Paul's Lack of Self in the Rocking Horse Winner
Paul’s Lack of Self in The Rocking Horse Winner
Heinz Kohut, days before his death, boldly stated at a Self Psychology conference in Berkeley, California, “The worst suffering I see in adult patients are in those very subtle, and difficult to uncover, absence of the mother, because her personality is absent. It is this emptiness that leads to the worse sufferings later in life” (Kohut, 1981). This cannot be more true of the story of little Paul in the story “The Rocking-Horse Winner” written by D.H. Lawrence in 1924. Paul, Hester’s youngest child and only son, in order to try and win his mother’s affections and love, violently rides his childhood rocking horse, in order to predict the winners of their town’s horse races. With this special, fortune-telling power, life-threatening exhaustion ensues, but leads to winnings worth thousands of pounds. With this money, Paul hopes to ease his mother’s worry of their family’s ‘un-luck’ and finally win the attention and affection of a mother with a ‘hard center of a heart’ (Lawrence, 1924). To Paul’s disappointment, the mother never acknowledges the money, himself, or their family’s streak of luck through Paul.
Heinz Kohut, the main founder of self psychology, defines psychopathology as a result of developmental deficiencies and unmet needs, particularly from mother (or caretaker) to child (Kohut, 1971). If the child receives a sufficient ‘holding environment’ from the mother in which the child is loved and cared for in a truly empathetic fashion , then according to Kohut, she is ‘successful’ and the child will develop a structured and healthier sense of self, particularly in the child’s development and relation to others or ‘objects’. Kohut writes, if empathic care by the mother is to be successful, she not only takes notice of some of the infant’s requirements and achievements but speaks to the child as an integral whole (Kohut, 1971). For poor little Paul, his pathology is rooted in the mother’s
Heinz Kohut, days before his death, boldly stated at a Self Psychology conference in Berkeley, California, “The worst suffering I see in adult patients are in those very subtle, and difficult to uncover, absence of the mother, because her personality is absent. It is this emptiness that leads to the worse sufferings later in life” (Kohut, 1981). This cannot be more true of the story of little Paul in the story “The Rocking-Horse Winner” written by D.H. Lawrence in 1924. Paul, Hester’s youngest child and only son, in order to try and win his mother’s affections and love, violently rides his childhood rocking horse, in order to predict the winners of their town’s horse races. With this special, fortune-telling power, life-threatening exhaustion ensues, but leads to winnings worth thousands of pounds. With this money, Paul hopes to ease his mother’s worry of their family’s ‘un-luck’ and finally win the attention and affection of a mother with a ‘hard center of a heart’ (Lawrence, 1924). To Paul’s disappointment, the mother never acknowledges the money, himself, or their family’s streak of luck through Paul.
Heinz Kohut, the main founder of self psychology, defines psychopathology as a result of developmental deficiencies and unmet needs, particularly from mother (or caretaker) to child (Kohut, 1971). If the child receives a sufficient ‘holding environment’ from the mother in which the child is loved and cared for in a truly empathetic fashion , then according to Kohut, she is ‘successful’ and the child will develop a structured and healthier sense of self, particularly in the child’s development and relation to others or ‘objects’. Kohut writes, if empathic care by the mother is to be successful, she not only takes notice of some of the infant’s requirements and achievements but speaks to the child as an integral whole (Kohut, 1971). For poor little Paul, his pathology is rooted in the mother’s