Mental pain and the cultural ointment of poetry

The author argues that mental pain consists of a wordless sense of self-rupture, longing and psychic helplessness that is vague and difficult to convey to others. It usually follows the loss of a significant object or its abrupt refusal to meet one's anaclitic needs. This results in the laceration of an unconscious, fused self-object core of the self. Abruptly precipitated discrepancies between the actual and wished-for self-states add to the genesis of mental pain. Issues of hatred, guilt, moral masochism as well as fantasies of being beaten can also be folded into the experience of mental pain. The feeling is highly disturbing and is warded off by psychic retreat, manic defence, induction of pain into others and changing the form and function of pain. Each of these can have a pathological or healthy outcome depending upon the intrapsychic and social context and upon whether they ultimately permit mourning to take place or not. Poetry serves to render mental pain bearable by enhancing empathy with one's own repudiated parts. With the help of two clinical vignettes, the multi-faceted (defensive, formal and content-based) role of poetry in reducing mental pain, enhancing mentalisation of its sources and facilitating mourning is discussed. It is suggested that through poetry, culture and affect meet and, in this encounter, both are enriched.