A PsychoAnalytic Fantasy: Almost a Dream in Four Movements.

 

Once again I am using a poem by Carlos Drummond de Andrade, called "Fragilidade" to illustrate what I shall be developing. I shall quote some of his lines:

 

"This verse, only an arabesque around the essential element - inaccessible.

No longer the desire to explain, multiple words going up in a beam, the spirit that chooses, the eye that visits, the song made of depurations and depurations, the delicate shape of a crystal of thousands of pure and clean sighs.

Nothing else but an arabesque, only an arabesque.

It embraces things, without reducing them."(N.T)

 

First Movement

When we admire certain masterpieces, we feel that they strike us with an inexplicable, inaccessible and lasting fascination. When I first saw the French tapestries of the 16th. century showing the Unicorn, more than fascinated, I was intrigued and curious, trying to understand their mysterious meaning. There are two sets of these tapestries. One, at the Cluny Museum in Paris, is entitled "La Dame à la Licorne"; the other one "The Hunting of the Unicorn" is at the Cloister, in New York. I shall focus my comments on the set which is in Paris. At every visit my attraction to their beauty is renewed and the meaning I have been giving them becomes more and more clear to me. I will make some comments about the tapestries - a total of six. The first five show pictures whose meaning is easy to grasp: they represent the senses - sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste. The sixth panel- and also the most beautiful - has an inscription that is self-explanatory: "A mon seul Désir".

Esthetically speaking, the six tapestries are characterised by a common richness of elements, which are distributed on the cloth, forming an elaborate and masterful arrangement. Over a colourful background entitled "a thousand flowers" which characterises a style, a kind of island appears where the main characters are located: the Lady, the Unicorn, the Monkey and the Servant and some other animals (lion, rabbit, birds), as well as trees. The composition suggests an oneiric realm in which a woman and a mythological animal - to which extraordinary powers have been attributed since ancient times - were put together to stimulate our imagination, in an environment full of mystery and magic.

The sense of sight - which is the theme of the first panel - is represented by the Unicorn looking at itself in a mirror firmly held by the Lady. On the panel concerning the sense of hearing, the Lady plays a song on a portable organ which is given to her by another woman. On the panel about the sense of taste, there is a little monkey with a candy in its mouth while the Lady chooses another candy, among many in a basket. On the fourth panel, the little monkey, sitting on a stool, is smelling a carnation stolen from a small basket while the Lady also holds a carnation, taken from the basket which is presented to her by the Servant - who apparently is not paying any attention to what is happening around her. The sense of touch is the theme of the fifth tapestry; it is represented by the soft touch of the Lady's left hand that rests, smoothly, on the Unicorn's horn while it firmly holds a spear in the other hand. On the first and fifth panel, the Unicorn is an active participant of the allegories. On the other three panels, the Unicorn is also present, looking at the scene represented by the Lady, the Monkey and the Servant.

The sixth tapestry - the richest in details - is magnificent. The Lady puts a necklace back into a jewelry box which is held by the Servant, while the Unicorn is looking at them. The three main figures are under a tent at the top of which is written "A mon seul Désir". This necklace can also be seen in the other tapestries around the Lady's neck. So I conclude, like other scholars have done, that the Lady - due to a natural and genuine inclination - chooses to adopt a superior and grave behaviour. This inclination would be lost if, through sensorial gratifications, the Lady became a slave of her desires. Putting aside the necklace, she stresses her renunciation to passions and submits herself to her "free will " only . She goes from the sensorial reality to the psychic one.

 

Second Movement

"L'enfant et les sortileges" is an opera by Ravel with libretto by Colette. The verses of the poem are very meaningful. Melanie Klein had also used the poem as a starting point to one of her works called "Infantile Anxiety Situations Reflected in a Work of Art and in the Creative Impulse" (1929).

The story is about the vicissitudes of a six or seven-year-old boy. The boy was in his room doing his homework, sitting at his desk. Lazily, he bites the pencil, scratches his head and sings to himself: I don't want to do my lesson; I want to walk in the garden; I want to eat all the cakes in the world, to pull the cat's tail, to poke the squirrel, to pull out the parrot's feathers, but what I want most is to punish my mother. Then he is caught red-handed by his mother who opens the door and asks him if he has already finished his lesson. Realising he has done nothing, his mother gets angry and punishes him: he may not leave his room until dinner time and he will only get stale bread and tea without sugar for lunch. The boy pulls out his tongue at her and she, rudely, replies: "Watch your manners, think about your lessons and most of all, think about how sad your mother is". The boy is full of anger and has a tantrum. He screams, jumps on the furniture, breaks the cup and the teapot throwing them on the floor; he pulls the cat's tail; hurts the squirrel that, free from the cage, escapes through the window; he takes the tong from the fireplace and spreads ashes and embers over the rug; throws the kettle on the floor; tears the pendulum out of the clock. With the tong as a sword, he tears the wallpaper, splitting a couple of lovers; spills ink on the table; throws books and notebooks in the air, screaming loudly.

Suddenly, the mistreated objects become alive in a swirl that involves everything. They dance, sing and take revenge on the boy. A little man comes out of the book and starts tormenting the boy by asking him mathematical problems. All of them are now terrifying objects; they have become chasers. Frightened, the boy runs for cover in the garden that surrounds the house. But, under the moonlight, even the garden is alive and threatening: insects, frogs, squirrels, lizards and the wind conspire against the boy and attack him. The animals surround and threaten him; they discuss which one of them is going to hurt the child. Afraid, in his loneliness, surrounded by the animals, the boy stammers out "mother". One squirrel, which was going to attack him, gets hurt and goes in front of the boy, who takes his scarf off and bandages the small animal. The other animals step back; they are surprised by the child's behaviour. They see that the boy is also hurt. The animals leave repeating the word "mother" and saying that now the child is a "good boy". At this moment, the boy raises his arms and cries "mother". The sortilege is over; everything goes back to normal and the child is hugged by his mother. He is calm and protected.

This marvellous poem written by Sidonia Gabrielle Colette (1873 - 1954), describes aspects of a child's emotional life with rare sensitivity, showing a deep insight. It is a poetic description of the interaction between paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions; the initial frustration, hatred, fragmentation, paranoid anguish, acting out, hallucination, guilt and reparation. The moment in which a selected fact arises and makes everything coherent that was dispersed, is evident: the boy stammers "mother" and everything starts to be organised and go back to its place and to its normal features. The fear is substituted by guilt and making amends. The child goes back to the mother's breast.

 

Third Movement

Years ago I went through a personal ordeal that kept me bedridden for six months. For forty-five days I could not even move in bed without help and at that time I underwent three surgeries. I was helped by my family, friends and a nurse, who took very good care of me and gave me all the necessary help for survival.

During that period, I was able to observe myself in a very special way since I was alone most of the time, first in hospital and then at home. Being all by myself, my senses were sharp to what was happening around me and in my body. I needed to pay attention to the experiences that happened fast and sometimes in a surprising way. I also had a good knowledge of how my digestive and circulatory systems worked and the care I had to take with the respiratory system so as to avoid lung problems. As my health improved, six months later, I had to walk again. I needed the help of a physiotherapist who supported me and taught me to walk again because my muscles were atrophied. For the second time in my life, I realised how a baby feels in the cradle, depending on its mother's care to be fed, washed and moved. I was very aware of the correlation between the ingestion of the food and the intestinal movements and other particularities of my body. I felt lonely with my feelings and thoughts and also about the decisions I had to make (some of them very serious) about my health and life. I felt lonely in my limitations and in the consequent feelings of frustration. I was entirely dependent. I was an adult who depended on others to survive. I felt lonely while I was being taken care of. I felt frustrated, but I had to count on my possibilities of finding ways to deal with my discomfort and limitations.

Some nights, I only dozed oand others I slept and woke many times. There were nights when I did not know whether I had dreamed or had had hallucinations. It was a repetitive feeling in sensorial terms, but with different emotional nuances. Over my room window I saw a white banner, of different sizes, looking like a cloud or a mist, faintly lit up and slightly torn. It made me frightened, anxious and uneasy, but many times I felt comfortable looking at it. These feelings used to change according to the night. Awake, I tried to think about this experience: the visions and my feelings. One day, I remembered my psychoanalysis sessions by association. For a time, my psychoanalyst treated me at his house, due to health problems. I used to go there at sunset and could see the evening light coming through the curtain. At the most intense emotional moments, everything around disappeared and only a white spot remained like a mist in front of me. This memory, associated with other knowledge that I have about myself, made me think that my dreams or hallucinations were a psychoanalysis session in which, detaching myself from the sensorial experience, I could notice something more intimate and deeper; something that gave me support, although I could not put it into words. I was depending on material help, and even on people's understanding, but at the same time I was conscious of my solitude. I was conscious of a painful external reality, but in contact with myself, feeling alive and trying to work out the experiences I was going through. The white spot represented "I " and "myself".

Awareness of solitude is developed throughout a lifetime. The human being is both dependent and completely alone. Awareness of solitude and its implications of being separate, in psychic terms, as well as the feeling of personal freedom and authority puts you in contact with the more real and genuine part of yourself.

 

Fourth Movement

I am going to present clinical material from a psychoanalysis session. It is a male patient who works in commerce. He lives with his parents and has been my patient for years.

As soon as he enters my office, he says he is not happy with his work. He has a fixed salary, but it is frustrating to look for buyers. He also feels that the job does not bring him any development. Then, he tells me a dream. I will try to tell it as close as possible to what I heard. He sees himself standing, unable to move, stiff. Suddenly he hears a sound and starts to move. Then he is on the telephone telling his mother that he is alive and awake. After a pause, he says that he sees blood in his bed, a lot of blood after having intercourse with his fiancée. He thinks she has had a hemorrhage during the sexual relation. He gets anxious and starts washing the sheet: he rubs many times until the sheet is clean. It was not a difficult task. He remembers that he washed the sheet in his mother's bathroom. He associates this fact with a piece of news he had read in the newspaper about a young football player who was moving to another country with his wife and two small children. He thought about how brave that player - much younger that he - was. The man takes life seriously. The patient relates that his fiancée had told him that she had not had her period yet. It seems that she had miscalculated her fertile period and they had had sex without any contraceptives. Then he remembers that his fiancée had asked him to meet her very early in another part of town and to take her home. He answered that she could take a taxi or the subway. She complained and said that she was frustrated, but he did not feel like either waking up early or waiting for her if she were late. He felt he was being rude at that moment.

Later on, the patient says he is rude and impatient with his mother. He also says that he first masturbated in his mother's bathroom; but he always used to leave everything very clean, being very careful not to leave any evidence of his sperm.

The narration of a dream is an acceptable and understandable method in psychoanalytic communication. In any other situation, it would be strange as an expression of a present emotional experience. The interpretation and meaning of this report would vary, according to the group to which an occasional reader belongs. For example, it would depend on the knowledge that a person has of psychoanalysis, and, even so, it would depend on the sophistication and education she or he has. In many groups, this dream would be seen as a premonition of a future event, with different connotations of fortunate or unfortunate facts. A member of any scientific group could consider it an indication of stupidity. To psychoanalysts, it would not be a surprise if the dream were an indication of Oedipus material. The analysand and his psychoanalyst saw the dream as an expression of curiosity by the emotional experience that happened during the night before the psychoanalysis session and related to another emotional experience during the session. The analyst gave a personal interpretation which was shared by the analysand and was meaningful to both of them. So the dream, together with other information emerging in that session, seems to indicate that certain a - elements were constantly interlinked. Therefore, the function a (dream work a) turned the emotional experience into material from which it is possible to learn, giving a elements for dream-thoughts or for a correlation with common sense. The given interpretation was that the patient's hatred of reality makes him feel incapable of being responsible for his states of mind. In its place, a parasitic and, therefore, hallucinated liaison is established with the breast. The analysand accepted this version of his emotional experience. At that fleeting and transitory moment, the understanding of the facts was meaningful to the psychoanalyst and to the analysand. It would not be meaningful either to other individuals or to those who do not belong to the psychoanalytic group. I shall go back to certain topics inherent in this interpretation.

A question arises at this moment: why have I associated these reports with the movements of a musical composition?

Myself: since the beginning I have thought of a symphony.

I: symphony?

Myself: symphony means a set of sounds a perfect harmony. It also means a musical piece, instrumental opposed to those pieces composed for human voices. It worked as an overture to great vocal music. Will this overture communication be helpful to a transformed and wider vision of psychoanalytic work?

I: I don't know. I feel frustrated trying to pass on my experience... and I can only write about it... I notice I am imitating W. R. Bion in his book "A Memoir of the Future"

Myself: I am not responsible for the effect nor for the reactions to what I have written. I am full of doubts and uncertainties. My ideas go...

I: There is a paragraph in "Cogitations", page 9, which aroused my reflections:

"This at once raises the question, what is common sense? - a problem that has received inadequate attention because without modern psychoanalytic technique and theory, it is impossible to make any useful approach to the question, or perhaps even to realize that a most significant phenomenon lies embedded in the term, which is itself a striking emanation of common sense."

In my work I have been observing, mainly with analysands who have been in analysis for years, that some important aspects for the development of awareness of the uniqueness of each individual have emerged. The development of the intuitive process in the psychoanalyst is also important, firstly resulting from his personal analysis, and then of course, increased by his life and working experiences. Psychoanalyst and analysand are permanently confronting each other in the psychoanalysis session, each one using his own mental process in the analytic work, the result of which is a permanent interaction in the "come to be" process.

The pictorial images, suggested by the tapestries, acted as an incentive to wonder about the passage from the awareness of the facts of external reality to the apprehension of psychic reality. In the first five tapestries that present significant allegories of the five senses, we can notice that smell and touch are represented by sexual characters since these senses are non-verbal and can be better expressed by means of sexual manifestations. Taste, represented by the oral satisfaction of candy, is also a non-verbal sense and refers to sensual primitive experiences, related to breast feeding. As to hearing, the Lady playing the "organ", is a musical reference corresponding to the assumption that music, song and the sound of the words have their starting point at the baby's cry. On the panel about sight, there is a pictorial representation of the image reflected in a mirror, corresponding to the sense of sight that is mainly verbal, pictorial or ideogramatic. Pretending I do not understand, I reveal the sources of my inspiration so that after having synthesised the five senses, I can present some of the meaning of the last tapestry, which is suggested in the sentence: "according to my will"; it seems to me that the tapestry reveals that using his free will, the individual can be himself, free from any authority other than "his own will". I use the term "free will" to mean the flow of our most intimate, original, unique, and genuine way of being.

The psychoanalytic session can be a moment in which the analysand and psychoanalyst experience what each one is in this "come to be" venture.

Confronting the first and second movements of this paper, I suggest that the Kleinian theory of the "interplay" between paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions is the necessary condition for the establishment of the intuitive process in which the separated and scattered elements acquire meaning through function a. This "interplay" is possible through the apprehension of the selected fact that harmonises and joins elements which were previously scattered. As suggested by W. R. Bion, I use Colette's story for the narrative of a dream or of a myth, that is, like the selected fact that reveals that certain a elements are constantly interrelated so as to express an emotional experience. As the story develops, confrontation between facts of external reality and necessities imposed by the psyche, of oscillating from one position to another, becomes understandable.

The evolution of the analytical process is complex; elaboration of the awareness that the individual is both lonely and dependent is painful. Individuals usually think that the emotional price to be paid is too high. But when it is possible to understand the awareness of solitude, it is liberating because it means contact of the individual with what is genuine in his personality.

In the last two movements I try to represent the consciousness of being alone and what is called common sense.

Frequently, we have to consider that there are sensorial receptive cells which are located, superficially, in the organism, that receive signals from the outside world; they constitute the exteroceptive system. The interoceptive system is made up of receptive cells located inside of the body, that receive signals of changes happening in the body itself.

Common sense seems to be the result of the integration of sensations. It is a term used to express an integrating experience in which we have the feeling of certitude and of confidence that the object that I see, hear, taste, smell and touch is the same one. Common sense is a term that also expresses the harmony of the senses in the perception of reality, that is present, even if we do not come to know it. "A feeling of reality or irreality, actually follows all the sensations of my senses which would not make sense without it." The understanding of the feeling of reality is experienced as a truthful and harmonious experience.

"Common sense" also means that experiences and objects which have been understood are common to individuals that belong to the same group, even if they have different ways of observation. The members of the group also have in common the same context in which the observation happens.

I think we cannot separate understanding of common sense from that of intuition. The perception of reality depends on the particular conditions of each individual and it can be associated to the elaboration of elements which, in my opinion, are related: separation, personal authority, awareness of solitude, a function, and curiosity.

These elements of psychoanalytic investigations are elements and configurations which are understood in a fleeting and transitory way, and which depend on the continuous oscillation of the human being between a squizoid-paranoid and a depressive position and vice-versa.

The process of comparing the above-mentioned movements resulted from an attempt to create a narrative through visual images that could lead the reader to understand some experiences that I have made in the psychoanalytic field. I had no intention to lead anyone to conclusions but merely to relate what happens during the psychoanalytic session.

I: do you think I have passed on an experience?

Myself: I don't know yet; possibly not. I think that it is difficult to pass on a "real inner meaning", and maybe it is only possible to have contact with myself and even so, only in a fleeting and imperfect way.

I: Have I tried to be "myself" in this paper?

Myself: curiosity, when preserved, stimulates the search for what is unknown, but to agree that in a psychoanalysis the unknown (as in every scientific investigation) is relevant, results in an emotional turbulence since the duality between "public opinion" (or the group's) and free will is always present.

 

II - COUNTERPOINTS

First Counterpoint:

I quote Bion in his book "Cogitations"12 :

"Drugs are substitutes employed by those who cannot wait.
The substitute is that which cannot satisfy without destroying the capacity for discrimination of the real from the false.
Whatever is falsely employed as substitute for the real, is transformed thereby into a poison of the mind."

I consider psychoanalysis as a scientific activity and therefore real, practiced by two people who are interested in acquiring further knowledge of the other’s psychic reality - the patient’s. Consequently, we can postulate that there is a psychoanalytic "field" which has favourable means to make the psychic reality discernible, and it is about those means that I would like to make some considerations. The main access to this reality is intuition. The intuitive ability of the psychoanalyst is developed by his personal analysis, and becomes a real skill, growing with psychoanalytic work. The patient’s intuition can also grow along the work, but analyst-patient confrontation vicissitudes will fall into his intuitive ability, propitiating conditions for disturbance areas of different strains to emerge, depending on circumstances.

 

SECOND COUNTERPOINT:

Comprehension and Common Sense

The work discipline praised by W. R. Bion is well known among psychoanalysts. Comparing the paper "Notes on memory and desire13 " from 1967 and chapter IV from the book "Attention and Interpretation"14 from 1970, which are papers that deal with this discipline in the psychoanalytic clinical observation, we notice that in the latter there is, in my opinion, a very important insert: the discipline is expanded to comprehension and sensorial perception. As a result, the causes of opacity in psychoanalytic work, are: memory, desire and comprehension. Failure to develop this discipline takes us to a misleading observation of the facts, by compromising the intuitive sharpness, which is an essential element for the practice of psychoanalysis. This discipline can be stretched beyond the consulting room and practiced in everyday life, whenever possible, in the observation of psychic phenomena that make up the life of all human beings.

Memory and desire have been object of more study by psychoanalysts. Now I would like to focus on comprehension and comprehensibility, related to the individual and to his relationships with the group.

I propose to substitute the word ‘drugs’ for comprehension in my previous quotation. Proposing a subject implies that we have some knowledge about this subject which enables us to propose it. Therefore, I think that it is in the distance between comprehension and incomprehension that we can theorise something that takes us far enough from what we already know.

I will use Shakespeare’s tragedy "King Lear", an action play, to exemplify the relation between narcissism and socialism, as well as its implications in common sense. Lear’s initial proposition to his daughters introduces a radical change in the habits of the group and in the way business is run in the kingdom. In order to be favoured with the distribution of the territories, the daughters should expose themselves to the King’s discretion, answering a personal and intimate question which compromises the objectivity of the proposition. The new order, on behalf of King Lear’s advanced age, seems to be a result of the supremacy of the "principle of pleasure!"; Regan and Goneril, the older daughters, represent greediness, envy, possessiveness. Kent and Cordelia, the youngest, represent common sense. The King’s proposition upsets the group order. As a result, Cordelia is excluded from the group, disinherited and repudiated. The older daughters are controlled by the father’s authority, answering the proposed question, exactly the way he wanted to hear it. The disavowal and suffering of Cordelia and Kent are a result of the failure to submit to the authority established by the social group, which implies sacrificing one’s own narcissism.

Common sense seems to be a function of the individual’s relationship with his social group. Cordelia and Kent become a threat to the group from the moment they oppose the new social order, creating a threat to the stability of the group. Their free will and well-being become less important to the survival of the group and its ideals. The conflict is more explicit when Cordelia’s individuality becomes abominable to the King and his older daughters. The group authoritarism tries to impose its group values on Cordelia, i.e. filial love and fidelity, with promises of wealth, power and benevolence from the group; if controlled by the group, she would be rewarded with taking part in the group communion, in the collective hallucination that manipulates emotions and, finally, would share the promise of the leader’s protection, as well as of immortality in a future life.

It is noticeable throughout the evolution of the plot that Cordelia feels the group’s growing pressure on her. In order to keep her self-esteem and her individuality, feeling distressed, considering that she has to face the fear the group arouses in her, she breaks with the group’s authority. The same thing happens to Kent. The King, failing to meet Kent’s sensible reflections and unable to wait, extinguishes his ability to discriminate between real and false. Frustrated, blinded by hate, Lear acts. He threatens Kent with death, disinherits Cordelia and hands her over to her candidates. The King of France thinks over the events and takes a sensible action, according to his feelings. Cordelia becomes his wife and Queen of France. Thinking is now a prelude of sensible action.

I conclude that the experience with groups has shown that every free individual positioning arouses hostility among the group to which the person belongs. Social well-being imposes itself as the goal and the person is now secondary for the survival of the group.

W.R. Bion introduces an important change in the processes of thought research and its disorders. Now, the focus is given to the development of thoughts and to an ‘instrument’ to deal with thoughts. The development of thoughts and of the instrument to think is closely related to the ability to tolerate frustrations. Life’s experiences always show that nothing that we live is as we would like it to be, which creates a constant source of dissatisfaction, until we are able to recognise that frustration is the result of the very apprehension of reality, in the broad sense of the word: internal and external reality.

Omniscience emerges as an alternative to learning through living the emotional experience, in individuals with little tolerance towards frustration. In clinical observation, the development of omniscience emerges through statements whose meaning is very distant from facts and does not resist the correlation with what belongs to common sense.

In the psychoanalytic relationship, patients try to encourage memory, desire and comprehension; they also hope for cure, revelations or possession of knowledge; those are, however, attempts to destroy the link, distorting the vertex of the work: the unknown. Those psychoanalysts who cannot bear frustration are not able to agree that it is the unknown that has relevance in the whole analysis; they escape from the real work, using memory, desire and comprehensibility of the available material. The harmful aspect of comprehension and comprehensibility originates in the minds of the observers and the results also befall on their minds, particularly affecting their intuitive ability.

Each moment of insight is a unique, singular, peculiar moment that arises only once in a lifetime. It is true to state that every life is a succession of evanescent and transitory moments. Every individual who aims self-knowledge, in his solitude, tries this succession of transitory emotional experiences that bring within themselves elements of other moments, transformed by mental process. Quoting Herman Hesse15, we can state that "we all have the viscosity and the eggshell of a primitive world". This is comparable to Freud’s statement in "Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety": "There is much more continuity between intra uterine life and earliest infancy than the impressive caesura of the act of birth would have us believe.16 "

In my opinion we are called by the reality of facts to make decisions. Decisions always stir anxieties. The decision for which we, psychoanalysts, are responsible is to keep the vertex of the unknown in research. This decision involves the psychoanalytic community, the group and the individual. If we return to my previous initial proposition about the tragedy of King Lear, we may think that all intimate decisions arouse a reflection about oneself, about the facts of life and about the correlation with the group among which we live. The decision process is a function of the maturing process.

I think that in the maturation process we must take into account the elaboration of hatred to doubt and to incertitude, as manifestations of hostility to reality. I believe that this hatred encourages the desire of comprehension, making it feasible for theories about life to emerge. It is also opposed to learning that results from emotional experiences, whenever intuitively understood and worked through the mental process. It is possible to suppose that there is a continuous hostility between rationality and the intuitive process, between rational thinking and common sense.

On the other hand, we cannot fail to also consider the hatred felt by the group towards individuality and its consequences on narcissism and common sense. The psychoanalyst must constantly elaborate this conflict, always addressing what is the base of himself and the tool of his work, that is, his mental process. It is never too much to insist that in every psychoanalytic work the analyst is there as a whole, acting together with the patient’s mind, using his own mind.

 

Third Counterpoint:

Silence, Solitude, Isolation

 

There is an experience that leads to silence in which human beings feel the unity of life"
(John Castermane)17

I postulate that being alone, aware of one’s own solitude is one aspect of the individual’s maturating process. This awareness is linked to the elaboration of the individual’s separation and to the development of his personal authority that leads to the full exercising of free will and freedom of being. These factors form an inner experience, through which we go in different moments of life.

In the isolation of the consulting room, by keeping the work discipline, the analyst goes through the interior experience of solitude and isolation, able to express it as the "silence" in which he perceives being himself, in his genuine way of being, available for work. When it is possible, during the session, the patient may go through similar experiences in which he learns his own psychic skills, coming to terms with what he is. Those are fleeting and transitory moments of insight, in which "silence" expresses the consonance with what we are; it is an unutterable experience. Moments of dispersion follow transitoriness of the insight experience; we can say that experience is built up and falls apart; however, it is a real and personal experience, different from the usual one. These interior experiences, through the action of the a function, turned themselves into material that can be stored and that is consistent with the setting-up of an unconscious memory, becoming part of the process of mental growth. As a result, the progressive integration of the factors pointed out leads to the accomplishment of a transformation into being, where the individual can be himself, deeply living his possibilities and limitations. This is the "silence" of being himself.

Another state of mind, which I have been studying, is what I call "prodigality", I try to differentiate it from generosity, because I use the word "prodigality" in a way that implies a certain exaggeration of the condition of being prodigal or generous, an exaggeration parallel to the psychoanalytic experience where studied factors seem enlarged and, sometimes, exaggerated.

Prodigality would be a complement to the helplessness of the psychoanalytic pair confronted with the unknown; it would be the factor to encourage the analyst’s trust, of feasible alternatives, even when not known; it would permit dealing with the patient’s possibilities, without manipulation and interference, making it possible for each patient to be himself. It reveals itself by the willingness to actively participate in the psychoanalytic experience, without expectations to recover, improve, change, living only the experience of the session. The analyst’s "prodigality" involves a real participation, in which his experiences of life, analysis and culture are available in his work. By this we can assume that psychoanalytic conversation is a real dialogue, enriched by the necessary elements for a broader vision of life and psychic reality to be offered for the patient’s consideration. I don’t think that an individual can become an analyst if he doesn’t have sound culture and knowledge provided by his experience. The offered psychoanalysis must be put to service the patient’s life. As for patients, prodigality corresponds to being able to use what is offered, contributing with his intuition and associative current and being able to use the opportunities of the psychoanalytic process.

The psychoanalyst can help the patient be aware that his contribution can be enhanced. Elaboration of greediness and envy, providing for gratitude to arise, especially gratitude for available personal resources, is an important element for the analytical process. The results from greediness and envy lead the patient to be in a position to deny the possibility to contribute, setting limits to the associative current and his intuition; thus, desire of satisfaction, improvement, possession of knowledge etc. prevail. If this happens, psychoanalytic relationship is permeated by the patient’s anxieties, his feelings of depression and guilt increased by eager and envious hatred. Failing to appropriately perceive the phenomenon encourages omnipotent and omniscient feelings in the psychoanalyst; a collusion of characteristics that destroys the psychoanalytic process may be established. It’s imperative that the psychoanalyst knows and has lived such experiences in his own psychoanalysis, in order to perceive these vicissitudes in his own patients. The broad perception of the task that is entailed in psychoanalysis enables the psychoanalyst to become a real person.

The psychoanalyst must also dream the material offered by the patient. Whenever the analyst resists to introject the patient’s material, anxiety and frustration arise. By becoming persistent, these are a factor that leads the analyst to the comprehension of the associations, or to the explanations of the session events. If the psychoanalyst does not dream, he does not transform the present emotional experience into a elements, right for the communication.

Finally, I think that W.R.Bion’s last book, "A Memoir of the Future" has encouraged in me the need to dream my emotional experiences; to be in touch with the text propositions, so suggestive of visual images, has evoked my emotions and life experiences, which have already been worked on and transformed by dream work a into dream images available to myself and to my communication.

 

ABSTRACTS

 

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