W. Winnicott 1961).
This is the painful process of human growth and development in which we, as human beings, struggle to assert our individual identity with a hope of becoming a person through other people’ perception of our individual behaviour. During this process of personal growth from infancy to adulthood we may become consciously aware, not always, that an external reality is not a representation of our inner world as we wished. Our struggle for being loved is the real battlefield especially when we are unconsciously overwhelmed with unwanted subjective projections and introjections experienced with managerial and leadership figures at work.
We transfer our unconscious feelings of love, hate and envy as well as unfulfilled unconscious desires in the workplace. A psychodynamic interpretation and analysis of our unconscious individual behaviour including transferences and counter-transferences, could eventually be explained by considering the Oedipal dimensions of transferences that we go through while undertaking tasks and dealing with authority figures in the workplace.
An individual behaviour that finds its roots in my unconsciously internalised and subjectively experienced Oedipal father figure who was perceived as a threat to an exclusive and omnipotent love toward a young maternal figure. A maternal loving figure that was perceived and phantasised as not belonging to me but to an authoritative paternal father figure. The struggle for an exclusive mother’s love was dealt with a strong antagonism with a perceived loving and protective father. Feelings of guilt and castration were experienced toward a father figure for not being able of loving my father and acknowledging him as an authority figure. From a psychoanalytic perspective this is a childhood experience that had its repercussions in the author’s adult life relationships with authority figures in the workplace. A sense of rebellion experienced against an imposed and sometime rejected super-ego, which would not suffice my ideal ego of being myself at work. An ideal ego, which would not give up to his object of love thus searching for a fusion with its primary object of love, the mother.
The emerging picture of my infantile unconscious inner psychic reality was an empty frame missing the main characters of an existing external world, a parental couple intercourse threatening my exclusive incest relationship with a good enough mother that was internalised as a good and a bad object. A catastrophic Oedipal situation with no way out of fulfilling my unconscious wishes and desires. To overcome this unacceptable situation I could only begin to identify, at the age of four or five, with an ideal father figure with an unconscious phantasy of becoming like him. An idealisation and identification with the father, so I could then unconsciously replace him in his relationship with a very young maternal mother figure.
What was missing was the “missing link” (Ronald Briton 3 , 1989), an acknowledgement by the child within myself; of my parents’ relationship and learning that other object relationships can also exist. Recognising a parental relationship would mean also acknowledging, in my inner internal psyche, the existence of family boundaries. A “triangle space”, as postulated by R. Britton, in which there is a possibility of becoming a participant with a parental figure relationship, an observed by a third person and an observer of a relationship between a father and a mother. Perhaps I was not able to conceive, within an Oedipus illusionary situation of my early childhood, the existence of a relationship between my parents and the benefits of recognising a mental space outside my internal and phantasised world. A parental relationship which could have helped me to grow up, thus becoming a person and capable of being observed and though of, thus providing some basis for a secure and safe family environment. A secure family environment in which I could see myself interacting with others, acknowledging other points of view while retaining my own and being observed as well as being an observer.
THE WORKING ENVIROMENT
Working as a lecturer in private universities can be considered as a privilege as well as an achievement of becoming a person with a sense of participation and experiencing others. A feeling of empathy and participation while hoping to experience a comfortable and supportive external reality in the workplace to recreate, unconsciously, the womb environment where all our pre-potent needs are met and gratified. An external reality that may resemble to a psychic inner reality with its unfulfilled unconscious needs and wants.
The University
My experience of being a part-time lecturer at the “University” in London, was a learning and painful experience that resembles to my early childhood experience in which rewards and punishments were used to help me to grow up and becoming an individual. I had to learn fast without relying or expecting some kind of recognition or rewards. My subjective perception of the “University” was an environment in which students were considered as the primary object of love to take care of and helping them to go through the painful and emotional experience of learning and studying for a bachelor degree. Initially it appeared that the students were the primary object love, of course not a great surprise. They were, after all, the “University’s” clients and its throughput. My classes contained students from the Middle East, Far East, Northern and Southern Europe and USA. I thought and felt that this multicultural environment would have helped me to have a better understanding of how higher education is conceived and experienced in other parts of the world.
The institution itself was an integrated part of a public quoted company with its headquarters in the USA and quoted at NASDAQ (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotation). At the time, the public company owned almost seventy-five private universities mainly in the USA with overseas campuses in Europe.
A family system
Initially I perceived the “University” as one of the many siblings belonging to a patriarchal family, the public quoted company, with its roots in an individualistic society. An American family with values and beliefs based on individual achievements rather than on harmony and collaboration with others.
I perceived and experienced the public quoted company as an absent mother figure that failed to contain and satisfy the immediate urges and needs of its siblings, the faculty and its lecturers, working at the London campus of the “University”. Most of the care for its members of staff was delegated to the management structure of the “University” campus in London. A management structure that involved a C.E.O, chief executive officer, who I have barely met or being introduced to, a vice president of academic affair, a human resources director and a newly appointed chair of business studies with a PhD in organisational psychology.
THE OEDIPAL ILLUSIONARY SITUATION AT WORK
The authority of the management as a father figure
I was almost thrilled and astonished by the great authority and power that existed in the management structure of the “University”. My anxiety and fear were present in all parts of the building of this private institution as if I was on scrutiny and whether I was taking care enough and look after spoilt students. I felt that authority was coming from within rather than from without. An authority that was perceived and experienced as the ghost of my past, a father figure with whom I was in conflict with and never managed to integrate the good and bad parts of an internalised father figure. I was afraid of being castrated by the management as a form of punishment of not being able to look after spoilt students. In my inner psychic world, the management evoked an internalised father figure with strong values and beliefs in higher education but with some tolerance towards its pupils, the students. I was not prepared to acknowledge the ambivalence that the management was trying to pursue high education standards through accreditation of its degrees by British universities and simultaneously being tolerant with the poor academic performance of those students.
I felt as being trapped into an institutional system with an ambivalent primary task and the work group (W.R. Bion, 1961), the management. A primary task of pursuing higher education values on the one end, and looking after spoilt children on the other end, thus making sure that all students’ desires and wants were gratified. A punishment for not obeying to a management authority was in the air and the result was a suspension from my role as a lecturer with no clear justification from the chair of business studies. It was a stressful and depressing experience in which I confined myself. I felt betrayed by an authoritative management style, perceived as a father figure, who firstly praised my high standards of education and on the other end had punished my high standards of higher education transferred to the students.
There was an unconsciously experienced rivalry with a management style that resembled to a evoked authoritative father figure, toward whom my dormant unconscious desires and forgettable memories acted out. They were projected onto an authoritative management leadership style of this private institution and revealing transferential dynamics between the individual (the author) and the institution (the university).
The University as the mother figure
Initially the “University” was perceived as a safe environment in which my personal development was apparently taken care of. I felt as being part of a family system in which I could feel important and being recognised as a member of a private institution that resembled to an unconsciously perceived good enough mother figure. A mother figure who would be always present and looking after her children, the faculty and its lecturers, and protecting them from a perceived dangerous and hostile external world. The “University” was perceived, in my inner world, as a dangerous external reality and as an absent, self-indulgent and complacent mother figure. An unconsciously perceived mother figure that neglected me as being present and alive. It was with great surprise to learn that students were the primary objects of love for the “University”. I had to confine myself to the role of a naughty boy who was not able to look after the University’s own siblings, the students, and consequently been punished. There was an Oedipal illusionary situation in which a good enough mother, the “University”, was there to take care of other siblings, the students, who were pampered (A. Adler 1992 4 like spoilt children that are brought up and expect their desires and wishes to be immediately gratified. Students were to be at the centre of attention and when their lecturers did not fulfil their expectations of getting good grades, as their primary objective, they would feel their world has failed them. They have been trained to take and not to give. Their main object of interest was themselves and never learned the importance of co-operation with their lecturer.
This private institution was unconsciously felt as an internalised bad object, a persecutory and destructive force that I had to get rid of in order to survive. It was a feeling of betrayal from a mother figure that was only interested to look after the revenue figures generated by spoilt students. A feeling of selfishness which was transferred to a child, the lecturer, who was looking for support and approval in his pursue of high standards of education that were firstly promised by a mother-figure, the “University”.
The triangle situation
An illusionary Oedipal situation emerged with a perceived rivalry with an authoritative management style resembling to a father figure that would never being acknowledged because it unconsciously evoked an infantile hostility against a male parental figure. There was an unsatisfying love relationship with a mother figure, the
“University”, that was unconsciously perceived as an absent mother who never acted as a container of my feelings of anger, frustrations and stress.
There was a feeling of being neglected and anger toward a private institution that was unable to provide a safe environment and acting as a good-enough mother toward its members of staff. There was a need of being a participant, as a member of the faculty team, in a relationship with a private institution that would have acted with integrity and morality in its endeavours to pursuing high standards of education. It seemed as the “University” fostered the ambiguity of a primary task as its primary aim “high academic standards” were not in reality its chief aim, but the shareholders/stockholders as the primary object of love.
A working trough process
My perception of this private institution was that of a parental couple with an authoritative father figure, the management, and a mother figure, the private institution, acting through its social defences like its academic policies, high standards of education and management committees designed to contain the anxiety of the faculty and members of staff. The management was unconsciously perceived as a mother figure that was always present to satisfy the immediate needs and desires of spoilt students. Students who only knew about their own phantasised internal world in which all their dreams and phantasies had lost contact with an external reality of a British higher education system.
A psychodynamic analysis of this essay seems to suggest that unmet unconscious desires and wants were acted out through the author’s hostile working relationships projected toward an authoritative management (father figure) and a private university (mother figure) It was a rewinding of the author’s past that unconsciously revived infantile traumatic wounds that could have been healed by recreating a parental couple situation and working through its incestuous relationships.
A working-through process in which the author could have learned of being an observer and not a participant thus acknowledging, in my internal psyche, the existence of institutional boundaries and social defences. There was an “authority from within” and the way in which the working through of Oedipal tensions could eventually strengthen the capacity to function in an “observer” stance – the capacity to observe with a degree of dispassion would have been, probably, a key component of the capacity to act authoritatively.
CONCLUSIONS
This essay suggests that a family system environment experienced early in infancy was unconsciously evoked in the workplace with the “University” acting as a mother figure and the management as a father figure in which unresolved Oedipal dynamics were experienced out of consciousness. Within this framework my attempt was to present a psychodynamic analysis of my own transference onto the “University”. The description indicates that there was high degree of “fit” between the author’s own internalised family and the external world of the “University”, and also that the private institution had a little capacity to contain the difficult feelings aroused by the situation.
The author’s acknowledgement of the part played by his own rivalrous acting out in the conflict with management is an example of transferential psychodynamics between the individual and the institution. The reference to “authority from within” and the way in which the working through of Oedipal tensions can strengthen the capacity to function in an “observer” stance. Indeed, the capacity to observe with some degree of dispassion would be a component of the capacity to act with authority.
It would be useful to go further and perhaps to develop further the author’s ideas about the “University” as an object of study in its own right, that is, independent of the author’s transference onto it. For instance in relations to the “University’s” academic policies as being social defences to contain the anxiety of its faculty’s members.
Moreover, the essay suggests that the “University” fostered certain problematic or inadequate kind of relationships relevant to the Oedipal themes treated such those which shed light on how relationships can be hated, avoided or maintained at an illusory level. For instance, the “University” tended to “emulate” a safe family environment suggesting a kind of falseness in the culture and style of relating, which seemed quite toxic. The ambiguity of the “primary task” might provide relevant contextual material for a further psychodynamic analysis as high academic standards were not in reality the “University’s” chief aims but rather the shareholders/stockholders were the “primary object of love”.
Overall, the author’s experience of being a lecturer over the past ten years would confirm his thoughts and beliefs that unconscious infantile life-experiences are the primary elements of our personality development and growth. Our adult behaviour is not detached or extraneous to early infantile Oedipal complex phenomena. An external reality, the working environment, is subjectively experienced and unconsciously internalised as a mean of fulfilling our inner world of dreams and phantasies. Oedipal conflicts are evoked in the workplace and acted out toward and against people who unconsciously represent our father or mother figures. Recognising and underlying the existence of an external reality outside our inner world necessitates an awareness of a “here and now” learning experience in relation to others.
We can only learn about ourselves in relation to others, how we react to others and how others perceive us. It is a painful experience not being able to reconcile early infantile traumatic wounds. We often tend to recreate unconsciously early childhood Oedipal illusionary situations in the workplace and in our roles in which early infantile and unconscious traumatic wounds, hopefully, can be healed. What is missing is awareness that unconscious phantasies would never recreate the initial and primary love relationship that human beings experienced with their primary parental figures and their primary object of love.
© Nicola Caramia
Notes
1 Lavinia Gomes, An Introduction to Object Relations, Free Associations Books, 1997. 
2 John Heron, Feeling and Personhood, Sage, London, 1992.
3 Ronald Britton, “The missing link: parental sexuality in the Oedipus complex”, The Oedipus Complex Today, Clinical Implications, Karnac Books, London, 1989.
4 Alfred Adler, What Life Could Mean To You, Oneworld Publications, 1992.
REFERENCES
• Ronald Britton, “The missing link: parental sexuality in the Oedipus complex”, The Oedipus Complex Today, Clinical Implications, Karnac Books, London, 1989.
•
Alfred Adler, What Life Could Mean To You, Oneworld Publications, 1992
•
Lavinia Gomes, An Introduction to Object Relations, Free Associations Books, 1997
•
John Heron, Feeling and Personhood, Sage, London, 1992
•
W.R. Bion, Experiences in Groups, Tavistock Publication Ltd., 1961.
•
D.W. Winnicott, Playing and Reality, Tavistock Publications Ltd., 1971.
ABSTRACT
This essay is a psychodynamic analysis of the author’s transference onto a private university perceived as a family system The Oedipal dimensions of the transference emerges with its unresolved conflicts unconsciously experienced by the author with the management, the university and its students. The author argues that unresolved primary Oedipal conflicts experienced in infancy are unconsciously evoked and acted out at work with a phantasy of reviving an idealised relationship with a parental figure. The description suggests that there was a high degree of “fit” between the author’s internalised family system and the external world represented by the university with little capacity to contain the difficult feelings aroused by the situation.
KEYWORDS
Individual,
person,
Oedipal, good-enough mother, authority, social defences, unconscious, pampered, primary task, boundaries, love, psychodynamic.
