Brutal Tyrants, Brutal Servants. Struggles with Perversion - Malcolm Rushton
Date: 20 March 2010
9.45am - 12.30pm
Chair: Hilary Pounsett
Around 1992, I attended the Portman Clinic Annual Lecture entitled ‘Terror in search of a nightmare’. It was given by an analyst who worked in Broadmoor Hospital at the time. The subtitle for the lecture was ‘Extremes of Brutality’. He spoke at length about what he called ‘brutal tyrants’ and ‘brutal servants’, and gave the Mafia as an example embracing these two categories of people. He saw the Mafia Godfather as the brutal tyrant and the henchmen who contained the violence on the Godfather’s behalf, as the brutal servants, often leading to a violent acting out, even murder. The Godfather never got his hands dirty. His violence went on in his head and was projected into his servants, who carried his fantasies out into the world, containers for his powerful feelings. I would like to use this model of brutal tyrants and brutal servants to describe some ongoing work with two patients, who I might loosely call ‘brutal servants’, and the struggles we have had in their attempts to separate from their respective ‘tyrants’, often with accompanying terrifying and nightmarish feelings, and achieved only in so far as they find their own heads and an identity of their own.
Malcolm Rushton is a Member of The SAP working in private practice in London.
Hilary Pounsett is a Member of The SAP working in private practice in Cambridge.
Venue: Friends Meeting House, 91-93 Hartington Grove, Cambridge
Cost: £17 including coffee
Posted by SAP Admin
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