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On Re-reading the Uncommon Reader

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Paul Terry

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On first reading Alan Bennett's The Uncommon Reader (2006) I enjoyed it as a whimsical piece of

satire. Returning to it recently for the purpose of a book discussion I came to appreciate that Ben-

nett's beautifully crafted work has much more to offer. On reflection I see Bennett offering a

poignant observation about the transformative potential of reading, which like therapy can bring

about a shift from an omnipotent, narcissistic state of mind to one in which we can bear ambiva-

lence, guilt and remorse, and make moves toward reparation. In choosing Queen Elizabeth II to

illustrate this transformation I believe Bennett is offering a commentary about our contemporary

society with the Queen as an emblematic figure of a government in the grip of narcissism. Allow

me to explain how I reached these conclusions.

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First a précis of the novel which opens with the Queen at a state banquet asking a reluctant French

President about Jean Genet. The President is not amused, and thinks to himself he is in a 'for a long

evening'. The novel's narrator then traces the history of the Queen's enthusiasm for literature, be-

ginning when she comes across a travelling library parked behind the kitchens at Buckingham

Palace. Curious, she ventures in and meets the driver librarian and just one reader, Norman who

works in the royal kitchens. Out of politeness she feels obliged to borrow a book and ends up pick-

ing a book by Ivy Compton-Burnett ,whom she remembers making a Dame. Thus begins a new-

found love affair with reading, initially with Norman as her guide and mentor. Norman, who is gay,

is subsequently promoted as a page to the Queen. The Queen is determined to make up for what

she has missed. She reads widely and prodigiously. Her majesty's reading is not well received.

Her courtiers complain she is neglecting her appearance, and worse that when she goes on walka-

bouts and meets her people instead of asking the routine questions such as how they travelled there

that day, for which they have been prepared and can give routine answers, she asks her subjects

what they are reading and sometimes even hands out books she herself has finished.

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The Prime Minister becomes especially fed up when, during his regular audiences with the Queen,

she starts drawing on her growing interest and study of history in order to quiz him about his own

acquaintance with the history of some of the countries in which he is intervening. She finds him

lacking in such knowledge and suggests texts he read, which he strongly resents. Various attempts

are made to discourage the Queen's reading, for example books she selected to accompany an over-

seas visit go missing. During one of her absences overseas Norman is removed. An old, now re-

tired royal retainer is sent to talk her out of reading. The efforts to sabotage her reading fail. How-

ever the Queen tends to become discouraged feeling that she has no voice of her own. She also

starts to become aware of other people's feelings in a way she had not previously considered. For

example she notices a courtier has become embarrassed and confused by something she has said;

and she realises when she comes across Norman again that he is resentful and hurt by the way he

was removed. She becomes aware of what she has missed in life and feels sad about that.

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The coup de théâtre occurs in the final chapter when the Queen summons all her mentors and advi-

sors, including former prime ministers and members of the government, to a gathering during the

year of her eightieth birthday. She announces she has decided to try her hand at writing about her

life which she feels needs 'redeeming by analysis and reflection'. To the increasing discomfort, par-

ticularly of the present government, she starts musing aloud about how, during the course of her

reign, she has met and entertained visiting heads of state some of them 'unspeakable crooks and

blackguards'; and how she has at times 'been forced to participate if only passively in decisions I

consider ill-advised and often shameful'. She has felt monarchy is 'just a government-issue deodor-

ant'. Her audience are by now alarmed. The Prime Minister triumphantly reminds the Queen that

her unique position as monarch would prevent her from publishing such a book. The Queen re-

sponds by citing examples of her predecessors who have done so and concludes by mentioning her

uncle, the Duke of Windsor and his book 'A King's Story'. The Prime Minister objects pointing out

that book could only be written because the Duke had abdicated. The Queen plays her trump card

saying 'Oh, did I not say that? ... why do you think you're all here?'

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In his paper on Narcissism Freud (1914) first used the phrase 'His Majesty the Baby' to evoke an

omnipotent state of mind that characterises narcissism in infancy. Tuckett and Taffler (2008) return

to this phrase in discussing the volatility of the stock market in the recent financial crises in the

West. The authors use 'His Majesty the Baby' to illustrate the paranoid schizoid state of mind, and

following Bion, describe how it recurs throughout life in oscillations between the paranoid schizoid

and depressive positions. The authors argue convincingly that in such narcissistic states, fuelled by

omnipotent phantasies of limitless financial rewards, excitement and greed, the financiers and their

customers who were caught up in financial bubbles of such enterprises as the dot.com companies,

were able to ignore unpalatable facts about the precariousness of those enterprises; and that later,

when the same enterprises crashed, guilt and remorse were denied and projected into convenient

scapegoats.

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Bernardine Bishop in a psychoanalytic study of Shakespeare's Lear and Prospero (2001) described

how such royal figures can be a metaphor for all of us in our struggles to achieve maturity: 'for

whatever sense we may have of our share of responsibility for the world; for acceptance of the un-

chosen in our lives - that what we are born into also belongs to whom we are.' (p.506). She points

out the attainment of these goals may 'only be apparent' and not real because of the absence of in-

ternal growth through an incapacity to face depressive pain. Consequently royal status may con-

firm 'entitlement to infantile aims' and encourage 'ownership and omnipotence'. Bishop shows

how Lear remains stuck in such an infantile state whereas Prospero grows through the play, is able

to relinquish omnipotent magical powers, take on responsibility and at the same time face loss, sep-

aration and death.

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In a similar vein Bennett's story traces the Queen's internal development as a result of her reading.

She moves from being entitled not to be concerned about others to noticing other people's feelings

and is able to feel concern for them. After Norman is suddenly removed, Bennett's narrator com-

ments how little the Queen seems troubled and how typical it was for the Queen to be spared any

'distress or even fellow feeling' by her courtiers, who kept anything likely to arouse such feelings

from her. Much later when she meets Norman again she is aware of his upset and the narrator

comments she then knows more about people's feelings and can put herself in someone else's place.

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Without Norman with whom to discuss her reading the Queen starts to make copious notes and an-

notations, including observations about herself and others. She notes a recommendation that 'one

recipe for happiness is to have no sense of entitlement' and adds her comment that 'this is not a les-

son I have ever been in a position to learn'. Reflecting about the end of her life she concludes that,

unlike the authors she reads, she has had no voice of her own. She despairs of her reading, observ-

ing to herself 'You don't put your life in books. You find it there.' She determines to try to write

about and publish her observations. She thus becomes able to take up a third position. Her final

abdication speech illustrates her capacity to observe her part in corruption and cover up, and her

wish to make reparation.

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The therapeutic aspects of reading are now well recognised and even acknowledged by the National

Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence in the NICE guidelines about Bibliotherapy. Little has

been written in the psychoanalytic literature studying the therapeutic processes in reading. Excep-

tionally, Christopher Bollas (1978) has written about the search for transformative experiences

through reading. He refers specifically to experiences of 'deep subjective rapport between reader

and text' which may be a moment or an entire piece of literature, or some other art form. He argues

that such aesthetic experiences are recollections of our earliest experiences of maternal care when

this kind of communion with mother gives the infant the experience of mother as a 'transformation-

al object'. Bollas refers to the transformational promise as 'where the unintegrations of self find in-

tegration through the form provided by the transformational object' (p.385). This kind of transfor-

mation sounds very similar to the holding that Esther Bick (1968) described when the mother pro-

vides the infant with a sense of a psychic 'skin' holding together all the infant's disparate feelings

and experiences.

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I think the kind of transformative shift from paranoid schizoid to depressive functioning that Ben-

nett is illustrating is more a mix of experiences of holding and containment. I am here following

the distinction Robert Caper (1999) has made between holding and containing interpretations. Ca-

per refers to holding interpretations as only articulating an understanding of the client's experience

including projective, transferential distortions; whereas containing interpretations reflect another

view, the therapist takes up a third position, disentangling him or herself from the mutual projec-

tions and offering an observation of the truth as he or she is able to understand it. It is the resulting

therapeutic hope and struggle to face the truth about oneself and others that Bennett so well illus-

trates in the Queen's abdication speech.

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Bernardine Bishop reveals Shakespeare commenting on this therapeutic process in his somewhat

unusual epilogue to The Tempest when Prospero invites the audience to 'draw near' and asks for our

help in leaving the island saying:

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' Let me not ... dwell

In this bare island by your spell.

But release me from my bands

With the help of your good hands'(Epilogue 5-10)

....

As you from crimes would pardoned be

Let your indulgence set me free. (19-20)

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Following Bishop, I understand Prospero here invites us to projectively identify with himself but

also pleads not to be left a character in the play on the island. He describes how we can set him free

by withdrawing our projective identifications and taking responsibility for our own guilt and need

for forgiveness. And if Bennett succeeds neither should we leave the Queen seeking redemption

through analysis and reflection but engage ourselves in reflections about our own collusion in nar-

cissistic entitlement, destructiveness and corruption.

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For my epilogue: there is mounting evidence about the value of reading in enhancing personal

growth and development, particularly so in relation to reading groups in prisons. Reading shows

substantial benefits for rehabilitation, and one aspect repeatedly mentioned is the gain in prisoners'

capacity for empathy with others. In the face of such evidence our present government is now re-

stricting prisoners' access to books. Key literary figures including Bennett have protested, but to no

avail. The Uncommon Reader demonstrates how well Bennett understands the importance of read-

ing and how passionately he must have identified with the protest. Perhaps his understanding of our

narcissistically dominated culture means he was not surprised by the government's dismissive re-

sponse.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to express my gratitude to Barbara MacKenzie who introduced The Uncommon Reader

for the book discussion in the Birkbeck Counselling Association Forum, and to those present who

contributed to the subsequent lively and stimulating discussion.

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References

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Bennett, A. (2006). The Uncommon Reader. London: Faber and Faber.

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Bick, E. (1968). The Experience of the Skin in Early Object-Relations. International Journal of

Psycho-analysis. 49, 484-486.

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Bishop, B. (2001). Lear and Prospero: From the Projective to the Introjective Mode. British Journal

of Psychotherapy. 17, 505-517.

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Bollas, C. (1978). The Aesthetic Moment and the Search for Transformation. The Annual of Psy-

choanalysis. 6, 385-394.

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Caper, R. (1999). A mind of one's own. London: Routledge.

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Freud, S. (1914). 'On Narcissism: An Introduction' in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psy-

chological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XIV, 67-102.

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Tuckett, D., Taffler, R. (2008). Phantastic Objects and the Financial Market's Sense of Reality: A

Psychoanalytic Contribution to the Understanding of Stock Market Instability. International Jour-

nal of Psycho-analysis. 89:389-412.

ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any citations for this publication.

This paper sets out to explore if standard psychoanalytic thinking based on clinical experience can illuminate instability in financial markets and its widespread human consequences. Buying, holding or selling financial assets in conditions of inherent uncertainty and ambiguity, it is argued, necessarily implies an ambivalent emotional and phantasy relationship to them. Based on the evidence of historical accounts, supplemented by some interviewing, the authors suggest a psychoanalytic approach focusing on unconscious phantasy relationships, states of mind, and unconscious group functioning can explain some outstanding questions about financial bubbles which cannot be explained with mainstream economic theories. The authors also suggest some institutional features of financial markets which may ordinarily increase or decrease the likelihood that financial decisions result from splitting off those thoughts which give rise to painful emotions. Splitting would increase the future risk of financial instability and in this respect the theory with which economic agents in such markets approach their work is important. An interdisciplinary theory recognizing and making possible the integration of emotional experience may be more useful to economic agents than the present mainstream theories which contrast rational and irrational decision-making and model them as making consistent decisions on the basis of reasoning alone.

  • Bernardine Bishop

My thesis is that King Lear and The Tempest, seen together, offer a map of the trajectory of psychic process from the projective to the introjective mode. Lear remains psychically unseparate, both from his daughters, who constitute a split maternal object, and from kingship, with which he is in projective identification. The Tempest, six years later, takes up and reworks to their resolution the same themes. Prospero learns to separate from Miranda, forgives his enemies, and relinquishes the rewards that come from narcissistic pseudopotency, in his case afforded by magic powers.

The Aesthetic Moment and the Search for Transformation. The Annual of Psychoanalysis

  • C Bollas

Bollas, C. (1978). The Aesthetic Moment and the Search for Transformation. The Annual of Psychoanalysis. 6, 385-394.

The works of Shakespeare(p. 34)

  • B Cornwall

Phantastic objects and the financial market's sense of reality: A psychoanalytic contribution to the understanding of stock market instability. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis

  • D Tuckett
  • R Taffler

The works of Shakespeare (p. 34). London: Tyas & Paternoster Row

  • B Cornwall