“One must either take an interest in the human situation or else parade before the void.” Jean Rostand

This paper is a recollection of several notes I took in 2016. I have been writing them on the subway, at coffee shops, on benches and ironically, never in school. 

What I want to explore is the meaning of attachment and what exists prior to it. I will propose a few observations on how a hypothetical parent responds to the child’s needs and how we as dependent beings are all defending ourselves from the one thing we know, which is the knowledge of death. 

We seek to attach out of desperation. It is important to remember that before the child is born -if everything goes smoothly- he is perfectly safe and comfortable in a non threatening environment which we call the womb. The child grows until he has to be expelled. This crucial event is repeated throughout our lives when we reach a certain point -in our career, a relationship, or within ourselves- where we are unable to grow anymore and become stagnant. This event is familiar to all because change can bring a lot of discomfort or even paralysing fear, we hold on to the familiar because of the uncertainty the unknown brings to the surface.

We have blindly believed that we attach to the first object simply out of our innate need to connect (our dependent nature) but if we examine this closely and reflect on what happens prior to the attachment, we can conclude that the need to connect comes from the first crisis in life, which is, the knowledge of death.

Birth brings out intolerable feelings of hopelessness and terror that precedes attachment; holding on to an object becomes the only way to survive. The real trauma is that birth is the loss of safety and the death of protection can’t be placed into words but is felt as unconscious knowledge. 

This is one of the many reasons we are ambivalent towards being dependent; we are born with an imprinted rejection which we all resent in different degrees. Our reality/our mother’s body “rejected” us, expelled us. This means we are destined to seek the sensation of oneness that was once felt as true.

According to Modern Psychoanalysis, it is the caretaker’s duty to contain these fears and make the child feel safe. I have written down three pairs of hypothetical “mothers” to demonstrate how the helplessness of a child can trigger a dynamic between mother and child that potentially creates the structure for future transference and attachment. Each pair portrays a narcissistic mother and its counterpart, who I named a neurotic mother and both are dealing with the same issue of handling their child’s needs. 

1. Rejection

The mother rejects the child actively and consciously (narcissistic mother) The mother sees the child as a real threat to her safety. His needs become too severe for her to deal with. She resents and disregards the child. She defends herself by actively demonstrating hatred or aggression towards the child as if his needs were imposed on to her. A reaction like this relates to a early preverbal wound. This mother might have been deprived from her needs as an infant and developed a psychotic defense that limits her ability to care for her child because it threatens her defense structure.

The mother rejects the child passively and unconsciously (neurotic mother) The mother is overwhelmed by the child’s needs but can’t access to her unconscious negative feelings towards him. She unconsciously rejects the child and enacts it by being harsh, punitive or judgemental and convincing herself this is her trying to impose order or rules. She tries to invalidate his feelings by “teaching” him through acts of withholding love/affection or delaying gratification as this helps her manage her own helplessness.

2. Terror

The mother creates more dread (narcissistic mother) The mother becomes paralysed when being confronted with the child’s needs. She regresses to a state of helplessness in which she becomes overwhelmed with fear and is unable to take on her responsibility as a parent. She becomes afraid of the child, might not want to have any physical contact with him, leaves him unattended. Her aggression towards the child transforms into paranoia where the child becomes the persecuting objects that threatens her safety.

The mother compensates for her own unconscious terror (neurotic mother) The mother can’t access her unverbalized aggression or fear, she represses it and projects it onto the outside world. The world becomes a threatening place in which her role as a mother is to protect her child from its dangers. Her need to make her child “safe” becomes an obsession, being aware of every single outside event that through her distortion of reality becomes dangerous. The mother becomes overprotective, seeks to control his environment, limits his ability to explore a territory in which she isn’t in control of.

3. Fusion

The mother fuses with the child’s needs (narcissistic mother) The mother becomes one with the child. Her needs and his needs merge and create a symbiotic relationship in which the child doesn't know what his needs are because they are undifferentiated with her own. This separates them from the outside world, provokes a deep feeling of helplessness when one is absent and potential separation becomes a real threat to their defense structure.

The mother oversees the needs of the child (neurotic mother) A mother that develops a strong defense against vulnerability and isn’t in tune with her emotional needs might oversee or reject the child’s needs. She will force the child to manage or self regulate his own emotions without her presence. She is emotionally or physically absent and will create a feeling of emptiness, a feeling of being unwanted or alone in this world.

After demonstrating how these initial reactions to helplessness play an important role in the child’s inner world, I now seek to explore the other side of the spectrum; the child’s response.

Are we constantly trying to fulfill our parents’ unmet needs? On the following chart I ask simple questions in order to understand how much do we know or how much do we engage with our parents’ expectations.

Do we ever satisfy them?  (parents’ unmet needs)	The simple answer is no. We do not satisfy them because we aren’t them. But, why have we taken on the role of finishing up what they haven’t themselves? This might be better explained with evolutionary theory. Our parents pass on to us physical and mental traits that we will -hopefully- make good use of them and become a “better” version of them and so on and so forth. Their unmet needs might unconsciously become the reason why they procreated in the first place.   With this in mind, there is an obvious expectation from them/society/the human race to fulfill what they weren’t able to accomplish. Now, why is this suddenly not so appealing? I think that if we live a life in order to unconsciously feed this illusion of fulfilling our parents needs we might derail ourselves from figuring out what might be our own paths. With that comes the task of choosing and choosing outside of our parents wishes is always a big challenge because are “rejecting” them at an unconscious level and this is hard because it forces us to feel the existential dread of being unprotected.
Do we even know them?	We aren’t born as free individuals. We are born in a house set with rules placed by people that have their own way of thinking, their own challenges, and often times parents seek to impose their worldview to the child as a form of protection. In other words, our “logic” is the combination of our parents worldview processed through a new set of eyes and sensibilities. We know our parents’ unmet needs, we might not distinguish them from ours because it’s sinked into our way of being but in terms of relating with the world we are constantly communicating and enacting them through a day to day transference.
Do we feel them?	Why is the question, “what do I want to do with my life” often times placed in the back burner? Our parents’ unmet needs become an impediment to answer that question, only because in order to answer that question one has to go through a process of separation with the internal parent.  When we transition towards being an individual we stop relying on the illusion that a parent will protect us forever and this process goes through a type of mourning. We feel our parents’ needs as an obstruction towards our own happiness because we have chosen to place what we think their expectation of us is while suppressing what we really want.
Do we enact them?	We project the unmet needs of our parents onto the external world. We recreate a repetition where the world becomes an “extension” of them. We unconsciously position this familiar dynamic in relationships (friends, partners, jobs) in order to continue suffering the same need of validation (which now comes from our dynamic with reality) while getting the same frustration and gratification.
Are we them?	Most of our defenses exist in order to incorporate our parents’ unmet needs into our world. The problem is that we’ve created a structure in which their needs exist before ours. Our defenses will allow us to tolerate this frustration so we use them as a shield that ultimately serves the purpose of protecting us but at the same time silencing our true needs.
Do we resent them?	Of course. We eventually resent having to constantly defend ourselves because we are giving priority to the internal object. Even though we incorporate their needs into our narrative we have developed a power struggle with our own internal authority figures.
Do we understand them?	We are only able to understand them if there is a sense of differentiation between the individual and his parents. (or introjects of them)
Can we change them?	As mature adults we struggle with individuating from our parents because no matter if they were good, bad, absent, present, they are the objects we have attached to and letting go of our internal objects means we are letting go of their place within ourselves. We are suddenly confronted with the fact of being alone in this world.

To conclude, I would like to add that it is important to be aware of the unconscious processes that are enacted in our daily lives. It might be impossible to be in sync with everything that goes on all the time. But, if we are all exposed to everyone’s unmet needs, how are we responding to them? Is the actual state of the world a result of not being in tune with our needs? Are we reacting to one another just as the hypothetical “mothers”?  How can we use this tool to benefit society? The only answer I have now is to sit with the feeling, listen to ourselves and let that be our compass. We might not change the world but we can change ourselves for the better. Living from the inside out might be the key to true happiness, or at least, the key to deciphering the void.

EMBRACE OUR MADNESS

“¿En qué piensas?.. ¿En quién piensas?”

“ Él.” 

Luis Buñuel.

Para el psicoanálisis la psicosis es una de las tres estructuras determinantes del sujeto a partir de la castración y la función paterna. Ésta es, precisamente, la que está forcluida. En su lugar, y a modo de restitución simbólica que no está, aparecerán fenómenos alucinatorios y delirios, construcción interna que el sujeto percibe como cierta. Precisamente porque el registro de lo Real es determinante, dominante, frente a lo simbólico. En la paranoia y a medida que su solución delirante progresa con su elaboración, es decir, el afecto caracterizado por sentimientos de alegría, euforia, triunfo, satisfacción u optimismo, tiende a quedar completamente absorbida, regulada, interpretada, elaborada en los términos de la megalomanía mediante la cual el sujeto reestructura su yo en relación con el ideal. En el extremo opuesto, el afecto depresivo, vinculado estructuralmente a la identificación con el objeto como opuesto al ideal, como resto, tiende a quedar absorbido por el sentimiento de persecución, que lo exterioriza. En el caso de Francisco; protagonista de la película “Él” dirigida y escrita por Luis Buñuel se ejemplificará un caso particular en su desesperado y fallido intento de conseguir una relación objetal.

En la primera escena de la película, en donde se lleva a cabo una ceremonia aparecen las claves y los elementos del deseo de Francisco. En esta escena, vemos cómo Francisco a través de un desplazamiento pasa la mirada desde el beso que el padre Velasco da a los pies del niño, beso que tiene una marcada connotación erótica, a los zapatos de una mujer y de ahí sube la mirada hasta el cuerpo de Gloria que desde ese momento se convierte en un fetiche. “Desde aquel día he venido todas las mañanas y tardes, estaba seguro de encontrarla”. Cuando ella se va él presenta esa angustia por la pérdida del objeto “Por un instante temí haber la perdido para siempre” aunque sólo la había visto una vez.

En ese primer instante en el cual existe una excitación aparentemente heterosexual, le provoca a la larga un delirio de persecución, Freud mostraba que dicho delirio proviene de una fijación homosexual. En Francisco se ve, aunque de manera inversa, que una excitación homosexual quedará envuelta en una aparente heterosexualidad, los zapatos de Gloria, pero que serán esta excitación la que pondrá en acción la estructura paranóica. También aquí la teoría Freudiana se comprueba como a partir de un deseo homosexual y la negación ante el mismo se genera por medio de diferentes mecanismos de defensa diferentes tipos de delirios como los expuestos en el personaje de Francisco.

Por otro lado Freud hizo énfasis en la importancia decisoria de la escena primaria y mostró como en la paranoia se estructura con un vacío fundamental, el del que mira. En esta escena de la Iglesia indudablemente el objeto que está en juego y encarnado en la presencia de Gloria es “la mirada”, es decir, aquello que atrapa la mirada y causa el deseo de Francisco. Quizás ello le genera una pregunta a Francisco al quedar súbitamente en falta acerca de saber qué es una mujer.

Este será un vacío que nos encontraremos más tarde en las múltiples referencias a la escena primaria que se harán, por ejemplo cuando Francisco introduce una aguja por el ojo de la cerradura y no hay nadie espiándolos en su intimidad. En la película también se parte de un escena erótica mirada, pero curiosamente se trata de una escena en la que los protagonistas son un niño y un “padre”. Por último, la persecución de la que será víctima Francisco a partir de este momento que pone en evidencia justamente en el cambio de papeles que se opera: Francisco va a devenir el implacable perseguidor de Gloria.

En la siguiente escena vemos ya claramente a un paranoico, por una parte el delirio de reivindicación de bienes de los que su abuelo fue injustamente usurpado, lleva a Francisco a la reinterpretación delirante de todo aquello que se opone a su deseo “Mi abogado se ha vendido a la parte contraria” y a la eliminación en un instante de la realidad “Ahora veo que me equivoqué eligiéndolo como abogado”, de la misma manera que elimina de un instante a la muchacha, quien representa una rival que interviene su relación homosexual con Pablo, su ayudante que cínicamente siempre halaga a su patrón. Se ve claramente un juego de poder a poder y en la que os movimientos de la omnipotencia pasan del paranoico que instala en sus propiedades su Ley absoluta, a la de sus “poderosísimos enemigos” capaces de comprar abogados, voluntades y lo que haga falta con tal de llegar a sus fines destructivos.

En estas escenas observamos como Francisco manipula con absoluta frialdad la situación para conseguir su objetivo, sin el más mínimo escrúpulo quita de en medio todo aquello que se interpone en sus planes y objetivos tal y como antes había hecho con el abogado y con la muchacha . Esta vez le toca a Raúl , el novio de Gloria. 

En este momento aparece el único elemento familiar de Francisco: en su casa, Raúl, la madre de Gloria, el padre Velasco y un amigo critican los “gustos caprichosos” del padre de Francisco, constructor de la casa y que a ojos de Francisco está llena de “ideas extrañas” que contrastan con la “perfecta normalidad” de Francisco quien “no ha cambiado absolutamente nada y sigue siendo el mismo que cuando era pequeño”. Aquí trata claramente de una escena fundamental ya que implica una clara desautorización de la figura de padre, quien acaba convertido en un personaje perfectamente extraño no sólo a los ojos de la sociedad, sino acaba convertido en alguien con quien Francisco parece que no tiene nada que ver. Aquí, parte fundamental de una estructura psicótica, aunque el padre haya existido en sí, la figura del padre no cumple su función de castración, es una figura ausente quien aunque no se sabe nada en sí, esto dar a interpretar mucho sobre su relación. A partir de ahí el delirio de reivindicación de bienes adquiere todo el significante, Francisco reivindica delirantemente una herencia de la que se siente injustamente desposeído y el patrimonio en litigio es su peculiar ordalía sobre su filiación. Lo abolido en lo simbólico vuelven en lo real bajo la forma de un delirio.

En la cena se habla sobre lo que significa el amor para cada uno, Francisco afirma que “un hombre y una mujer se encuentran y ya no podrán separarse”, claramente regresando a lo que seria una relación de completud con la madre, una simbiosis; “ese amor se está formando desde la infancia”. Al hablar sobre esa mujer (Gloria) la idealiza, la hace su razón de vivir y de cierto modo su fetiche. “En esa mujer cristaliza sus sueños, sus ilusiones, sus deseos de la vida anterior de ese hombre”. Y a partir de esto surge la parte de omnipotencia de Francisco en la cual el objeto de su deseo es Gloria y haría todo por conseguirlo. “Si ello no me quisiera, tendría que quererme”.

Después se produce la escena del paseo de Francisco y Gloria por el jardín en la que Francisco le dice a Gloria que la casa fue construida por su abuelo y en la que llama la atención la contradicción que hay sobre el constructor de la casa: un momento antes se decía que era el padre y ahora Francisco afirma que es el abuelo, esta escena es muy significativa del problema con el padre, vuelve a enfatizar la ausencia del padre. Por otra parte, esta escena nos permite entender la doble posición en la que se encuentra el paranoico: si por una parte hay una herencia que no ha recibido o que más precisamente, está desvalorizada, por otra sí existe una inscripción paterna, sí existe tal herencia, ya que no debemos olvidar que la “extraña casa” en la que vive Francisco ha sido construida por su abuelo o su padre. 

Pero esta desvalorización deja el camino abierto a una un padre idealizado, fuente de homosexualidad, que a su vez contribuye aún más a la desvalorización del padre real. En la película se observa claramente en la posición de autoridad incuestionable que ocupa el padre Velasco, la religión como un claro “modelo de creencia”, y si en condiciones normales esa creencia se encarga de que no exista nada entre esa autoridad y el padre real, reforzando su autoridad, no ocurre lo mismo en el paranoico, donde como vemos la posición de autoridad del padre real está altamente comprometida.

Freud habla sobre la importancia que las fantasías sobre la escena primaria tienen en el desarrollo psicológico de las personas. Aquí podemos ver su importancia crucial en la paranoia. En la escena de la noche de bodas vemos como Francisco, preso de un ataque tanto de celos como de pánico, tratar de rehacer una escena primaria, contada por Gloria a la que poder sujetarse en su sexualidad. Por una parte, su “cuéntamelo todo como si fuera tu confesor” lleva toda la connotación voyeurista, no exenta de una clara dosis de masoquismo, de quien no puede alcanzar otro tipo de excitación sexual. Pero fundamentalmente se trata de un intento de identificación narcisística a Gloria, de colocarse en el sitio de Gloria en la relación sexual para tal vez entonces, como Schreber, poder decir internamente que “seguro tener relaciones como mujer se ha de sentir muy bien”. En esta maniobra identificatoria a Gloria queda un sitio vacío que es el que corresponde al propio Francisco que se pierde en la identificación y en consecuencia el sitio que debería ocupar, que es el del que mira, está vacío.

Esa mirada pone en cuestión la belleza y los ojos cerrados de Gloria en la secuencia del tren, la noche de bodas, y el repentino cambio de humor en Francisco cuando de la pregunta de ¿qué piensas?, pasa a… ¿en quién piensas? Irrumpe, quizás, el desvanecimiento subjetivo de Francisco. Partir de este momento la película toma un giro inesperado y el protagonista entra en una dinámica en la que la pregunta sobre la mujer juega un papel decisivo. Los celos son constitutivos, introducen al Otro en la infancia. Sin embargo, para Francisco, se alcanza una instalación en la búsqueda de una repetición del acontecimiento. Él ya no tendrá dudas sobre el lugar del tercero, Raúl, antiguo amigo de Gloria. Esa certeza del paranoico la mantendrá Francisco hasta el final de la película, claramente una parte fundamental de la paranoia; la certeza.

Y justamente después de esta escena se presenta claramente quien va a ocupar este sitio vacío: el perseguidor. Las siguientes escenas nos muestran como el amigo de Gloria va estructurándose como perseguidor, es el hombre que acecha a la pareja en su intimidad, el que espía, el que mira. De nuevo aparece aquí la excitación sexual en la escena en la que Francisco arregla los zapatos de Gloria y poco después es cuando el amigo de Gloria se vuelve abiertamente el perseguidor, el que espía la intimidad de la pareja.

¿ Quién persigue al paranoico?. El amigo de Gloria nos permite trazar un perfil del perseguidor de Francisco: un voyeurista, un malvado sin escrúpulos que no se detiene ante nada ni ante nadie y cuya única ley es su propio interés, su propio deseo. Es decir, el paranoico proyecta en el perseguidor a un perverso, y claramente se puede ver como Francisco se expresa de él “a mi me cae pésimamente porque se cree un Don Juan, puede confundir tu buena educación con otra cosa”. Y algo que puede resultar de importancia es como al caminar, Francisco no pasa por donde hay hombres; que a simple vista podría parecer que es por los celos que le generan que los hombres vean a Gloria, pero siguiendo la línea Freudiana, es un claro ejemplo de una negación ante la propia homosexualidad.

Francisco es un personaje sin historia aparentemente. Porque la escena primaria no es sólo una fantasía sexual sino que fundamentalmente es una fantasía sobre el propio origen, y es el punto de partida de su propia historia. No hay una historia que coloque a los personajes y a él mismo en un orden, y en su lugar, aparece un delirio. Aquí esta ausencia de historia que transmite el personaje y que se vuelve evidente si la contraponen a Gloria, que de la misma manera no se tienen datos de ella, sí tiene una historia detrás. Y es esta historia de Gloria la que será uno de los blancos de los ataques de Francisco. Como el golpe al amigo de Gloria, que no deja de ser una parte de la historia de ella.

Toda la secuencia del viaje de bodas está lleno de historias muy claras sobre el tipo de relación objetal que establece Francisco. 

En las siguientes escenas podemos ver los intentos de Francisco por manejar la situación de otra manera. Francisco va a intentar el control maníaco de la situación. Por una parte y frente al hecho real de que su nuevo abogado le dice que su pleito es muy difícil de ganar, Francisco responde con una renegación de la realidad y le dice a Gloria que su pleito está ganado. Mantiene guardado su problema de celos hasta el punto de invitar a Gloria a seducir a su abogado, y en fin, está alegre justamente cuando debería estar triste ya que las noticias que le acaban de dar no son precisamente buenas. Pero como tal esta manía está destinada al fracaso y de nuevo una crisis de celos llega.

Hay algo realmente sorprendente en la película en el perfecto orden evolutivo que se mantiene a lo largo de ella. Porque las escenas posteriores, es decir las escenas perversas, no podrían darse sin el elemento evolutivo anterior.

Y así, siguiendo la línea evolutiva ya iniciada, Francisco intenta la salida perversa. Primero con el fetichismo de los zapatos y luego con el sadomasoquismo. El fetichismo es de nuevo el motor de la excitación sexual, al ver los zapatos de Gloria por debajo de la mesa; pero se trata de una excitación sexual que no puede terminar en una relación sexual más o menos genitalizada, sino que desemboca en una descarga sadomasoquista extremadamente violenta. Y ahí es donde encontramos el seguimiento lógico a la teoría que impone el fetichismo: si por una parte es el encargado de desmentir la castración y por ello es objeto de veneración, como lo son los zapatos de Gloria, por otra no deja de ser el representante de dicha castración y como tal objeto de hostilidad cuya denigración se produce no sólo por la categoría de su objeto sustituto, unos simples zapatos, sino que alcanza a lo que reemplaza, en este caso Gloria, a quien, Francisco le aplica un castigo por sus coqueteos, logrando así una identificación con el temido padre castrador que introduce una triangulación. 

Así Francisco sigue intentando la relación perversa con Gloria en los disparos de salva que a modo de castigo lanza sobre ella por haber atrevido desvelar sus secretos y lo sigue intentando cuando se adelanta y habla antes con la madre de Gloria y con el padre Velasco, logrando engañarlos sobre la realidad de la pareja. Pero esto se rompe en el momento en el que se vislumbra el fracaso de su delirio de reivindicación y los Tribunales están a punto de fallar contra él, siendo en ese momento cuando la angustia psicótica y depresiva hacen su aparición y el frágil intento de relación perversa se derrumba.

Un nuevo fracaso viene a sellar el intento de otra relación objetal diferente a la establecida. Ante lo limitado del campo de elección objetal por una parte y ante la rapidez del fracaso de su delirio en su función de posicionamiento de libido homosexual por otra, sólo queda un último destino posible para ésta libido: su regreso al Yo y la regresión al narcisismo primario de la escena del campanario que constituye uno de los pasos previos al derrumbe psicótico. En este delirio narcisista, Francisco se atribuye una omnipotencia absoluta con derecho sobre la vida y la muerte de los demás, ve a la gente desde las alturas de este campanario "Me gustaría ser Dios, para aplastarlos como gusanos". Hay un claro desprecio a los hombres, “si fuera Dios no los perdonaría nunca” ejemplificando una clara homofobia que podría ser derivada de su homosexualidad y más concretamente sobre Gloria, de la que piensa que podría matarla en ese momento si quisiera “Estamos solos nadie podría impedirme que te castigue”. Es el momento de la máxima megalomanía, en el momento que Francisco expresa que “desde las alturas las cosas parecen puras y limpias”. Y “Me hace daño la felicidad de los tontos”.

Pero aún veremos el esfuerzo de Francisco por evitar el derrumbe. Como se ha visto antes, el delirio de reivindicación es fundamental en el funcionamiento de Francisco ya que, como todos los delirios, tiene doble función: defensiva y estructurante, es una curativa; defensiva porque el contenido y el afecto de la representación se mantienen proyectados fuera; estructurante porque obedece a una seria de cuestiones: encontrar el objeto, reinvestir la realidad y llenarla de sentido. Ahora, si dicho delirio es la “justicia” a la que se aferra Francisco para mantener una filiación, para mantener una triangulación que evite la irrupción psicótica, está a punto de fracasar, de hecho Francisco afirma que “mis enemigos que son tan poderosos no terminarán hasta acabarme, yo que siempre estoy buscando la justicia”. Y ahí es donde aparece el otro intento a través de los celos, que Gloria le sirve haciéndose acompañar hasta la puerta de su casa por Raúl.

Si la situación de Francisco era ya delicada, la consecuencia de su desesperación aparece con la amenaza de ruptura por parte de Gloria. Situación imposible de entender cuando, como en el caso de Francisco, se tiene la absoluta convicción de ser la víctima y algo o alguien insinúa que es el malo, cuando los esfuerzos por mantener un orden que separe a los ladrones de patrimonios de las víctimas, a los espías de los espiados y a las infieles de los engañados, se desvanece y deja paso a una confusión que testimonia sobre la imposibilidad de integración, que aquí pierde toda aquella certeza que todo psicótico posee.

En esta situación no cabe ninguna otra posibilidad que la de una regresión en la que se observa lo que se veía antes, que no hay ninguna protección, y Francisco, implora como un bebé angustiado, que no se le abandone “No me abandones, haré lo que tu me mandes pero no me dejes” en un momento en el que ha aparecido la desinvestidura objetal y la desestructuración "no sé lo que me pasa, no puedo concentrarme, las ideas se me van". 

Aún le quedarán fuerzas par intentar una última revuelta contra Gloria en el momento en el que ésta, le sugiere la posibilidad de ver a un médico. Enojo contra la idea de Gloria de introducir un tercero en la relación, pero sobre todo contra la pasividad a la que la regresión le ha conducido y que para el paranoico es intolerable en la medida en la que le deja a la merced de todos los poderes, más que castrantes, destructivos.

Así, Francisco prepara una cuerda, una aguja, hilo, cuchilla de afeitar, una botella, tijeras y algodón que son los mismos útiles que usan los personajes de la "Filosofía en el tocador", de Sade, 

De esta manera, Francisco intenta “castrar” a Gloria en la medida en la que su deseo es el máximo testimonio de su autonomía, de su independencia frente a él, y si en otros momentos se ha conformado con boicotear cualquier expresión del deseo de Gloria, ahora, en el momento de la amenaza de ser abandonado, no son suficientes los simbolismos. La secuencia sádica claramente expuesta en esta escena. Lo primero que llama la atención ,¿De qué se trata? . Se trata de no mostrar. Y ¿Qué es esto que como espectadores no se puede ver? Pues claramente la castración, o bien, la falta. 

Gloria, desbordada por la situación se va de casa. Y Francisco entra en un delirio que traduce en lo real lo más temido por él: todos saben que es engañado por Gloria, que Gloria tiene un amante, que él está excluido de esa relación, y sobre todo, que las burlas ofensivas de los demás traducen su incapacidad como hombre “¿se ríe usted de mí?, algo que ha intentado mantener en el más absoluto secreto para los demás pero sobre todo para sí mismo y cuyo único testigo es Gloria, ahora sin control en tanto en cuanto el pacto de mantenerlo en secreto está roto y puede delatarlo. “Lo saben todo”

Así se cierra el ciclo, donde empezó, en una iglesia, y con el mismo padre Velasco de la ceremonia que será agredido dado que las cuentas a arreglar con él no son pocas si se piensa que esa posición de autoridad incuestionable, de complejo de creencia que se señalaba antes, ha contribuido al fracaso de la relación con Gloria en la medida en la que lo buscado por Francisco ha sido ese padre idealizado que no deja espacio a la relación con la mujer. Y que además, no ha cumplido uno de los objetivos prioritarios de la idealización: protegerse de la persecución.

La última parte nos muestra a Raúl, Gloria y un niño llamado Francisco que van a visitar a Francisco, recluido en un monasterio. Esta escena final es donde la película muestra toda su coherencia. Porque a la pregunta del padre prior sobre quién es el padre de Francisco (niño), no hay respuesta. Un niño que se llama Francisco y en el que desde la infancia la historia de su padre, su propia historia, está llena de incertidumbres. De esta forma, se hace converger toda la historia de éste paranoico en este punto final de máxima significación aplicando al cine, de una forma ejemplar, el proceso de condensación. Francisco se estabiliza en el convento. Su delirio se mantiene enquistado en una sumisión masoquista a la autoridad del padre, única forma en la que puede dar cabida a la imagen paterna y al mismo tiempo le proporciona un interlocutor a la altura de su megalomanía: Dios. Pero también constituye el abandono de toda tentativa de relación de objeto en la que la imposibilidad de encontrar un sitio al tercero que no sea de amenaza y persecución, condena al fracaso.

Al finalizar este ensayo sobre un hombre que se deseo acaba con su razonamiento, quisiera agregar que la obra de Buñuel es como un lapsus de la mirada, ligado muy estrechamente a la lectura de Sade o a su ideología surrealista, que instala una manera particular del circuito del deseo.

Estas consideraciones sobre el cine de Buñuel pueden servir para los verdaderos núcleos de esta película. Podrán permitir extraer enseñanzas sobre la psicosis. Pero también sobre el sadismo y otras cuestiones que atañen al goce, la angustia, el objeto y el sujeto en el fantasma.

Embrace our Madness.

Omnipotence....of thought.

What is omnipotence of thought and where can we recognize it?

Well, basically it alludes to the power of certain beliefs that subsequently can transform or distort reality through one’s thought.

Commonly seen in the obsessive character; a magical thought becoming a symptom.

This superstitious idea brings out a simple question: Is this symptomatic in nature or part of a system of thought?

“Neurotics… are only affected by what is thought with intensity and pictured with emotion, whereas agreement with external reality is a matter of no importance” (Freud,1912-13a, p 86).

Omnipotence is related to thoughts that only express or are developed from a repressed wish, this is just a way to switch reality.

This kind of thinking proposes the way a child may use hallucination to deal with a perceived lack of gratification. In adults, avoiding unconscious aggressive wishes that lead to animistic thinking.

I wanted to make a link between language/aesthetic meaning and what we have read this semester because the concept of omnipotence of though can’t be separated from narcissistic thinking/primary process/preverbal stage.

Freud used the term when he spoke about primitive people, schizophrenics and regressed infants. Later on in adulthood, leading to repression of all that fails to conform the ego ideal; in the same way, “every remnant of the primitive feeling of omnipotence which…experience has confirmed helps to increase… self regard” (1914c, section 2), which is the expression of the ego’s grandiosity.

It is difficult to constrain limitations on the big idea of omnipotence of thought and to choose sides because whether located in magical practices and animistic thinking or in neurotic symptoms, it is appropriate with the boundary-less character of primary narcissism.

This article will help all of us to visibly comprehend this power that gives expression and movement to all this desires in this artistic vehicle called poetry.

Embrace our Madness.

“The face identifies us”

The skin I live in.
An Almodóvar masterpiece.


What does a face have that makes us instantly interpret the whole persona?
If in fact the face does identify us, the question is “identifies us as what?”

If we follow Freud’s line of though on this, strictly speaking, “primary identification is the original and primitive form of emotional attachment to something or someone prior to any relations with other persons or objects.”


If we need the face as a way of identifying ourselves then first let’s understand what is the symbolic meaning of a face.
Throughout human history the face has been hunted, preserved venerated, offered as sacrifice and even eaten.
So, why the face? Well, it contains all essential elements of human awareness, inspiration and expression.
Round in shape, the face carries out transformation and wholeness, it’s a continual transformation into a differentiated state that symbolizes the vessel and substance of life’s eternal re-creations.

There are so many aspects of the movie I would like to point out, but what I will do is concretely talk about Vera, what she represents and her identity in this film.

At first she is portrayed as an extremely beautiful, hysteric, creative, fragile and deeply torn woman.
There are many characteristics in her that accentuates her femininity.


Faceless paintings that induce a bare sensitivity towards the female body without the acknowledgement for the psyche.
Curtains, corridors, windows and clothes are key elements that symbolize a woman, a woman embodying this idealistic figure that must take care of her looks; feel and project beauty with just the texture of the fabric, fetishizing the material to a point that Vera tears the dresses into little pieces and vacuums it, making a statement of “vacuuming her own femininity”, not accepting the new Vera.

At the end of the film where Vera is back to the store, the only way she can be perceived as a woman is by wearing a dress, a dress that she created (identification with herself). Who’s wearing who?

Blood, bees, insects, malaria, orange.

What is Almodovar trying to say with all this imagery?
All are symbols of abjection degrading the image of a woman, being female represents being “cast of”. But there is a peculiar aspect in these four elements.
Joining them is the equation of the universal perception of what is to be a woman.
Honey making is a world creating art, essentially an alchemical “warmth process”.
We can be unnerved by the sight of a single insect, all the more so an infestation producing a heaving sea of movement, trembling antennae and the strong odor of them.

A woman’s flowering is rooted in the soil of her blood, she has been taught to hide the vital energy that our culture has exiled to the menacing realms of the unconscious.
Orange extends into the realm of gold, the incorruptible and everlasting, and into the realm of blood, vigorous, active and mutable.

There is always distance between Robert and Vera, this “creation” that cannot be penetrated or corrupted. A woman is a chameleon, sculpting herself into the environment to survive.

Now, why would Robert change the skin?
Why is this fascination and obsession with this organ?
How can a person change the whole scheme of a body, and actually transform not only the outer part of it, but the inside as well?

“The artificial skin is much tougher than normal skin, and smells differently”
There is something indeed he wants to create, not only a perfect woman, but also a man whom is a perfect woman.
Vera tells Robert that she is “made to order”, bonds perfectly with him. What is the danger on creating a woman who bonds perfectly with a man? She uses this power to destroy him.

“You have to keep the new orifice open and manage, bit by bit, to make it deeper. Think that your life depends on that orifice and you breathe through it”

A misogynistic preconception of the female sex, being always open to the man’s corruption, resisting her own needs and basically surrender by being just a sexual object.

What I find very intriguing is the relation between Vicente and Norma. Vicente is a junky that rapes Norma, Robert instead of spending his energy on her wellbeing captures him and tortures him in order to convert him into his own wife. Robert is in love with Norma’s aggressor. Identification with the aggressor goes both ways, because Robert also infatuates Vera.

Sexual identity is the theme of the film, trying to make a point throughout the whole movie. Vera tells the other doctor “I have always been a woman”. What does this mean?

The last scene made me realize what this was all about; what is the meaning of a powerful woman? What consequences does this entail?

An oedipal tragedy, when Vera shoots Marilia she is covering herself under the bed, a womblike hideaway that protects her and makes her survive, then reaching for her actual mother.

So, what is so fascinating about skin?
“Skin is associated with everything from the wonders of touch to racial profiling.”

Embrace our Madness.


References.

Moon, Beverly. Ed. An Encyclopedia of Archetypal Symbolism. Vol 1. Boston and London, 1991.

“Sensuality, desire, greed and the quest for love”

The Osmothèque inside Jean Baptiste Grenouille.
Patrick Süskind's "Perfume"

The Egyptians considered the nose to be the most important orifice in one’s body and handled it with great care during mummification, just as they maliciously sliced off the nose of an enemy’s face to prevent his survival in the Land of the Dead. Their ancient linkage of the nose with life finds an echo in the discovery, in modern times, which the brain evolved from a pair of primitive olfactory sensors at the upper end of the spinal cord, establishing the antecedence of scent over the now predominant sight and hearing. (Taschen, 2010. P.165.)

Among humans, the nose can detect 10,000 more flavors than the incorrectly credited tongue, the nose is nevertheless associated with highly nuanced instinctual and intuitive functions, like associating romance with a musky perfumed vapors to find “the right chemistry” or tracking down the scent of a crime. The Egyptians understood that the breath passing through a goddess’ nostrils to give eternal life to a deceased kind would impart a fundamental reality, for the nose is like a forgotten portal to the archeology of the psyche. (Taschen, 2010. P.362).

The nose of Jean Baptiste Grenouille is peculiar and one of a kind; it can smell almost anything and has the capacity of memorize the scent of whatever it smells. The way his early life is presented, odors that related to him were disgusting and sickening to the human nose, but not to Grenouille, recognizing them immediately, embracing them and actually incorporating them to his own memory. Symbolically, rotten smells are traditionally associated with the vaults of hell, the moral sewers of life, while paradise is scented with rose and lotus, and the mere memory of a past love, like Flaubert, preserving his lover’s perfumed slippers in his desk drawer, is fondly brought back to life by a single whiff.

Let’s begin with the meaning on the name “Grenouille”, which means frog in French. A frog is an ancient Egypt leaning forward in a balanced squat, its skin moist-looking, its head tilted upward, the protruding eyes focused, that it seems its tongue will suddenly dart out of its wide mouth and pull an insect in or the long hind legs, in a nimble leap, carry it to another part of the pond. Grenouille “leaps” from person to person on his journey to create the perfect perfume. Frogs are also the first to let us know when nature is drastically out of balance (one of the reasons why, perhaps, in fairy tales they bring in what’s missing). Currently one of the most threatened groups of animals on earth, they are an accurate indicator of a traumatized biosphere and of a future that might be woefully absent of their mosquito and fly-catching, their brilliant colors, their fervent forms of every size and knobby embellishment, and their raucous song of espousal. (Taschen, 2010. P.190). Frogs are cold-blooded, hibernate and survive on what they’ve stored within themselves, which hints at Grenouille’s surviving on his olfactory memories for seven years in that cave.

Only things that smell had meaning for Grenouille, language lacked this refinement for communicating the richness of his olfactory world. He created new smells in his mind by combining the ones that he already knew and he had the capacity to smell these through his own imagination. In a way he appears to effectively shut out the world he lives in, he has forgone love in favor of survival, and something he is very good at is surviving. He has made his decision “vegetatively, as a bean when once tossed aside must decide if it ought to germinate or had better let things be” (Suskind, 1986. P.25)

The author possesses a very keen and vivid awareness with the most elemental and basic emotional and sensory states, it is a representation of every significant aspect of the mind and it’s repercussions through the process of life. Odor is a powerful signifier of Grenouille’s earliest memories and perceptions; it’s primitive, archaic, almost invisible and totally neglected.

Grenouille’s birth and primal experiences have provided him a vulnerability to following environmental failures while at the same time giving him an exact and unique method of survival. The first part of the book presents Grenouille as an unwanted child, “dead meat”, an inconvenience to his mother and to society that must immediately be discarded and forgotten. Although his mother conceives him he is never actually conceived of by her. The perfume of decay in that marketplace is what first welcomed Grenouille into the world. His first contact wasn’t a caring and nurturing mother, but the smell of death. His identity is established right in that precise moment, in the very start of his existence, both within and immediately after the womb.

His mother’s own narcissistic desires became true, Grenouille was born to be inconspicuous around all these conspicuous odors, and he was without a doubt invisible, to her and to the world, in other words, odorless.

Grenouille starts to create a fantasy world primarily out of scent in it’s most primitive way in which he immerses himself, a form of protecting himself against this premature awareness of this great terror and intolerable psychological pain related with abandonment and neglect. That is why Grenouille is capable of surviving constant rejection and great traumatic experiences and abuse.

Grenouille finds no relief when he is with his foster mother, Madame Galliard. Although he is given some physical care, it lacks emotional value. He becomes a “tick”, abandoning all human relations; he emits nothing and is impenetrable. In the hands of Grimal, he is abused and suffers psychological traumas from which apparently makes him even more immunized against death.

Grenouille’s first encounter with the “perfume” that may be representing the essence of goodness and innocence occurs during these same days. This “goodness” is transformed into a smell of a virginal girl, which may seem as a cliché but it’s also purity and innocence and this women who have been with no one, untouched, unpolluted, unstained. There may be a strong implication that the “perfume” is related to the idealized maternal object and an innocent baby (Grenouille) in a symbiotic and undifferentiated early state.

But why death is the only answer to preserve the scent for himself? Perhaps experience has taught him that objects must be frozen or somehow immobilized in order to keep them from exerting their own will and eventually and inevitably abandoning him. For the first time, Grenouille experiences the bliss of atonement and discovers a reason to live, a desire to move on; the creation of beautiful scents. (the “essence” of the idealized mother)

Twice, with Grimal and Baldini, he experiences this psychosomatic breakdown that may be related to the extreme of physical abuse and psychic decomposition. After this two episodes he is “born again” with a growing sense of grandiose omnipotence. This grandiosity is represented in the relationship with Baldini, in scenes where he magically reproduces and invents scents surpassing those of his master’s imagination.

Even as he is exploited, Grenouille is able to achieve something similar to a life of his own. When he leaves Baldini, he stays isolated in an inhabited cavern for seven years, which symbolically represents a “womb like” environment and this ideal of an olfactory peace. He recovers his primal experience, this pre birth experience of “being the only human being in the world” of the maternal body. There are many symbols of fetal existence from the “virgin” tunnel, to the umbilical snakes that nourish him and the uterine wall (rocks) that he licks to obtain moisture. He is re-living the smells of his past as a way of protecting himself from the terrifying awareness of his vulnerability.

Finally, a dream penetrates Grenouille’s mind, making him feel sick and suffocated. “He was deathly afraid, his whole body shook with a raw fear of death…he sat there shivering and trying to gather his confused, terrified thoughts, he knew one thing for sure: he would change his life, if only because he did not want to dream such a frightening dream a second time. (Suskind, 1986. P.164) This is just a reaction to this long process of introspection, a reaction to this awareness that he was nobody.

He leaves the cave; he wants human contact once again. He now has a new obsession: creating and possessing a “superhuman scent” in order that he might inspire love. An important part is that Antoine Richis (Laura’s father) provides the necessary insight for understanding Grenouille’s motivation. He believes that the murderer’s aim is not to destroy but to collect, and he is not trying to attack beauty but to conserve beauty for himself.

Grenouille’s triumph is empty, as always he couldn’t find reciprocity for his emotional states. Just as his overflowing love and his craving for attachment have been met in the past with hatred, so now his overwhelming hatred begets only love. Once again, was overcome by the “fog of his colorlessness”; the feeling of desintegration. He is filled with terror that constitutes the final and devastating realization of the agreement between his internal and external realities.

In the end, Grenouille grows increasingly maddened by this uncaring world, he is defeated by despair by this painful realization that he might never been seen and loved for himself: that he might never become himself. Once again he seeks an experience of being “one” with the body of the mother.

Toward the end, he provokes the band of homeless people to a cannibalistic ritual and is finally “taken in”, eaten in an act of “love”. Of course, this is the ultimate act of love; in concrete terms is the baby’s experience of being introjected by the maternal object; an experience, which the baby must have in order for him to be able to incorporate a sense of a containing object.

All the deaths of all those beautiful innocent girls, with their hair shaved off, stripped of their clothing and robbed of the very “essence” of their being is a reenactment of Grenouille’s infancy. He had also been robbed of his own essence; his innocence, long ago sacrificed for the sake of his own human survival. All this deaths represent those horrible experiences of an abandoned and dying baby.

The story of Grenouille conveys the purest form of trauma, maybe it is an extreme personification but it reflects how society and human beings mold themselves in order to persevere. Perfume is the story of a murderer, but it is also the story of an artist. There is something luring in the dissonance between the evil deeds Grenouille commits and the beauty he ultimately created. He can’t be dismissed as a moral failure: he is also an artist of precise dedication, passion and skill. He is obsessed with maintaining and possessing beauty for all time, and not concerned with transitory life, not even his own. He is not terrifying because he is evil, but because his evil deeds just slide off him as though he were coated with Vaseline. If we cheer for his artistic success, even just out of curiosity, we are being part of his crimes. Do we all have a Grenouille-like coating that keeps us from feeling the pain? Is the passion that drives this murderous artist alive in us as well?

The ending is really what makes the book a masterpiece. It becomes clear then that what Grenouille was trying to do was create a physical distillate of love. Neither sex nor beauty; Love. He made the perfect match of feelings of love, both emotional and physical; a love with perfect eroticism. They absorbed him entirely; he became part of them, just as a person in love wished to become part of his lover. But this is the omnipotent part, he represented the very concept of love and his physical absorption by the people represents their ultimate adoption and understanding of that concept.

Another important aspect is the objectification of women. Of course in reality “beautiful” women, whether young or not, virgin or not, don’t necessarily smell any better than anyone else. The reason to make them represent this perfect scent is related to this long societal tradition based on puritan male fantasies. Objectification of women is all about reducing them into objects to be used in fantasy. Grenouille does this literally in creating his perfume from them that induces fantasies. The metaphor for his dehumanization in the book is death since it’s the only way to reduce them to the essence of their scent.

Since the moment of Grenouille’s birth, survival skills and his relation to society evolved and fought in opposite directions. He survived this very hard adolescence, without any sexual discovery of this awkward phase. He inhaled the scent of more than 20 women. He was a despicable, emotionless and heartless scoundrel capable of producing artistic works of sublime beauty. There are many unanswered questions about Grenouille, and about the book itself. What is beauty worth? And should we place greater value on transitory life or lasting art?

Perfume is a story about identity, communication and the morality of the human spirit, it can be seen as an allegory, expressing the most basic realities about human existence and also a parable, separating and highlighting certain attitudes and characteristics that are very relevant to conform a clinical study.

So, what is the scent of love? It may be too costly to gain that secret unless there’s an appreciation of love first.

Embrace our Madness.

Reference.

Taschen. (2010). The Book of Symbols. Cologne, Germany: Florian Kobler.

Suskind, P. (1986). Perfume: the story of a murderer. New York: Random House.