In the Godfather part III, there is an assassination by helicopter gunship scene, perfectly ambushing the gang members in what they perceive to be their eagle’s nest. One of the horrified mobsters runs for his jacket as the machine gun fire pours in, screaming, ‘my lucky coat, my lucky coat!’ Eventually he reaches the precious coat and grasps it to him, just as he is unfairly cut to pieces. Who knows what might have been possible if he’d a few more seconds…
The pathos is that this tough mobster is not simply trying to save his coat but that in his clinging to it there is the hope that it will save him. At the moment of truth a primitive underlying fantasy of omnipotent fusion with a totemic object, something that really is of the Underworld, bursts through the prosaic dog eat dog world of organised crime.
Mobsters and ‘isms’ of all kinds have never been all that good at acknowledging the Other and so relatedness is bound to assume some curious forms. The difference between the ‘primitive’ with his totem and the neurotic with his compulsion is that the primitive understands he’s in the grip of something whereas the modern does not and is therefor more likely to wind up dead because of it.
Sometimes this problem can be cleared up by getting the magical jacket or at least it’s sleeves tattooed onto your body for safe keeping, relieving the anxiety of having it nicked or being caught short in a shoot out.
In Gogol’s, ‘The Overcoat,’ the protagonist suffers the ignominy and horror of having his lucky jacket torn from his back by shadowy muggers. Even though he attained this ermined badge of office and all the esteem due to him, he could not secure it. Whether he has the overcoat or not his value is still outside him. To achieve it is to be enslaved by it; to lose it, cast down.
This powerlessness which ever way you turn is the crux of any unconscious complex. It feels like a lose/lose situation. Even when you have the jacket it is spoilt by the having to have it… and not having it is just like being robbed.
In the course of my analysis with Chuck Schwartz I once dreamed that he came over to me with his hand out, saying very seriously, ‘give me the jacket’. I looked down and saw I was wearing a matador’s jacket with gold thread in the stitching. I refused, suddenly fearful. He insisted and eventually I began to peel it off. It really was like having to flay myself alive, a horrible torment but afterwards such blessed relief.
What I learned is that analysis is much more than reacquainting yourself with trauma and suppressed memory, nor even becoming aware of deeper layers of the Psyche. It is also a question of what we are unconsciously identified with whilst sifting through all this content. The beginner’s mistake in self-knowledge is to assume you have no prior epistemology. What coat, whose coat, are you wearing at the time? Which of the gods has your allegiance and therefor influence over your perception?
In Grimm’s ‘Bearskin’, the protagonist is given a lucky jacket by the Devil, with pockets eternally full of gold. Over this and concealing it is thrown a great Bearskin. The idea is that if he can survive having everything he ever wanted for seven years the Devil would then…give him everything he ever wanted.
Well, gold every time you put your hands in your pockets seems brilliant until you want a hanky or a sandwich. Moreover, the growing stink of the Bearskin meant that people didn’t want to hang out with him no mo’. He learns that gold, like sex, isn’t all that much fun unless its a shared experience.
At first the gold producing jacket is enchanting and the bearskin a mere encumbrance. After a few years, once no-one comes near, the magical jacket falls into disuse. His comfort devolves into the bearskin instead, which gives him protection from the elements and into whose folds he could retreat and reflect on stuff.
It turns out that ‘everything you ever wanted’ is a miserable curse only to be lifted when its used to give rather than to get. Not only does money not buy you love, it can actively get in the way. In another story by Gogol, ‘the Fair at Sorockyntsi’, an infamous devil was booted out of hell for being too extreme. His next heinous plan is then to allow his jacket to fall into the hands of human kind. A trail of destruction follows anyone tempted to wear it. Eventually a trader realises that he cannot sell his wares because of it and chops the jacket to pieces with an axe.
Magical things are necessary to development. It’s the beginning of getting used to the idea that the breast has its own life. Yet to identify with them unreservedly, failing to outlive them, is to adopt a stance unconsciously taken, to pay a price for a deal you can’t quite recall making..
So the main thing is not what you might know but the ‘vested’ interest you already use to constrain response. To address an issue is to become aware of what you are dressed for, in what capacity you speak and on whose team you are batting. Chuck’s response to my dream of him demanding my matador’s jacket was, ‘we are possessed by anything we are unconsciously identified with.’
Wouldn’t it be interesting to close your eyes for a second and, in your mind’s eye, to get a glimpse of the imaginal jacket you are wearing,…? What does it say about your relationship with the world? What magical expectation does it give rise to?
