More on Inhibition
In his remarks on inhibition, Freud first turns to the way activities of the ego may take on sexual significance and thus throw our self possession into disarray. In one passage he writes:"Analysis shows that when activities like playing the piano, writing or even walking are subjected to neurotic inhibitions it is because the physical organs brought into play - the fingers or the legs - have become too strongly erotized. It has been discovered as a general fact that the ego functions of an organ is impaired if its erotogenicity - its sexual significance - is increased. It behaves, if I may be allowed a rather absurd analogy, like a maidservant who refuses to go on cooking because her master had started a love affair with her. As soon as writing, which entails making a liquid flow out of a tube onto a piece of white paper, assumes the significance of copulation, or as soon as walking becomes a symbolic substitute for treading upon the body of mother earth, both writing and walking are stopped because they represent the performance of a forbidden sexual act."
Could rugby have sexual significance? Most women see at once the homoerotic quality of the game and are not slow in making their perception the basis of ridicule. It may sound 'rather absurd', but walking on the pitch or kicking goals may have started to assume the significance of a forbidden sexual act for Johnny Wilkinson. A significance which the obsessional ritual which he goes through with each kick is no longer able to contain.
An alternative view on Johnny Wilkinson
While searching for a picture of Johnny Wilkinson on the internet I was astonished and delighted to find a reference on the website of the British Psychoanalytical Society. It was in their 'quote of the month' section for March 2002."I'll never be as fast as Dan Luger but I can be faster than I am - I'll never be as agile as Jason Robinson but I can be better than I am now" Johnny Wilkinson England Rugby Team 2 March 2002
The gloss attached to this quote, written by a member of the Society which includes former England cricket captain Mike Brearley, was as follows:
"Johnny Wilkinson compares his current abilities less with those players who he feels are more talented than he is, than with how he might become if he were to improve. He realises that there are players who outshine him, possess more talent, but he seems not to be the sort of person to feel especially downcast by such comparisons.
In Our Adult World and its Roots in Infancy (1959) Melanie Klein writes of the mental qualities which make it more likely that we will admire the achievements of others. She explains that if we can't stand that some people are better than we are at something that matters to us, we are deprived of the possibility that we may be inspired to reach inwards for, or to obtain from others, the resources necessary for us to improve.
She writes, "The world would be in our eyes a much poorer place if we had no opportunities of realizing that greatness exists and will go on existing in the future. Such admiration also stirs up something in us and increases indirectly our belief in ourselves. This is one of the many ways in which identifications derived from infancy become an important part of our personality. The ability to admire another person's achievements is one of the factors making successful team work possible. If envy is not too great, we can take pleasure and pride in working with people who sometimes outstrip our capacities, for we identify with these outstanding members of the team"."
This kind of approach is now common in what I call the 'optimistic' school of psychoanalysis. Whereas Freud saw everyone as basically neurotic and conflict-riven, the optimistic school sees humanity as basically well adjusted and conflict free. Had Freud been asked what he thought of these views he would no doubt have adopted Ghandi's answer when asked what he thought of western civilisation: It sounds like a good idea.
Johnny Wilkinson has psychical conflicts like the rest of us - unconscious psychical conflicts - and in certain circumstances they will express themselves in a way which undermines his talent and potential. The problem I am addressing is - what happens when Wilkinson himself becomes the "outstanding member of the team"?
I leave it to the reader to decide whether the quotation above ("I don't want to be better than anybody else") confirms Klein or Freud in this instance - or whether Johnny Wilkinson is indeed the perfectly adjusted ice-man that the sports commentators like to portray him as.
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