Joan Riviere
Encyclopedia
Joan Hodgson Riviere was a British psychoanalyst, who was both Freud's earliest translator and an influential writer on her own account.
, the daughter of Hugh John Verrall and his wife Ann Hodgson. Her father was a lawyer and her mother a vicar's daughter. She was educated at Brighton and then at Wycombe Abbey
. At the age of seventeen, she went to Gotha
, Germany, where she spent a year and became proficient in the German language. Here interests were primarily artistic and she was for a time a court dressmaker.
Riviere married in 1907 and had a child, but suffered a breakdown on the death of her father around that time. She took an interest in divorce reform and the suffragette movement. Her uncle, Arthur Woollgar Verrall
organised meetings of the Society for Psychical Research
where she discovered the work of Sigmund Freud
and Ernest Jones
, and this stimulated her interest in psychoanalysis. Suffering from emotional distress, she went for therapeutic psychoanalysis with Ernest Jones in 1916. In 1916 and 1917 she some time in a sanatorium because of nerves. Jones was impressed by her understanding of psychoanalytic principles and processes and she became a founding member of the British Psychoanalytical Society
, formed in 1919. At the Hague conference in 1920, she met Freud for the first time and asked to be analysed by him. She also met Melanie Klein
. She was translation editor of the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis from its inception in 1920 until 1937. In 1921 she worked with Freud and his daughter Anna Freud
, Ernest Jones
, James Strachey
and Alix Strachey on the Glossary Committee, and translating Freud's work into English. She supervised the translation and editing of volumes 1, 2 and 4 of the Collected Papers, and is arguably the best translator of Freud's work: 'the incomparable Joan Riviere, that "tall Edwardian beauty wuth picture hat and scarlet parasol", whose renderings retained more of Freud's stylistic energy than any others'.
Meanwhile her personal analysis with Jones had become difficult and when he reached an impasse, he recommended her to Sigmund Freud
for further psychoanalysis. This took place in Vienna 1922
When she returned to London, Riviere became actively involved in the work of the British Psychoanalytical Society. She met Klein again in Salzburg in 1924 and became a key proponent of Melanie Klein's ideas. In 1929 she was assisting Sylvia Payne
in orgainsing the Oxford conference. She became a training analyst in 1930 and was the analyst of Susan Isaacs
, John Bowlby
, and Donald Winnicott
and supervised Hanna Segal
, Herbert Rosenfeld
, and Henri Rey. Her supervisees 'all pay tribute to her originality, intellect, sensitivity, kindness, and culture, as well as to her sharp tongue and forcefulness'. James Strachey
concluded that 'indeed, she was a very formidable person'; and when in her paper on "Hate" she wrote of 'an elation which is pleasurable on overcoming an obstacle, or on getting one's own way' she may (as so often) have been rooting her comments in personal experience.
As well as translating Freud's work, Riviere published several seminal works of her own. In 1929 she published "Femininity as a Masquerade" in which she looks at an area of sexual development of intellectual women in particular, where femininity is a defensive mask that is put on to hide masculinity. In 1932 she published "Jealousy as a Mechanism of Defence" in which jealousy is seen to be a defence against envy aroused by the primal scene
. In 1936 she incorporated Melanie Klein's findings on the depressive position in "A Contribution to the Analysis of the Negative Therapeutic Reaction". . In the same year she managed put Klein's theories in the context of Freud's work in "The Genesis of Psychical Conflict in Earliest Infancy," delivered in Vienna in honour of Freud's 80th birthday.
From 1942 to 1944 Riviere took an active role in the Controversial discussions
at the British Psychoanalytical Society, in particular supporting the Kleinian faction. 'However, by the 1950s Riviere was dissociating herself from the circle of disciples who surrounded Klein'.
Riviere married Evelyn Riviere, a barrister and son of artist Briton Rivière
in 1906. Their only child, Diana, was born in 1908..
In "Jealousy as a Mechanism of Defence" (1932), 'impelled by the Kleinian vision, Riviere proceeded to chart highly original ground, linking morbid jealousy to envy of the primal scene some twenty-five years before Klein'.
Her account of "womanliness" as a masquerade was taken up by Lacan
as part of his exploration of The Imaginary
and The Symbolic
: 'a term which I have not introduced, but of which one female psycho-analyst has pin-pointed the feminine sexual attitude - the term masquerade '. Subsequently the same view, of femininity as performance, 'has been appropriated for a variety of de-essentializing and deconstructive versions of gender as performance (most influentially in late twentieth-century feminist
and film theory
)'.
Her "Contribution to the Analysis of the Negative Trerapeutic Reaction" is 'widely regarded as her most important contribution to psychoanalytic theory', building as it did on her personal experience - 'drawing on the painful experiences bound up with her analyses with Jones and Freud'. Freud had originally formulated the concept of the negative therapeutic reaction in large part out of his experience in analysizing Riviere: 'She cannot tolerate praise, triumph or success...she is sure to become unpleasant and aggressive and to lose respect for the analyst' whenever success loomed in sight. Such patients were characterised in his view by 'what may be called a "moral" facto, a sense of guilt, which is finding its satisfaction in the illness and refuses to give up the punishment of suffering.
By contrast Riviere (drawing on Klein) 'puts the emphasis elsewhere...focuses attention on the patient's despair about her inner world and her hopelessness about making reparation'. She described forcefully the patient's 'trait of deceptiveness, the mask, which conceals this subtle reservation of all control under intellectual rationalizations, or under feigned compliance and superficial politeness'. Even 'apparent improvement may be based on a manic defence: "The patient exploits us in his own way instead of being fully analysed"'. Such manic defences were however for Riviere a desperate attempt to avoid the depressive pain of an empty inner world. 'Apropos of the resistances that mask the depressive position, Riviere slips in a revealing sentence that can be read at once professionally and confessionally: "This has been my own experience"'.
Athol Hughes ed., The Inner World and Joan Riviere: Collected Papers 1920-1958 (London 1991)
Life and career
Riviere was born Joan Hodgson Verrall in BrightonBrighton
Brighton is the major part of the city of Brighton and Hove in East Sussex, England on the south coast of Great Britain...
, the daughter of Hugh John Verrall and his wife Ann Hodgson. Her father was a lawyer and her mother a vicar's daughter. She was educated at Brighton and then at Wycombe Abbey
Wycombe Abbey
Wycombe Abbey is an independent girls' boarding school situated in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, England. It is academically one of the top schools in the United Kingdom, and the top girls' boarding school...
. At the age of seventeen, she went to Gotha
Gotha (town)
Gotha is a town in Thuringia, within the central core of Germany. It is the capital of the district of Gotha.- History :The town has existed at least since the 8th century, when it was mentioned in a document signed by Charlemagne as Villa Gotaha . Its importance derives from having been chosen in...
, Germany, where she spent a year and became proficient in the German language. Here interests were primarily artistic and she was for a time a court dressmaker.
Riviere married in 1907 and had a child, but suffered a breakdown on the death of her father around that time. She took an interest in divorce reform and the suffragette movement. Her uncle, Arthur Woollgar Verrall
Arthur Woollgar Verrall
Arthur Woollgar Verrall was a British classics scholar associated with Trinity College, Cambridge, and the first occupant of the King Edward VII Chair of English...
organised meetings of the Society for Psychical Research
Society for Psychical Research
The Society for Psychical Research is a non-profit organisation in the United Kingdom. Its stated purpose is to understand "events and abilities commonly described as psychic or paranormal by promoting and supporting important research in this area" and to "examine allegedly paranormal phenomena...
where she discovered the work of Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
and Ernest Jones
Ernest Jones
Alfred Ernest Jones was a British neurologist and psychoanalyst, and Sigmund Freud’s official biographer. Jones was the first English-speaking practitioner of psychoanalysis and became its leading exponent in the English-speaking world where, as President of both the British Psycho-Analytical...
, and this stimulated her interest in psychoanalysis. Suffering from emotional distress, she went for therapeutic psychoanalysis with Ernest Jones in 1916. In 1916 and 1917 she some time in a sanatorium because of nerves. Jones was impressed by her understanding of psychoanalytic principles and processes and she became a founding member of the British Psychoanalytical Society
British Psychoanalytical Society
The British Psychoanalytical Society was founded by the British psychiatrist Ernest Jones as the London Psychoanalytical Society on October 30, 1913....
, formed in 1919. At the Hague conference in 1920, she met Freud for the first time and asked to be analysed by him. She also met Melanie Klein
Melanie Klein
Melanie Reizes Klein was an Austrian-born British psychoanalyst who devised novel therapeutic techniques for children that had an impact on child psychology and contemporary psychoanalysis...
. She was translation editor of the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis from its inception in 1920 until 1937. In 1921 she worked with Freud and his daughter Anna Freud
Anna Freud
Anna Freud was the sixth and last child of Sigmund and Martha Freud. Born in Vienna, she followed the path of her father and contributed to the newly born field of psychoanalysis...
, Ernest Jones
Ernest Jones
Alfred Ernest Jones was a British neurologist and psychoanalyst, and Sigmund Freud’s official biographer. Jones was the first English-speaking practitioner of psychoanalysis and became its leading exponent in the English-speaking world where, as President of both the British Psycho-Analytical...
, James Strachey
James Strachey
James Beaumont Strachey was a British psychoanalyst, and, with his wife Alix, a translator of Sigmund Freud into English...
and Alix Strachey on the Glossary Committee, and translating Freud's work into English. She supervised the translation and editing of volumes 1, 2 and 4 of the Collected Papers, and is arguably the best translator of Freud's work: 'the incomparable Joan Riviere, that "tall Edwardian beauty wuth picture hat and scarlet parasol", whose renderings retained more of Freud's stylistic energy than any others'.
Meanwhile her personal analysis with Jones had become difficult and when he reached an impasse, he recommended her to Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
for further psychoanalysis. This took place in Vienna 1922
When she returned to London, Riviere became actively involved in the work of the British Psychoanalytical Society. She met Klein again in Salzburg in 1924 and became a key proponent of Melanie Klein's ideas. In 1929 she was assisting Sylvia Payne
Sylvia Payne
Sylvia Payne was one of the pioneers of psychoanalysis in the United Kingdom.-Early life:Born as Sylvia May Moore in Marylebone, London, the daughter of Rev. Edward William Moore and his wife Letitia. Her father was incumbent of Brunswick Chapel and an adherent of the Higher Life movement, being...
in orgainsing the Oxford conference. She became a training analyst in 1930 and was the analyst of Susan Isaacs
Susan Isaacs
Susan Isaacs is an American novelist and screenwriter. She was born in Brooklyn, New York, educated at Queens College, and worked as a senior editor at Seventeen magazine. She married Elkan Abramowitz, a lawyer, in 1968 and in 1970 left work to stay at home with her newborn son, Andrew. Three...
, John Bowlby
John Bowlby
Edward John Mostyn "John" Bowlby was a British psychologist, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, notable for his interest in child development and for his pioneering work in attachment theory.- Family background :...
, and Donald Winnicott
Donald Winnicott
Donald Woods Winnicott was an English paediatrician and psychoanalyst who was especially influential in the field of object relations theory. He was a leading member of the British Independent Group of the British Psychoanalytic Society, and a close associate of Marion Milner...
and supervised Hanna Segal
Hanna Segal
Hanna Segal was a British psychoanalyst and a follower of Melanie Klein. She was president of the British Psychoanalytical Society, and vice-president of the International Psychoanalytical Association...
, Herbert Rosenfeld
Herbert Rosenfeld
Herbert Alexander Rosenfeld was a British psychoanalyst, who was born in Germany in 1910 and died in London in 1986.'British analysts have been deeply influenced by the work and teachings of Rosenfeld who increasingly focused upon the analyst's contribution to what was happening in the analysis -...
, and Henri Rey. Her supervisees 'all pay tribute to her originality, intellect, sensitivity, kindness, and culture, as well as to her sharp tongue and forcefulness'. James Strachey
James Strachey
James Beaumont Strachey was a British psychoanalyst, and, with his wife Alix, a translator of Sigmund Freud into English...
concluded that 'indeed, she was a very formidable person'; and when in her paper on "Hate" she wrote of 'an elation which is pleasurable on overcoming an obstacle, or on getting one's own way' she may (as so often) have been rooting her comments in personal experience.
As well as translating Freud's work, Riviere published several seminal works of her own. In 1929 she published "Femininity as a Masquerade" in which she looks at an area of sexual development of intellectual women in particular, where femininity is a defensive mask that is put on to hide masculinity. In 1932 she published "Jealousy as a Mechanism of Defence" in which jealousy is seen to be a defence against envy aroused by the primal scene
Primal scene
In psychoanalysis, the primal scene is the initial witnessing by a child of a sex act, usually between the parents, that traumatizes the psychosexual development of that child...
. In 1936 she incorporated Melanie Klein's findings on the depressive position in "A Contribution to the Analysis of the Negative Therapeutic Reaction". . In the same year she managed put Klein's theories in the context of Freud's work in "The Genesis of Psychical Conflict in Earliest Infancy," delivered in Vienna in honour of Freud's 80th birthday.
From 1942 to 1944 Riviere took an active role in the Controversial discussions
Controversial discussions
The Controversial discussions were a protracted series of 'Scientific Meetings' of the British Psychoanalytical Society which took place between October 1942 and February 1944 between the Viennese school and the supporters of Melanie Klein...
at the British Psychoanalytical Society, in particular supporting the Kleinian faction. 'However, by the 1950s Riviere was dissociating herself from the circle of disciples who surrounded Klein'.
Riviere married Evelyn Riviere, a barrister and son of artist Briton Rivière
Briton Rivière
Briton Rivière was an artist born in London, England, of Hugenout descent.His father, William Rivière, was for some years drawing-master at Cheltenham College, and afterwards an art teacher at Oxford University. He was educated at Cheltenham College and at Oxford, where he took his degree in 1867...
in 1906. Their only child, Diana, was born in 1908..
Seminal writings
Her paper on "On the Genesis of Psychical Conflict in Early Infancy" has been described as 'the clearest and most beautifully expressed outline of Kleinian theory as it was at that time'. In general, 'Riviere often presents Kleinian ideas in ways that are more accessible and elegant than Klein's densely packed papers, and she may also have helped Klein to express herself more effectively in English'.In "Jealousy as a Mechanism of Defence" (1932), 'impelled by the Kleinian vision, Riviere proceeded to chart highly original ground, linking morbid jealousy to envy of the primal scene some twenty-five years before Klein'.
Her account of "womanliness" as a masquerade was taken up by Lacan
Lacan
Lacan is surname of:* Jacques Lacan , French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist** The Seminars of Jacques Lacan** From Bakunin to Lacan: Anti-Authoritarianism and the Dislocation of Power, a book on political philosophy by Saul Newman** Lacan at the Scene* Judith Miller, née Lacan...
as part of his exploration of The Imaginary
The Imaginary
The Imaginary order is one of a triptych of terms in the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan, along with the symbolic and the real. Each of the trio of terms emerged gradually over time, and underwent an evolution during the development of Lacan's thought...
and The Symbolic
The Symbolic
The Symbolic is a part of the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan, part of his attempt 'to distinguish between those elementary registers whose grounding I later put forward in these terms: the symbolic, the imaginary, and the real - a distinction never previously made in psychoanalysis'.-The...
: 'a term which I have not introduced, but of which one female psycho-analyst has pin-pointed the feminine sexual attitude - the term masquerade '. Subsequently the same view, of femininity as performance, 'has been appropriated for a variety of de-essentializing and deconstructive versions of gender as performance (most influentially in late twentieth-century feminist
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
and film theory
Film theory
Film theory is an academic discipline that aims to explore the essence of the cinema and provides conceptual frameworks for understanding film's relationship to reality, the other arts, individual viewers, and society at large...
)'.
Her "Contribution to the Analysis of the Negative Trerapeutic Reaction" is 'widely regarded as her most important contribution to psychoanalytic theory', building as it did on her personal experience - 'drawing on the painful experiences bound up with her analyses with Jones and Freud'. Freud had originally formulated the concept of the negative therapeutic reaction in large part out of his experience in analysizing Riviere: 'She cannot tolerate praise, triumph or success...she is sure to become unpleasant and aggressive and to lose respect for the analyst' whenever success loomed in sight. Such patients were characterised in his view by 'what may be called a "moral" facto, a sense of guilt, which is finding its satisfaction in the illness and refuses to give up the punishment of suffering.
By contrast Riviere (drawing on Klein) 'puts the emphasis elsewhere...focuses attention on the patient's despair about her inner world and her hopelessness about making reparation'. She described forcefully the patient's 'trait of deceptiveness, the mask, which conceals this subtle reservation of all control under intellectual rationalizations, or under feigned compliance and superficial politeness'. Even 'apparent improvement may be based on a manic defence: "The patient exploits us in his own way instead of being fully analysed"'. Such manic defences were however for Riviere a desperate attempt to avoid the depressive pain of an empty inner world. 'Apropos of the resistances that mask the depressive position, Riviere slips in a revealing sentence that can be read at once professionally and confessionally: "This has been my own experience"'.
Other publications
- Womanliness as a masquerade. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 10, 303-313.
- Jealousy as a mechanism of defence. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 13, 414-424.(1932).
- A contribution to the analysis of a negative therapeutic reaction. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 17, 304-320.(1936).
- On the genesis of psychic conflict in earliest infancy. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 17, 395-422.(1936).
- The inner world in Ibsen's "Master Builder." International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 33, 173-180.(1952).
- Developments in psycho-analysis by Joan Riviere( Book )
- Love, hate and reparation; two lectures co-written with Melanie Klein
Athol Hughes ed., The Inner World and Joan Riviere: Collected Papers 1920-1958 (London 1991)
Translations
- Collected papers by Sigmund Freud. Authorized translation under the supervision of Joan Riviere
- A general introduction to psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud. Authorized English translation by Joan Riviere, with a preface by Ernest Jones and G. Stanley Hall
- The ego and the id by Sigmund Freud
- Civilization and its discontents by Sigmund Freud