Mm Mm Good

I attended my first meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association about 55 years ago, when, as a psychologist, I would only be admitted to meetings with a letter from a member supporting my interest in attending. Fortunately my analyst was a member and he wrote such a letter for me. But, I had to swear I would not reveal my analyst wrote the letter. Although the letter would gain me admission, the fact it was written by my analyst would be seen as countertransference acting out and would have gotten him kicked out.

I attended the meeting and I remember a paper I heard then. It was Ralph Greenson's paper, “On the meaning of the sound ‘mm’ as in the Campbell soup ad ‘Mm, mm good.’” The meaning is that this is the only sound a baby can make and keep in all the milk. Interestingly Leonard Bernstein came up with a similar idea many years later and from an entirely different source. He discovered a series of notes in music from different countries around the globe that resembled the “mm” sound. He also related it to the sound a baby can make and not lose any milk. Bernstein even added that the word “mother” in many languages begins with this sound. He also found another series of notes that resembled an “ech” sound, which Bernstein suggested was “spitting out the bad milk.”

I think Bernstein succeeded thereby in bringing together Ralph Greenson and Melanie Klein. All this is of particular interest today, since Beatrice Beebe and I are being made Honorary Members for our work on the relevance of infant research for adult treatment. It seems Ralph Greenson had a similar idea 55 years ago.