“If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery--isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is.”
Embrace our Madness.
Saturday, January 18, 2014
Love in psychoanalysis, is transference.
The very concept of love, its questions an unsolved riddles, in psychoanalysis, is aimed towards the concept and complications of transference so that love seems to be just a displacement.
Love feels unauthentic. “I love someone because I’m really in love with somebody else”. It seems that psychoanalysis underestimates love, reducing it to just a tool of information. To be in love is to get lost, through the paths of love you lose your own path, losing yourself. Yet, analysis follows this path, challenging it until something hidden is released.
There is no analysis without transference, the analyst must hold back from any interpretation until transference is established. Of course the analyst’s job emphasizes and exploits the natural aspect of love.
Identifying the patient’s desire and observing him fell love is one aim of analysis. Freud called this “the condition of love” (Liebesbedingung). “Liebe” is a term which overlays both love and desire, although occasionally we see the conditions of love separated from those of sexual desire.
“What are transferences? They are new editions or facsimiles of the tendencies and phantasies, which are aroused and made conscious during the progress of the analysis; but they have this peculiarity, which is characteristic for their species, that they replace some earlier person by the person of the physician. To put it another way: a whole series of psychological experiences are revived, not as belonging to the past, but as applying to the physician at the present moment.” (1905)
Freud (1915) acknowledged, "We have no right to dispute that the state of being in love which makes
What is repeated in transference love is frustration, a demand not heard, never answered, which leads the patient to reassume the position of a child with respect to the analyst. Behind the exacerbated demand for love and reparation that is seen in passionate transferences lie developmental deficits and failures of the primary environment that have distorted the patient's self.
According to Klein (1952), The comfort and care given after birth, particularly the first feeding experiences are felt to come from good forces. Objects entitled as “good” or “bad”. The infant directs his feelings of gratification and love towards the “good” breast and his destructive impulses and feelings of persecution towards what he feels to be frustrating, the “bad” breast.
Now, the Oedipus phase makes it a bit harder for the infant. For anxiety and guilt increase the need to externalize bad figures and to internalize good ones; to attach desires, love, guilt, and reparative tendencies to some objects, and hate and anxiety to others; to find representatives for internal figures in the external world.
Love and hatred dominate since early infancy, there’s a connection between positive and negative transference and by exploring love and hate the analyst and the patient can understand more the origin of the patients wishes.
What about narcissistic love? The self, according to Kohut (1966) may expand far beyond the borders of an individual, or it may shrink and become identical with a single one of his actions or aims.
The antithesis to narcissism is not the object relation but object love. Idealization plays an important part in love, mostly in narcissistic love, it may be actually an aspect of narcissism, of the original bliss, power, perfection, and goodness which is projected to the parent figure during a phase when there qualities become gradually separated into perfection pertaining to pleasure, or power, or knowledge, or beauty, or morality.
The idealized parent imago is partly invested with object-libidinal cathexes; and the idealized qualities are loved as a source of gratification to which the child clings tenaciously.
During the preoedipal period there is a gradual loss of the idealized parent imago, while the massive loss during the Oedipal period contributes to the formation of the superego.
Now, the Narcissus myth gives us an idea of autoerotism. Some emotions are lost in self-admiration; it is an ordinary stage of sexual development that is now commonly associated with erotic feelings aroused in a person by his own body and personality. Also, a sensation of exclusiveness coming from the mother makes the child feel omnipotent and powerful.
Spotnitz (1961) mentions “The person whose development is favorable behaves only briefly like someone in love with himself”. But even after he has formed good object-relations, he persists in narcissistic activity to some extent and generally increases it late in life.
Love does not prevent hatred and other negative emotions from invading a relationship, Spotnitz says. There is a clear denial of “bad” emotions when it comes to a relationship because it’s a constant reminder of failure and weakness. Attempting to conceal them is always destructive to the relationship.
Unrecognized hate can easily diminish love and sometimes kill it but a certain amount of battling between a man and a woman is always involved in the normal sexual relationship.
Bion (1958) would agree that a patient feels obstructed by the presence of feelings of impotence together with feelings of hatred and envy towards the sexual parents who are thought by him to possess, and to deny him the use of, the potent breast or penis that makes the possessor potent in the expression of love.
This picture is further complicated because, although it is true to say the patient feels free to love, at least in intention, the violence of the explosion leaves him denuded also of his feelings of love. It is important to be aware that a relationship will be a replica of the infantile love, which is the prototype of the valid love object in puberty when the release from the parents should take place.
In “General Theory of Neuroses”, Ferenzci (1920) states that
…The neurotic cannot effect this release; the son remains under the authority of the father the whole of his life and cannot transfer his libido from his mother to a strange sex object.”
There are two kinds of love regression, the reoccupation of the libido with the first incestuous love object and the return of the entire sexual organization to an earlier stage.
In hysteria, the primary incestuous love object shows the repression of the libido, the sexual organization of the hysteric continues undisturbed to the full development of the genital zone, but this last function is repressed.
On the contrary, in compulsion neuroses, the libido regresses to the anal-sadistic stage and at the same time regression of the love object takes place. The amount of ungratified libido that a man can endure has its limits; the more incomplete the sexual organization is, the stronger and more numerous will the fixations be on love objects. (Ferenzci, 1920)
An adult love, or a “later object” love has always a threshold stage, the narcissistic, when all libido belongs to the Ego, and where the Ego itself is the object. Falling in love creates an aim for the libido to grow; the object is filled with it while the Ego is practically empty.
Freud’s article on “Mourning and Melancholia” (1917) states that the disposition to melancholia predominates in the narcissistic type of love object, and that the refusal of food that is a characteristic of the complaint can be traced back to a regression to the oral stage of the libido.
Self-reproaches actually are reproaches against persons with whom the patient feels identified. There is an undoubtable pleasurable self-torture in melancholia that is a gratification of sadistic and hate impulses against an object, but by inversion it gets directed against the self.
It seems like all psychology schools understand each other in terms of a primary caretaker being the educator of what love means. Love is safety and emphasizing on love and those first moments of life means that we all need to feel close to someone in order to start creating a functional ego structure that can resist future traumas and rejection.
Love is a very complicated subject to hold on to because it is constantly changing within objects. It’s important to acknowledge that even though primary caretakers didn’t do the best job in giving the child what he needed at that point that nothing is written in stone, there are many ways to re educate this person and become more productive when it comes to love.
“In the end
these things matter most:
How well did you love?
How fully did you live?
How deeply did you let go?”
Gautama Buddha.
Embrace our Madness.
Love feels unauthentic. “I love someone because I’m really in love with somebody else”. It seems that psychoanalysis underestimates love, reducing it to just a tool of information. To be in love is to get lost, through the paths of love you lose your own path, losing yourself. Yet, analysis follows this path, challenging it until something hidden is released.
There is no analysis without transference, the analyst must hold back from any interpretation until transference is established. Of course the analyst’s job emphasizes and exploits the natural aspect of love.
Identifying the patient’s desire and observing him fell love is one aim of analysis. Freud called this “the condition of love” (Liebesbedingung). “Liebe” is a term which overlays both love and desire, although occasionally we see the conditions of love separated from those of sexual desire.
This is how Freud isolates the type of man who cannot love where he desires and who cannot desire where he loves. In love at first sight, there, in an instant, a subject meets his condition of love as if this possibility has been suddenly intertwined with necessity.
One aim of psychoanalysis is overcoming resistances to love in the experience of the patient’s subjectivity. Sometimes controlling love brings out conflicts of dominance, submission, abandonment, separation and independence that play a big part in every relationship.
Transference love creates an emotional relationship, determined by the analytic situation, of which the object is the analyst; the task of the analyst in this circumstance is to trace the relationship back, without either satisfying or smothering it, to its primitive roots.
Freud found that we all have motives; reasons of which some are connected with being in love and others are particular expressions of resistance. In analysis there may be a desire to destroy the analyst’s authority by bringing him down to the level of a lover and gain a hidden promise.
One aim of psychoanalysis is overcoming resistances to love in the experience of the patient’s subjectivity. Sometimes controlling love brings out conflicts of dominance, submission, abandonment, separation and independence that play a big part in every relationship.
Transference love creates an emotional relationship, determined by the analytic situation, of which the object is the analyst; the task of the analyst in this circumstance is to trace the relationship back, without either satisfying or smothering it, to its primitive roots.
Freud found that we all have motives; reasons of which some are connected with being in love and others are particular expressions of resistance. In analysis there may be a desire to destroy the analyst’s authority by bringing him down to the level of a lover and gain a hidden promise.
A patient's passionate attachment to the analyst should indeed never be treated as evidence of the physician's personal irresistibility, but rather as an effect of the analytic situation itself.
Clearly, the analysis of the counter-transference is necessary so as to prevent the analyst's personal feelings, complexes or inner resistances from slowing down the progress of the treatment. The excitation provoked in the analyst by the patient's demands and transferential projections, and notably the erotization of the transference, certainly put the analyst's superego to the test, but at a more fundamental level they challenge their relational skills and capacity for symbolization as well as mastery over their own desire for reparation.
Resistance, on the other hand is acting as a provocation; it heightens the patient’s state of being in love and more empathically, by pointing to the dangers of this situation.
The transference follows the vicissitudes of love. When it is negative, hostile, or governed by repressed erotic impulses it constitutes resistance. According to Freud, the "transference of friendly or affectionate feelings" which are "unobjectionable and admissible to consciousness" can contribute to a successful cure. (1912)
Transference-love is provoked by the analytic situation; it is intensified by resistance and lacks the reality principle, less sensible, less concerned about consequences and more naïve. All of this resembles quite well to the feelings of being in love.
"It represents an artificial illness which is at every point accessible to our intervention. It is a piece of real experience, but one which has been made possible by especially favorable conditions" (Freud, 1914)
If we observe love as part of transference we must first give description to this concept. In Freud’s Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria he defines the transference situation in the following way:
Clearly, the analysis of the counter-transference is necessary so as to prevent the analyst's personal feelings, complexes or inner resistances from slowing down the progress of the treatment. The excitation provoked in the analyst by the patient's demands and transferential projections, and notably the erotization of the transference, certainly put the analyst's superego to the test, but at a more fundamental level they challenge their relational skills and capacity for symbolization as well as mastery over their own desire for reparation.
Resistance, on the other hand is acting as a provocation; it heightens the patient’s state of being in love and more empathically, by pointing to the dangers of this situation.
The transference follows the vicissitudes of love. When it is negative, hostile, or governed by repressed erotic impulses it constitutes resistance. According to Freud, the "transference of friendly or affectionate feelings" which are "unobjectionable and admissible to consciousness" can contribute to a successful cure. (1912)
Transference-love is provoked by the analytic situation; it is intensified by resistance and lacks the reality principle, less sensible, less concerned about consequences and more naïve. All of this resembles quite well to the feelings of being in love.
"It represents an artificial illness which is at every point accessible to our intervention. It is a piece of real experience, but one which has been made possible by especially favorable conditions" (Freud, 1914)
If we observe love as part of transference we must first give description to this concept. In Freud’s Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria he defines the transference situation in the following way:
“What are transferences? They are new editions or facsimiles of the tendencies and phantasies, which are aroused and made conscious during the progress of the analysis; but they have this peculiarity, which is characteristic for their species, that they replace some earlier person by the person of the physician. To put it another way: a whole series of psychological experiences are revived, not as belonging to the past, but as applying to the physician at the present moment.” (1905)
Freud (1915) acknowledged, "We have no right to dispute that the state of being in love which makes
its appearance in the course of analytic treatment has the character of a 'genuine' love." In fact transference love was no different from any other kind of love, for there is no such state [of being in love] which does not reproduce infantile prototypes"
What is repeated in transference love is frustration, a demand not heard, never answered, which leads the patient to reassume the position of a child with respect to the analyst. Behind the exacerbated demand for love and reparation that is seen in passionate transferences lie developmental deficits and failures of the primary environment that have distorted the patient's self.
According to Klein (1952), The comfort and care given after birth, particularly the first feeding experiences are felt to come from good forces. Objects entitled as “good” or “bad”. The infant directs his feelings of gratification and love towards the “good” breast and his destructive impulses and feelings of persecution towards what he feels to be frustrating, the “bad” breast.
Now, the Oedipus phase makes it a bit harder for the infant. For anxiety and guilt increase the need to externalize bad figures and to internalize good ones; to attach desires, love, guilt, and reparative tendencies to some objects, and hate and anxiety to others; to find representatives for internal figures in the external world.
Love and hatred dominate since early infancy, there’s a connection between positive and negative transference and by exploring love and hate the analyst and the patient can understand more the origin of the patients wishes.
What about narcissistic love? The self, according to Kohut (1966) may expand far beyond the borders of an individual, or it may shrink and become identical with a single one of his actions or aims.
The antithesis to narcissism is not the object relation but object love. Idealization plays an important part in love, mostly in narcissistic love, it may be actually an aspect of narcissism, of the original bliss, power, perfection, and goodness which is projected to the parent figure during a phase when there qualities become gradually separated into perfection pertaining to pleasure, or power, or knowledge, or beauty, or morality.
The idealized parent imago is partly invested with object-libidinal cathexes; and the idealized qualities are loved as a source of gratification to which the child clings tenaciously.
During the preoedipal period there is a gradual loss of the idealized parent imago, while the massive loss during the Oedipal period contributes to the formation of the superego.
Now, the Narcissus myth gives us an idea of autoerotism. Some emotions are lost in self-admiration; it is an ordinary stage of sexual development that is now commonly associated with erotic feelings aroused in a person by his own body and personality. Also, a sensation of exclusiveness coming from the mother makes the child feel omnipotent and powerful.
Spotnitz (1961) mentions “The person whose development is favorable behaves only briefly like someone in love with himself”. But even after he has formed good object-relations, he persists in narcissistic activity to some extent and generally increases it late in life.
Love does not prevent hatred and other negative emotions from invading a relationship, Spotnitz says. There is a clear denial of “bad” emotions when it comes to a relationship because it’s a constant reminder of failure and weakness. Attempting to conceal them is always destructive to the relationship.
Unrecognized hate can easily diminish love and sometimes kill it but a certain amount of battling between a man and a woman is always involved in the normal sexual relationship.
Bion (1958) would agree that a patient feels obstructed by the presence of feelings of impotence together with feelings of hatred and envy towards the sexual parents who are thought by him to possess, and to deny him the use of, the potent breast or penis that makes the possessor potent in the expression of love.
This picture is further complicated because, although it is true to say the patient feels free to love, at least in intention, the violence of the explosion leaves him denuded also of his feelings of love. It is important to be aware that a relationship will be a replica of the infantile love, which is the prototype of the valid love object in puberty when the release from the parents should take place.
In “General Theory of Neuroses”, Ferenzci (1920) states that
…The neurotic cannot effect this release; the son remains under the authority of the father the whole of his life and cannot transfer his libido from his mother to a strange sex object.”
There are two kinds of love regression, the reoccupation of the libido with the first incestuous love object and the return of the entire sexual organization to an earlier stage.
In hysteria, the primary incestuous love object shows the repression of the libido, the sexual organization of the hysteric continues undisturbed to the full development of the genital zone, but this last function is repressed.
On the contrary, in compulsion neuroses, the libido regresses to the anal-sadistic stage and at the same time regression of the love object takes place. The amount of ungratified libido that a man can endure has its limits; the more incomplete the sexual organization is, the stronger and more numerous will the fixations be on love objects. (Ferenzci, 1920)
An adult love, or a “later object” love has always a threshold stage, the narcissistic, when all libido belongs to the Ego, and where the Ego itself is the object. Falling in love creates an aim for the libido to grow; the object is filled with it while the Ego is practically empty.
Freud’s article on “Mourning and Melancholia” (1917) states that the disposition to melancholia predominates in the narcissistic type of love object, and that the refusal of food that is a characteristic of the complaint can be traced back to a regression to the oral stage of the libido.
Self-reproaches actually are reproaches against persons with whom the patient feels identified. There is an undoubtable pleasurable self-torture in melancholia that is a gratification of sadistic and hate impulses against an object, but by inversion it gets directed against the self.
It seems like all psychology schools understand each other in terms of a primary caretaker being the educator of what love means. Love is safety and emphasizing on love and those first moments of life means that we all need to feel close to someone in order to start creating a functional ego structure that can resist future traumas and rejection.
Love is a very complicated subject to hold on to because it is constantly changing within objects. It’s important to acknowledge that even though primary caretakers didn’t do the best job in giving the child what he needed at that point that nothing is written in stone, there are many ways to re educate this person and become more productive when it comes to love.
“In the end
these things matter most:
How well did you love?
How fully did you live?
How deeply did you let go?”
Gautama Buddha.
Embrace our Madness.
References.
Freud, S. (1915). Observations on Transference-Love (Further Recommendations on the Technique of Psycho-Analysis III). The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XII (1911-1913): The Case of Schreber, Papers on Technique and Other Works, 157-171.
Klein, M. (1952). The Origins of Transference. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 33:433-438.
Kohut, H. (1966). Forms and Transformations of Narcissism. J. Amer. Psychoanal. Assn., 14:243-272.
Spotnitz, H. (1961). The Narcissistic Defense in Schizofrenia. Psychoanal. Rev., 48D:24-42.
Spotnitz, H. (1977). Problems of the Marriage Parnership. Mod. Psychoanal., 2:4-14.
Bion, W.R. (1958). On Hallucination. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 39:341-349.
Ferenczi, S. (1920). General Theory of the Neuroses. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 1:294-296.
Freud, S. (1917). Mourning and Melancholia. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XIV (1914-1916): On the History of the Psycho-Analytic Movement, Papers on Metapsychology and Other Works, 237-258
Freud, S. (1915). Observations on Transference-Love (Further Recommendations on the Technique of Psycho-Analysis III). The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XII (1911-1913): The Case of Schreber, Papers on Technique and Other Works, 157-171.
Klein, M. (1952). The Origins of Transference. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 33:433-438.
Kohut, H. (1966). Forms and Transformations of Narcissism. J. Amer. Psychoanal. Assn., 14:243-272.
Spotnitz, H. (1961). The Narcissistic Defense in Schizofrenia. Psychoanal. Rev., 48D:24-42.
Spotnitz, H. (1977). Problems of the Marriage Parnership. Mod. Psychoanal., 2:4-14.
Bion, W.R. (1958). On Hallucination. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 39:341-349.
Ferenczi, S. (1920). General Theory of the Neuroses. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 1:294-296.
Freud, S. (1917). Mourning and Melancholia. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XIV (1914-1916): On the History of the Psycho-Analytic Movement, Papers on Metapsychology and Other Works, 237-258
“The identity is the negative of our desiring fantasies” (Bersani)
Pornography is a discourse; therefore it is constantly emitting sentences to us, the readers.
This discourse creates an imaginary knot without taking into consideration the form. The pornographic are the “poorly taken” pictures, the ugly, the obscene, explicit scenes approaching natural orifices and shameless demonstrations of what’s missing.
“The concept of lack from Lacanian discourse suggested that the woman’s body is fetishized in film because it produces anxiety in the male viewer, to whom the female body represents castration.” (Gabbard, 2001)
Shame, precisely, is this passion that connects the imaginary knot and keeps a distance between what’s public and private. Distance that’s there, maybe just in appearance, tossed up in the pornographic. [1]
A part object discourse, which is visibly common in a pornographic scene; a shot of a woman moaning, another shot of a penis penetrating the vagina, another penis ejaculating.
Every mock up is epically created reaching a supposed pleasure. The woman that is staring directly to the camera while opening her legs is mimicking the audience’s gaze.
“The Lacanian approach to film criticism centers on how the perspective of the camera creates a “gaze” on the events of the film’s narrative.” (Gabbard, 2001)
The sexual organs of the actors show much more character than their own faces, the relaxed veins of their penises speak of integrity of a hard working heart, but in their faces there’s vaguely any content.
Does pornography care about aesthetics?
Does beauty have the same meaning in all films?
A film that captures a societal shock is Bertolucci’s ”Last Tango in Paris”; This so called “artsy porn” captures both indecent and elegant styles at the same time making them dance together the same way as the tango; an invitation to let loose in this wave of seduction and yearning.
What’s essential in this movie is how the experience is structured; simply an anonymous and clandestine affair that is approachable to any spectator. This erotic encounter is always aimed at transgressing given everyday identities. [2]
The pathetic side of the pornographic discourse is that the subject keeps enunciating his next move while at the same time disappears in his narrative.
Showing “everything”, the pornographic discourse just demonstrates the divorce between narrative, the act and the utopic corporeal unity. In porn there needs to be three; There, in that room, the lovers are in this almost epistemic relationship where the Other’s gaze is placed.
What’s revealed isn’t the sexual relationship - this doesn’t mean that couples don’t have sex- but the encounter with the other sex that certifies the irrepresentable of the sexual relationship.
This is what porn-o-graphy provides, it doesn’t limit itself by showing the sexual act, doesn’t stop by just installing these scopic devices, but shows, in reality, the absence of complementarity.
Two people in a bedroom dancing or having sex isn’t porn. This is erotism or intersubjective relationship. It’s precisely the introduction of this Other- a third- the gaze, that makes the pleasure itself innocent, private and without interruptions always impossible.
Sex by itself is an exhibitionist act because it relies on the gaze of the Other, sex is pornographic.
Back to the movie, we see in what way the uncovering of the scenes of penetration feeds the ghostly side of Paul generating questions of what does it mean to be a man. On the other side, a woman, placed in a position of desire, exhibits her own castration, a microscopic look of the receptor that will decide the meaning.
This movie is born in a state of unbalance; surrounded by excess, filmed by a director that exposes mistrust (who knows more about cinematographic critique than poetic images); for some incomprehensible reason Bertolucci gave us this hint about imperfect beauty.
Last Tango tells the story about two loners in a city that will never be the one of love. Paris creates pain, Paul the despair and Jeanne the body; filming with pornographic treachery intimate acts of love and a savage rape, penetrating into the hidden and occult of two people that believe in being acknowledged.
Jeanne searches for a father that can tell her stories, while he vomits all his truths about the world; she is waiting to be asked to dance while he forces her through the dance floor; she wishes for a goodnight kiss while he covers her ass with butter and, above all, Jeanne loving him and him corresponding.
Stroller argues that:
The overall structure of erotic excitement … is similar in most everyone, (that) it is not (hostile) dynamics that differentiate perversions from the lesser perversions, those states that others call normal or normative behavior, but whether the erotic excitement brings one toward or away from sustained intimacy with another person. (Stoller, 1985, pp. vii-viii)
This film is full of dichotomies; male and female, life and death, America and France, but the interesting part is that these don’t seem to contradict each other, but work as complementary forces, despite the chemistry and friction between two characters whose identities and desire connect.
Being humiliated is a strong factor in perversion and also the core of excitement in general. A man that desexualizes women, acts with hostility and desires to harm is more characteristic of the sexual fantasies and practices of his gender, since “perversion” as well as actual and fantasized sexual violence, abuse, and rape, seem more widespread among men than women. [3]
Paul’s cruelty may not be justified and perhaps it is exactly what attracted Jeanne in the first place (she is the one who first looks at him at the beginning of the film- very rare in cinema for a woman to give the “gaze”.) His hatred and desire to humiliate Jeanne seeks revenge and triumph over his own supposed childhood traumas, forming the basic fantasy script in perversion and pornography. [4]
Mostly all scenes in the film are emotionally charged, very provocative and give the spectator a wide range of feelings.
Paul never asks Jeanne a direct question but constantly frames her into his next move while assaulting her, humiliating her and pushing her over the edge.
Her desire is formed through idealizing Paul while alienating herself, choosing a submissive-masochistic role and borrowing his subjectivity.[5]
Bertolucci simultaneously mocks and mourns the human yearning for love and companionship. This film is a requiem for unreturned love and a testament to the tendency of humans to refuge love with lust when trapped in a mixture of depression, displeasure and sorrow.
Bertolucci’s purpose is not to praise carnality as a virtue or to despise it as a vice, but to use it as an instrument to accredit the actual existence of a dark, ugly, and bestial side of humanity, which is so often repressed and hypocritically denied in similar works on the subject.
Sadomasochistic role-play reflects the growing social significance of the ability to change roles and to tolerate conflicts in roles. This desire to harm leads us to differentiate “perverse” from “non-perverse” sexuality, but not according to the gender of the object in relation to the self. [6]
The use of the characters are sort of an uncanny medium to immerse into unexplored areas of human psyche while projecting them as objects of desire, disgust and depravity. The “asymmetry” in desire, its intertwining with a spectrum of dominance and submission, starts to show its defensive features and symptomatic nature.
We are being showed the dynamics of the inner self being corrupted because of the cultural influence. How love is a code for “using”; an a-ddiction, Paul becomes the man who uses Jeanne and then shows his hidden vulnerability, also shoes how common miser is in all western societies, nice cinematographic sets and gloomy atmospheres reflect the human unconscious.
The human being is a cultural magnet, we understand ourselves through culture and either destroys or fortifies the self.
Embrace our Madness.
Chodorow, N.J. (1992), Heterosexuality as a compromise formation: reflections on the psychoanalytic theory of sexual development. Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Thought, 15:267-304.
Woltersdorff, V. (2011), Paradoxes of precarious sexualities: sexual subcultures under neo-liberalism. Cultural Studies, 25(2):164-182.
Dines, G. (1997), Pornography: The production and consumption of inequality. Routledge. Great Britain.
This discourse creates an imaginary knot without taking into consideration the form. The pornographic are the “poorly taken” pictures, the ugly, the obscene, explicit scenes approaching natural orifices and shameless demonstrations of what’s missing.
“The concept of lack from Lacanian discourse suggested that the woman’s body is fetishized in film because it produces anxiety in the male viewer, to whom the female body represents castration.” (Gabbard, 2001)
Shame, precisely, is this passion that connects the imaginary knot and keeps a distance between what’s public and private. Distance that’s there, maybe just in appearance, tossed up in the pornographic. [1]
A part object discourse, which is visibly common in a pornographic scene; a shot of a woman moaning, another shot of a penis penetrating the vagina, another penis ejaculating.
Every mock up is epically created reaching a supposed pleasure. The woman that is staring directly to the camera while opening her legs is mimicking the audience’s gaze.
“The Lacanian approach to film criticism centers on how the perspective of the camera creates a “gaze” on the events of the film’s narrative.” (Gabbard, 2001)
The sexual organs of the actors show much more character than their own faces, the relaxed veins of their penises speak of integrity of a hard working heart, but in their faces there’s vaguely any content.
Does pornography care about aesthetics?
Does beauty have the same meaning in all films?
A film that captures a societal shock is Bertolucci’s ”Last Tango in Paris”; This so called “artsy porn” captures both indecent and elegant styles at the same time making them dance together the same way as the tango; an invitation to let loose in this wave of seduction and yearning.
What’s essential in this movie is how the experience is structured; simply an anonymous and clandestine affair that is approachable to any spectator. This erotic encounter is always aimed at transgressing given everyday identities. [2]
The pathetic side of the pornographic discourse is that the subject keeps enunciating his next move while at the same time disappears in his narrative.
Showing “everything”, the pornographic discourse just demonstrates the divorce between narrative, the act and the utopic corporeal unity. In porn there needs to be three; There, in that room, the lovers are in this almost epistemic relationship where the Other’s gaze is placed.
What’s revealed isn’t the sexual relationship - this doesn’t mean that couples don’t have sex- but the encounter with the other sex that certifies the irrepresentable of the sexual relationship.
This is what porn-o-graphy provides, it doesn’t limit itself by showing the sexual act, doesn’t stop by just installing these scopic devices, but shows, in reality, the absence of complementarity.
Two people in a bedroom dancing or having sex isn’t porn. This is erotism or intersubjective relationship. It’s precisely the introduction of this Other- a third- the gaze, that makes the pleasure itself innocent, private and without interruptions always impossible.
Sex by itself is an exhibitionist act because it relies on the gaze of the Other, sex is pornographic.
Back to the movie, we see in what way the uncovering of the scenes of penetration feeds the ghostly side of Paul generating questions of what does it mean to be a man. On the other side, a woman, placed in a position of desire, exhibits her own castration, a microscopic look of the receptor that will decide the meaning.
This movie is born in a state of unbalance; surrounded by excess, filmed by a director that exposes mistrust (who knows more about cinematographic critique than poetic images); for some incomprehensible reason Bertolucci gave us this hint about imperfect beauty.
Last Tango tells the story about two loners in a city that will never be the one of love. Paris creates pain, Paul the despair and Jeanne the body; filming with pornographic treachery intimate acts of love and a savage rape, penetrating into the hidden and occult of two people that believe in being acknowledged.
Jeanne searches for a father that can tell her stories, while he vomits all his truths about the world; she is waiting to be asked to dance while he forces her through the dance floor; she wishes for a goodnight kiss while he covers her ass with butter and, above all, Jeanne loving him and him corresponding.
Stroller argues that:
The overall structure of erotic excitement … is similar in most everyone, (that) it is not (hostile) dynamics that differentiate perversions from the lesser perversions, those states that others call normal or normative behavior, but whether the erotic excitement brings one toward or away from sustained intimacy with another person. (Stoller, 1985, pp. vii-viii)
This film is full of dichotomies; male and female, life and death, America and France, but the interesting part is that these don’t seem to contradict each other, but work as complementary forces, despite the chemistry and friction between two characters whose identities and desire connect.
Being humiliated is a strong factor in perversion and also the core of excitement in general. A man that desexualizes women, acts with hostility and desires to harm is more characteristic of the sexual fantasies and practices of his gender, since “perversion” as well as actual and fantasized sexual violence, abuse, and rape, seem more widespread among men than women. [3]
Paul’s cruelty may not be justified and perhaps it is exactly what attracted Jeanne in the first place (she is the one who first looks at him at the beginning of the film- very rare in cinema for a woman to give the “gaze”.) His hatred and desire to humiliate Jeanne seeks revenge and triumph over his own supposed childhood traumas, forming the basic fantasy script in perversion and pornography. [4]
Mostly all scenes in the film are emotionally charged, very provocative and give the spectator a wide range of feelings.
Paul never asks Jeanne a direct question but constantly frames her into his next move while assaulting her, humiliating her and pushing her over the edge.
Her desire is formed through idealizing Paul while alienating herself, choosing a submissive-masochistic role and borrowing his subjectivity.[5]
Bertolucci simultaneously mocks and mourns the human yearning for love and companionship. This film is a requiem for unreturned love and a testament to the tendency of humans to refuge love with lust when trapped in a mixture of depression, displeasure and sorrow.
Bertolucci’s purpose is not to praise carnality as a virtue or to despise it as a vice, but to use it as an instrument to accredit the actual existence of a dark, ugly, and bestial side of humanity, which is so often repressed and hypocritically denied in similar works on the subject.
Sadomasochistic role-play reflects the growing social significance of the ability to change roles and to tolerate conflicts in roles. This desire to harm leads us to differentiate “perverse” from “non-perverse” sexuality, but not according to the gender of the object in relation to the self. [6]
The use of the characters are sort of an uncanny medium to immerse into unexplored areas of human psyche while projecting them as objects of desire, disgust and depravity. The “asymmetry” in desire, its intertwining with a spectrum of dominance and submission, starts to show its defensive features and symptomatic nature.
We are being showed the dynamics of the inner self being corrupted because of the cultural influence. How love is a code for “using”; an a-ddiction, Paul becomes the man who uses Jeanne and then shows his hidden vulnerability, also shoes how common miser is in all western societies, nice cinematographic sets and gloomy atmospheres reflect the human unconscious.
The human being is a cultural magnet, we understand ourselves through culture and either destroys or fortifies the self.
Embrace our Madness.
References.
Gabbard, G. (2001), Introduction. Psychoanalysis and Film. G. Gabbard, ed. New York: Karnac Books. pp. 1-16.
Gabbard, G. (2001), Introduction. Psychoanalysis and Film. G. Gabbard, ed. New York: Karnac Books. pp. 1-16.
Chodorow, N.J. (1992), Heterosexuality as a compromise formation: reflections on the psychoanalytic theory of sexual development. Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Thought, 15:267-304.
Woltersdorff, V. (2011), Paradoxes of precarious sexualities: sexual subcultures under neo-liberalism. Cultural Studies, 25(2):164-182.
Dines, G. (1997), Pornography: The production and consumption of inequality. Routledge. Great Britain.
“I simply am not there”
Dissecting the man who dissects girls.
American Psycho.
“There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction. But there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory. Although I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours, and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable. I simply am not there.” (Mary Harron.)
Patrick Bateman portrays himself as the ultimate pleasure seeker, a man that has it all. “The libido has been withdrawn from the external world, has been directed to the ego and thus gives rise to an attitude which may be called narcissism” (Freud, 1925).
How can narcissism be defined in this character? Bateman is a perfectionist, a man without a visible flaw; every detail in his routine is planned perfectly. He has a strict schedule, which has helped him as a defense. In other words, his physique is his own defense.
He uses his body to soothe his inner pain, but in the inside there is a void, an empty space without any emotional content. He speaks about not being in touch with his own emotions, being inhuman or unable to feel. “I have all the characteristics of a human being: blood, flesh, skin, hair; but not a single, clear, identifiable emotion, except for greed and disgust.
"Something horrible is happening inside of me and I don't know why. My nightly bloodlust has overflown into my days. I feel lethal, on the verge of frenzy. I think my mask of sanity is about to slip.” (Mary Harron).
He is tormented on the inside but stands out as a very strong, intellectual reliable narrator. He uses some prefabricated phrases in his own speech, which are not his own thoughts or words, he picks them up from outside, like the newspaper, radio show or magazines.
Although when someone interrupts him he loses track and his inner thoughts like “murders and excecutions” instead of “mergers and adquisistions” come into surface. “There then was the patient’s suppressed aggression, the most extreme manifestation of which had thus far been his death wishes” (Reich, 1919).
When someone asks Bateman what are some important subjects that people should be worried about he responds “Well, we have to end apartheid for one. And slow down the nuclear arms race, stop terrorism and world hunger. We have to provide food and shelter for the homeless, and oppose racial discrimination and promote civil rights, while also promoting equal rights for women. We have to encourage a return to traditional moral values. Most importantly, we have to promote general social concern and less materialism in young people.” (Mary Harron)
All this discourse is empty, filled with lifeless interactions with people but ironically what is secretly being discussed is his own hate. For example “homeless, racial discrimination and equal right for women” are three subjects that eventually he destroys.
He is part of this social hierarchy of New York City, maybe a metaphor for his own megalomania and omnipotence. He hates minorities, homosexuals, poor/homeless people and women especially with some power. He introjects all his hate and in his speech he uses a reaction formation defense to present himself as this correct and centered person.
“In these patients there’s a most pronounced narcissism, emphasizing the hostility and defiance hidden behind an apparent eagerness to cooperate” (Rosenfeld, 1971).
With this type of comments he preserves a status, being on top of his other colleague who are all racists and misogynistic, Bateman in public acts carefully so he won’t stain his appearance.
What is the symbolic meaning of this characters he hates?
Paul Allen is one of Bateman’s coworker in B&B who is a big threat for him. He is the manager of the most lucrative account there is, a bright, young, handsome man who is the first character to visibly reject Bateman, by mistaking him for another associate in the firm and the only way Bateman can be near him is to pretend he is the other character.
“This identification is connected with fantasies of replacing an admired object in order to profit therefrom by taking over the admired person’s rights and properties” (Brenner, 1974).
He feels powerless and vulnerable when Paul Allen is in the room, regressing to his own infantile development, this “power figure” represents a very punitive, strong, restrictive character; his father.
“The essential task confronting such narcissistically tainted personalities is that of maintaining and restoring the infantile self esteem which derives from the reunion of a grandiose self–representation with and omnipotent object representation” (Rochlin, 1973).
This may be the primary source of his break with reality, there is a conflict between needing some affiliation to give life definition and also rebel from this predetermined life by his father’s choice. He feels he doesn’t own his life and can’t quit his job because as he says “I want to fit in”, there is a clear rejection not only from Paul Allen but also from his first object of love.
“Projection and distortions of reality follow upon this process which support the patient’s embattled sense of self and self-esteem, justify his rage and hostility, and allow him to maintain these affects in support of inner narcissistic needs” (Meissner, 1979).
Another objects he tries to exterminate are women, his relationship with women lack affect. He is resistant in being with only one person, a clear fear of being in symbiosis with his first love object and therefore abandoned afterwards. Women are the desired object but also another threat for Bateman, they are the antithesis of success and power. He manipulates women in order to make them become just an object, an emotionless being, and an accessory that fits in his life of appearances.
Women are disposable for Bateman, there’s just one object he’s directing this behavior to: his first love object. He commits violent and sexual acts in the same way, by constantly replicating the horror of his own castration. He has a fragmented idea of a woman, not entirely joined, a woman represents the “lack of’. These women are terminated by savage aggressions, using a phallic device in order to destroy by an overcompensation of his own male impotence.
“Aggression is a failure to fit between the child’s need for absolute dependence and the response of the mother, hatred serving as a barrier to protect the ego from ‘people who do not love us’” (Fonagy et al., 1993).
He has intercourse with women in a very stereotyped way, he masters the process, he even styles himself and looks at the mirror while having sex with them, a clear narcissistic focus on image (his own) and a superficial intercourse.
He degrades and devaluate women to the point that he not only kills them violently during sex but also dissects them and finally eats their remains. This is a maladaptive need to introject an object into the self. Just as a person in love wishing to become part of his lover.
“There may, in addition, be specific narcissistic dynamics that are played out in the interactions of projection and introjection themselves, over and above their reference to the objectives of self preservation” (Meissner, 1979).
This is a way for him to feel preserved and contained over the terrifying loss of an object, he releases tension by being sexually potent, misogynistic, impulsive and powerful over his victims.
“There’s a constant struggle between an irrepressible urge to destroy their objects and a desire to preserve them” (Klein, 1958).
Bateman has a fragmented ego, a lack of balance between these three structures; ego, superego and id. There is vagueness between fantasy and reality; he doesn’t consider himself real and complete.
“There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory” (Mary Harron).
He understands his inappropriate behavior and observes reality, but can’t be inside it, he can’t control himself. There is a strong disinhibition of the id, filled with depraved fantasies and sadistic violence, in this way he releases all his tension by destroying others.
While he loses a connection with reality the id becomes more noticeable. “The most primitive patients, functioning on a pre-self level, maintain hallucinations that promise discharge” (Meadow, 1989).
Patrick Bateman is a man that is devoted to get rewards from external things, money, power, fame, status and recognition. He is surrounded in the world of finance; this environment is controlling, overpowering and hyper-masculine, where presentation is the most important part of a name and therefore; success. All his energy is encapsulated in his own business card; this small paper with ink is what embellishes his persona.
His own rules aren’t differentiated from stock market rules; eliminating the enemy is his priority. Killing the other who may be more powerful is what keeps Bateman satisfied.
“My need to engage in homicidal behavior on a massive scale cannot be corrected but, uh, I have no other way to fulfill my needs.” (Mary Harron).
Bateman’s identity throughout the whole movie is unclear; he is repeatedly recognized as someone else, this may represent his own inability to know who he is. He acts aggressively towards others who threaten his inner psyche and make him feel vulnerable and shameful.
“The patient is plagued by the negative narcissistic qualities of a sense of humiliation, embarrassment and mortification” (Meissner, 1979).
Bateman imagines doing and saying violent things to people throughout the whole movie but in reality he doesn’t; it’s all in his mind. So this fantasy might be a narcissistic defense, projection as a defense mechanism takes on its character as it “reinforces and preserves the sense of grandiose entitlement around which the pathological sense of self sustains itself. (Meissner, 1979).
Patrick Bateman has built a protecting cover between his own self and the terrible truth of his own reality. This mask is, one the one hand, his acquired hallucinatory identity as a serial murderer, and, on the other, the perfect appearance as a Wall Street banker. This two different identities function as a cover to Bateman and as an opposite magnet between two forces: the identity of a serial murderer personifies what the other refuses to accept in society.
“The grandiosity serves to mask and counter there underlying negative narcissistic components” (Meissner, 1979). This is why there is so much anxiety; one’s identity causes the other to live with fear of his own existence.
Patrick Bateman has built a protecting cover between his own self and the terrible truth of his own reality. This mask is, one the one hand, his acquired hallucinatory identity as a serial murderer, and, on the other, the perfect appearance as a Wall Street banker. This two different identities function as a cover to Bateman and as an opposite magnet between two forces: the identity of a serial murderer personifies what the other refuses to accept in society.
“The grandiosity serves to mask and counter there underlying negative narcissistic components” (Meissner, 1979). This is why there is so much anxiety; one’s identity causes the other to live with fear of his own existence.
Bateman begins to be immersed more and more into insanity, his own hallucinations start to slip and his own self begins to disappear. “At the grossest and most distorted level of psychotic grandiosity, which is so frequently a dimension of paranoid thinking, the grandiose delusion one possesses special powers, is transparently compensatory and serves to redress the narcissistic imbalance reflected in feelings of worthlessness, vulnerability, weakness and inadequacy” (Meissner, 1979). When he realizes that he isn’t a serial killer, his whole identity that has projected onto the external world vanishes and his whole structure collapses.
Patrick Bateman invests most of his time and effort in improving his self-image, feeling compenstated for his underlying feelings or worthlessness. There is an unbalance in the dual force system, it seems like his own repetition compulsion is similar to what Freud (1920) explains at this “existence of a force in human nature that operates against the pleasure principle and its imperatives of human self-preservation and gratification.” In other words; death drive.
There are some formulations relating drives and primary processes that fit perfectly into Bateman’s character. “The tendency to immediate gratification (discharge of cathexis can be shifted from it’s original object in the event that these are blocked or innaccesible and can instead be discharged by a similar, or even by a rather different route.” (Freud, 1974).
Bateman portrays a person who is incapable of any delayed gratification, his urge to conceive satisfaction is so predominant that he can’t wait until an actual discharge, he has to immerse himself into his own fantasy, and treat himself as this “sexual object”, who looks at it, strokes it and fondles it till he obtains a complete satisfaction.” (Freud, 1914)
Patrick Bateman is a man with apparently no soul, he walks with this cruelty around his mouth, with a chilling smile, and perfection accomanies him everywhere. All his actions have the shallowness of his business cards and the disgusting taste of his self-awareness.
He has a blurred image throughout the movie, a depersonalization that makes his whole surroundings unnoticeable. All his crimes, being graphic and brutal are the representation of a mixture of aggressive libido and death drive joined together with repression of an overpowering superego, preventing him to realize that he is a pathetic boy who empowers himself with murders and knowledge.
“There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it I have now surpassed. My pain is constant and sharp, and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact, I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape. But even after admitting this, there is no catharsis; my punishment continues to elude me, and I gain no deeper knowledge of myself. No new knowledge can be extracted from my telling. This confession has meant nothing.” (Mary Harron).
“The destructive omnipotent parts of the self often remains disguised or they may be silent and split off, which obscures their existence and gives the impression that they have no relationship to the external world” (Rosenfeld, 1971).
Embrace our Madness
Patrick Bateman invests most of his time and effort in improving his self-image, feeling compenstated for his underlying feelings or worthlessness. There is an unbalance in the dual force system, it seems like his own repetition compulsion is similar to what Freud (1920) explains at this “existence of a force in human nature that operates against the pleasure principle and its imperatives of human self-preservation and gratification.” In other words; death drive.
There are some formulations relating drives and primary processes that fit perfectly into Bateman’s character. “The tendency to immediate gratification (discharge of cathexis can be shifted from it’s original object in the event that these are blocked or innaccesible and can instead be discharged by a similar, or even by a rather different route.” (Freud, 1974).
Bateman portrays a person who is incapable of any delayed gratification, his urge to conceive satisfaction is so predominant that he can’t wait until an actual discharge, he has to immerse himself into his own fantasy, and treat himself as this “sexual object”, who looks at it, strokes it and fondles it till he obtains a complete satisfaction.” (Freud, 1914)
Patrick Bateman is a man with apparently no soul, he walks with this cruelty around his mouth, with a chilling smile, and perfection accomanies him everywhere. All his actions have the shallowness of his business cards and the disgusting taste of his self-awareness.
He has a blurred image throughout the movie, a depersonalization that makes his whole surroundings unnoticeable. All his crimes, being graphic and brutal are the representation of a mixture of aggressive libido and death drive joined together with repression of an overpowering superego, preventing him to realize that he is a pathetic boy who empowers himself with murders and knowledge.
“There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it I have now surpassed. My pain is constant and sharp, and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact, I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape. But even after admitting this, there is no catharsis; my punishment continues to elude me, and I gain no deeper knowledge of myself. No new knowledge can be extracted from my telling. This confession has meant nothing.” (Mary Harron).
“The destructive omnipotent parts of the self often remains disguised or they may be silent and split off, which obscures their existence and gives the impression that they have no relationship to the external world” (Rosenfeld, 1971).
Embrace our Madness
References.
American Psycho. Dir. Mary Harron. Perfs. Christian Bale. Film. Lionsgate Films, 2000.
Rosenfeld, H. (1971) A Clinical Approach to the Psychoanalytic Theory of the Life and Death Instincts: An Investigation Into the Aggressive Aspects of Narcissism. Int J Psycho-Anal., 52:169-178
Freud, S. (1914) On Narcissism: An Introduction. Standard Edition. London: Hogarth Press, 14: 67-105
Meadow, P. (1989), Object relations in a drive theory model. Modern Psychoanalysis, 14: 57-74.
Meissner, W. (1979), Narcissism and Paranoia. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 15:527-538.
Fonagy,P., G.S. Moran, & M. Target. (1993), Aggression and the psychological self. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 74:471-485
American Psycho. Dir. Mary Harron. Perfs. Christian Bale. Film. Lionsgate Films, 2000.
Rosenfeld, H. (1971) A Clinical Approach to the Psychoanalytic Theory of the Life and Death Instincts: An Investigation Into the Aggressive Aspects of Narcissism. Int J Psycho-Anal., 52:169-178
Freud, S. (1914) On Narcissism: An Introduction. Standard Edition. London: Hogarth Press, 14: 67-105
Meadow, P. (1989), Object relations in a drive theory model. Modern Psychoanalysis, 14: 57-74.
Meissner, W. (1979), Narcissism and Paranoia. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 15:527-538.
Fonagy,P., G.S. Moran, & M. Target. (1993), Aggression and the psychological self. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 74:471-485
Rosenfeld, H.S. (1971), A Clinical approach to the psychoanalytic theory of the life and death instincts: an investigation into the aggressive aspects of narcissism. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 52:169-178.
Brenner, C. (1974), The Psychic apparatus. An Elementary Textbook of Psychoanalysis. New York: Anchor Press, pp. 31-56
Brenner, C. (1974), The Psychic apparatus. An Elementary Textbook of Psychoanalysis. New York: Anchor Press, pp. 31-56
Monday, January 13, 2014
Desire: Drive = Truth: Knowledge
It is said that in
ancient Greece Plato and his followers gathered one day and asked this
question; “What is a human being?” After a great deal of thought, they came up
with an answer: A human being is a featherless biped.
Everyone was happy
with this definition until Diogenes burst into the conversation with a live
plucked chicken, shouting, “Behold! I present you with a human being.”
After all this
commotion, the philosophers gathered again and refined their definition. A
human being, they said, is a featherless biped with broad nails.
This is a very
curious story that shows the kind of difficulties philosophers have been facing
all along when attempting to give abstract, general definitions of what is to
be human.
Even with no
intervention from Diogenes, it seems pretty clear that describing ourselves as
featherless bipeds does not really capture much of what it means to be human.
Heidegger was
concerned with this question also; he came to answer it in a way that was strikingly
different from many other people before him. Instead of attempting an abstract
definition that looks as human life from the outside, he attempted to provide a
much more concrete analysis of “being” from what could be called an insider’s
position.
He said that since
we exist in the thick of things (in the midst of life) if we want to understand
what it is to be human, we have to do so by looking at human life from within
this life.
If we want to know
what it means to say that something exists, we need to start looking at the
question from the perspective of those beings of whom being is an issue.
We can assume that
although cats, dogs and lions are beings, they do not wonder about their being:
they do not stress over these questions; they do not ask, “What does it mean to
say that something exists?” But humans do. So whenever we want to explore
questions of being, we have to start with ourselves, by looking at what it
means to exist.
Now, we exist through
the realms of desire, human beings are moved by inertia; controlled by time and
others desire. Perhaps, one should extend this to the very definition of
humanity: What ultimately distinguishes man from animal is not a positive
feature (speech, tool-making, reflexive thinking, or whatever), but the rise of
a new point of impossibility, the impossible-real ultimate reference point of
desire.
The often
mentioned evolutional difference between humans and apes acquires here all its
weight; when an ape is confronted with an object beyond its reach which it
repeatedly fails to obtain, it will abandon it and move on to a more modest
object (maybe a less attractive partner), whereas a human will persist in its
effort, remaining fixated by the impossible.
This must be why
the subject as such is hysterical; the hysterical subject is precisely a
subject who poses enjoyment as an absolute; he or she responds to the absolute
of pleasure in the form of an unsatisfied desire. Such a subject is capable of
relating to a term that is off limits; even more radically, it is a subject
that can only exist insofar as it relates to a term that is “out of play”.
Hysteria then, must be this elementary “human” way of installing a point of
impossibility in the absolute pleasure principle.
To understand
impossibility we must first be aware of what exactly do we want to conquer. There is a difference between part-object love
and primary object love; the former being the breast and the latter being the
mother.
This may be a good
way to explain the two-step process whereby the subject is constituted and
desire is established.
The earliest sexual object is the breast, and the earliest
source of satisfaction for
the sexual instinct is
the encounter between two partial objects, the infant's mouth and the mother's
breast.
In Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905d),
Freud explained that the breast becomes a lost object "just at the time, perhaps, when the
child is able to form a total idea of the person to whom the organ that is
giving him satisfaction belongs" (p. 222).
Loss of the object of the oral instinct is thus a precondition of access to the total person as
a possible love object. At the same time, however, this loss opens the door
to autoeroticism for
the infant as the infant assumes a complete body image. The infant, though in a
passive position, is active with regard to a part of its own body, and this
enables the infant to find a source of satisfaction that is the first
substitute for the breast.
Later the lost object becomes the "whole person". Here
separation from the object is addressed in two ways: either the child expresses
an impulse to
master the object by breaking it, casting it aside, or incorporating it in
fantasy (and so working it over in the psyche ), or the child bypasses the need for
the object by regarding it as a lost object beyond the reach of the self.
With the recognition of the absence of the object,
therefore, the child makes a transition, as a result of working over in the
psyche, to a capacity to do without the object.
When the subject does not recognize the object as lost, as
in melancholia, the object is incorporated in fantasy, where it maintains a silent existence
within the subject. Freud described this
process in "Mourning and Melancholia."
Object loss can also provoke anxiety, mourning, or pain. Do we feel those
three elements when we aren’t able to grasp an impossible object?
The difference between humans and animals is clear now,
humans experience a loss when it comes to separation and will try to fill this
void thought their life by repetitions.
I believe there’s a feeling of impossibility within
ourselves and hasn’t been completely conquered. It’s being externalized and that
is the reason we will never find a cure. But, what is this impossible? Is it a
yearning for this un-castrated being? Oneness with a supposed “perfect” object?
A phantom limb is the sensation that an amputated (castrated)
or missing (since birth?) is still attached to the body and is moving
appropriately with other body parts. The missing limb causes pain and can be
made worse by stress, anxiety, and traumatic experiences. This pain is usually
intermittent. The frequency and intensity of attacks usually declines with
time.
This may be an odd comparison but when seen this way it
appears as if we where walking with a missing limb, an imaginary extension of
ourselves that we crave for in fantasy. This appears as a constant reminder of how
loss feels and how damaging it can be to the psyche.
As Erich Fromm once said “Life is fraught with anxiety and
powerlessness because of our separation from nature and from one another.”
These feelings can be overcome through searching out and
devoting ourselves to the discovery of our own abilities and ideas, embracing
our personal uniqueness and developing our capacity to love.
Man’s main task is to give birth to himself. In doing so, he
frees himself from confusion, loneliness, and apathy.
Freud, Sigmund. (1905d). Three essays on the theory of sexuality. SE,7:123-243.
Freud, Sigmund. (1916-1917g [1915]). Mourning and melancholia. SE,14:237-258.
Freud, Sigmund. (1920g). Beyond the pleasure principle. SE,18:1-64.
Winnicott, D.W. (1962), Ego integration in child development. The
Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment. New York:
International Universities Press. pp. 56-63
Zizek, Slavoj. (1997). The Plague of Fantasies. Verso, UK.
Murray, Craig. (2010). Amputation, Prosthesis Use and Phantom Limb
pain. Springer, UK.
Fromm, Erich.(1999). Erich Fromm; His life and ideas. Rainer
Funk, NY.
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