Fee Association

Fee Association

Psychoanalysis was popular when Vera and Vladimir were in their prime and they were both psychoanalysed.   This was part of their fight against depression which also saw them paint their walls orange at one stage due to that colour’s uplifting qualities.

The importance of psychoanalysis was implicit in their politics but was not above satire.  They were aware of the seminal importance of paying the analyst’s fees as part of the therapeutic element of the treatment.  Vera had been analysed at one stage by a Kleinian analyst – a follower of the analyst and theorist Melanie Klein – and complained that he had talked too much.   At one stage I was remembering my dreams very vividly and the Derers insisted on analysing them.  My dreams were weird and included sharing tandoori chicken with Audrey Wise MP.  Vera said an analyst would pay to analyse my dreams.

In 1964 Vera wrote an amusing article for the journal Mental Health on “How To Be Psychoanalysed”.   Vera’s piece expounds the art of “couchmanship” and “how to free associate”.   She says of those who would give up on their analysis:

Sometimes, resistances take the form of a belief in the analysand’s mind that he wishes to terminate treatment, say, because his symptoms have gone.  Such a belief is, of course, an indication that he prefers even to give up his symptoms and to live in a state of pseudo-health rather than to continue, metaphorically speaking, to face his analyst.

She also warns against an expectation that analysis will result in overt changes:

It is becoming widely accepted that any expectations as to outcome are signs of resistance, indicating that the person having them has not been fully analysed.

Analysis, she points out, means you know at least why you have the symptoms even though they do not disappear.  Vera urges analysands not to be disappointed, since they are at least making a small contribution to cultural resources, by helping through their economic resources to maintain the psychoanalytical profession. 

Psychology was central to Vladimir’s political thinking.  He said it would have been the focus of his magnum opus.  He believed that most people on the Labour Left did not actually want to succeed in their purported aim of transforming society.  Rather, they were like children wanting to misbehave in the face of the parent (the Labour Right) before being told off.   As one who is daily riled by the Labour Left’s complete lack of seriousness I would have loved to have had him expound all of this in writing.  When their house came to be sold I scoured the place for any lost masterpiece Vladimir may have written on the subject, but alas there was none to be found.