AFTER YESTERDAY'S CRASH.

[First, I wrote this in a flurry and have not proof-read or edited any of it. I may or may not in the future. It’s not my clearest writing, or most accessible, but it is what it is. Regardless, I hope to write a follow-up more explicitly connecting these ideas with radical left and radical right politics in the future. It was my motivation for writing this, admittedly, and it’s what I’m analyzing throughout even if mostly implicitly.]

I was thinking about this dialectic: the hysterical desire to reside within the undifferentiated symbolic, versus the obsessive paranoiac's desire to reside in the imaginary space of absolute and fundamental difference. If you notice, they are inversions of one another such that they can almost be seen as exactly the same.

They are secretly infatuated, in love, with one another. The hysteric represses their envy of the paranoiac's claims to absolution, seemingly-indefatigable structure and authority, whereas the paranoiac represses their envy of the hysteric's claims to radical freedom, their seemingly-hedonistic relationship to pleasures and their appearance of boundless liveliness. These differences, though, are surprisingly superficial. At their core, they share the same sort of manic grandiosity and claims to having a privileged relationship to truth and reality. It's only the directions of their gaze that separate them; they are both bound in the same way to the fundamental structure of gaze itself. Jacques Lacan's conception of the 'four discourses' is also very important here, particularly the discourses of the Master and the Hysteric, unsurprisingly and respectively relating to our paranoiac person and our hysterical person, but I don't dare wade into those waters just yet.

In far more traditional psychoanalytic terms, the hysteric identifies more with the position of the Oedipal mother and the paranoiac with the Oedipal father. This is why in culture you tend to see obsessive paranoiacs represented by men (e.g. the leaders of the alt-right) and hysterics by women (e.g. the moral leaders of so-called social justice movements). But of course this is more complicated; women and men are alike involved in both spaces. Women can be paranoiac and men can by hysteric. This fact exactly belies my earlier point that the difference between these two "forms" is relatively superficial. Likewise, a male child can primarily identify with their mother and vice versa for a female child and their father. The increasing allowance of the stories of transgender people to be spoken and heard in the culture has done a lot to teach us about this fact. But the strong tendency towards the original identifications, I argue, will never be eliminated because of the biological fact of sexual difference and the primacy of image in psychic development. In other words the imaginary aspect of identification is, at least from my perspective, an a priori structural truth: the experience of seeing one's body, in particular one's genitals, and using it as a point of reference to determine what is "like me" and "not like me" is fundamental. In my understanding, the occurrence of this thought by the child is what Lacan calls the "mirror stage," with the word "mirror" referring to the essential image-based quality of it. This is all derived from the sexual-reproductive fact of a human beings creation from the sexual encounter between human beings, one with a vagina and one with a penis. Even artificial insemination, for example, is only a distancing from this man-woman reproductive act, it is not an elimination of it.

It might be accurate to say this, then: the paranoiac is more consciously obsessed with the "I am like X" while the hysteric is more consciously obsessed with the "I am not like Y". But again, and Lacan explores at length the linguistics behind this, and expression of "I am like X" or "I am not like Y" is existentially dependent on its hidden opposite. Any declaration of "I am like X" has as its supplement the simultaneous implication of "I am not like Y". This is why Lacan talks about the sign as effectively empty; in other words, signs do not ever actually make reference to some signified meaning. Their appearance to do so is illusory. They only come into meaning in reference to an infinite chain of other signifiers. The best way of understanding this is thinking about how we understand words. Words are always defined in terms of other words. And to understand the words that express any definition of a word, one must define those words contained in the definition, and so one must begin again the process, and it repeats infinitely. Words are defined in terms of words which are defined in terms of other words and so on for infinity. This is why Lacan used the image of the Möbius strip, because any movement along it always returns back to the original point. There is no beginning and there is no end, the only time there is one or the other is when we as subjects imagine where it is.

However abstract this all sounds, it really is not. Again it all develops from the very simple point of the relationship between the child and its primary caregiver. We call this person the mother and associate them with femininity, but in this context the 'mother' is primarily unconcerned with someone's having a vagina; this only gains importance later when the child sees their body as a sign and looks for ways to determine who is "like" or "not like," again primarily with reference to the image of their genitals.

Talking about "later" does presuppose an earlier something, an experience of the child that is before they even realize they are separate from their mother (the word mother, which has messy cultural connotations, is being used for brevity and I prefer not to abstract it to the level of mathematic symbols in order to escape these trappings, which some writers have done with much resultant confusion. There is a long meta-conversation about "theories of theory" that I am avoiding for now.) Whether or not this experiential path actually exists or existed is beside the point, because it's experienced as real. Lacan crosses over here with object relations theory by assuming the primordial experience of an absolute unity between mother and child that is eventually disrupted when it learns it is separate from its mother; in other words, that I am not the only thing my mother desires, I cannot fulfill all her needs, and so on. This is where the Oedipal arrangement comes in because, traditionally, this is where the father enters the scene. But again like the mother, the father here isn't necessarily a biological human entity: it's a symbolic position, more accurately expressed in the abstract as "a something other than me that my mother desires." It is often a real person, but more importantly it is an imagined "thing" by the child. A series of powerful questions and anxieties stems from here: what does this Other have that I don't? What about me is like this Other and not like them? What do I lack (an important word for Lacan)? And most importantly: how can I be more like this Other in order to win my mother's love back, in order for this to return to how they were? In other words, what stems from here is desire. And the way we navigate desire, of course, is vis-a-vis language. The child learns to speak in order to obtain what is outside themselves, what they can't satisfy on their own, that missing "it" that they discovered when they noticed their mother's eyes look away from them wantingly. Lacan calls that "it" the objet petite a, the imaginary object-cause of desire that promises us a return to the state of oneness. In other words, it is the fantasy of immortal true love. It might also be called death drive.

To return to the ideas of the hysteric and paranoiac positions, they are both different ways of desiring. As such, they are both defined by the same structure of desire itself (as born out of the above origin myth). They are different ways of responding to a profound sense of lacking something. The hysteric introjects the lack and over-identifies with it, seeing it and producing it everywhere, seeing any authoritative claims to "wholeness" as devilish lies. The paranoiac projects the lack and under-identifies with it, seeing themselves as a true whole that is besieged by the terrorism of those who are themselves creating the lack out of nothing but envious violence. In Oedipal terms, the hysteric says, "mother is right I do lack but so does the father" while the paranoiac says, "mother is right I do lack but the father doesn't though I can become him." In a sense then the difference between the two positions can be seen as a difference between how one relates to "the Other who mother desires," and why there are gender-specific tendencies towards either position. The latter over-identifies with the father's authority, and the former under-identifies with it. In truth, though, both are obsessed with what the father is or is not, and what the father has or does not have. They are both obsessed with accurately locating and managing their relationship to the "it," and more directly, what it means for what they themselves have or do not have. This is precisely what Lacan is referring to when he famously said, "Desire ... is always the the desire of the Other."

[Okay I’m finally just putting this shit out there to be read or not read, liked or disliked. And I have the privilege of being abroad in Spain at the moment (among many many other privileges that are far more than just momentary), so probably don’t read if you are rightfully still being-with the sadness and the horror of it all. And if you don’t want to hear another straight white dude’s thoughts about an event that will harm me far less than any other demographic, nothing could be more understandable. I also recognize that at moments like this speaking of the distant future, especially in an academic sort of discourse, or even about hope and optimism seems inappropriate if not invalidating. I fundamentally wrote this for myself because writing, and of course my forever-favored ego defense of intellectualization, helps me to cope. The only reason I am sharing it is the off chance that it helps anyone else cope too.]

Trump voters aren’t “evil,” or “bad” people. Their explicit and/or implicit racism/homophobia/sexism/etc are merely manifest symptoms, albeit horrifying, and if psychoanalysis says anything of value it’s that it’s important to look beyond the symptoms, at the unconscious suffering they’re generated by. That suffering needs to be heard, to be made conscious, if the Left wants to be relevant. 

Moralism is not a viable political platform because it ignores the real class oppression of poor whites, not to mention all other working class identities, affected by neoliberal policies (that Hillary Clinton has no doubt been a figurehead for). It refuses to articulate a progressive alternative for them, all but forcing them into the anti-globalization right and the paranoid vitriol it spouts. Bernie Sanders was a start, but as we know he got squashed in a series of profoundly arrogant moves by the Democratic establishment. I hope that they now realize that his economic politic is absolutely necessary for the future of progressivism in America. Hopefully politicians like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren will gain prominence in the party, and even more importantly, hopefully other and younger politicians will join them. 

I know the argument I’m now about to make is a difficult one, considering the unimaginable damage to so many vulnerable people that will likely occur over the next four years. I also am acutely aware that I am speaking it from a relatively safe place considering my dominant identities, but the more I think about it, the more I imagine that Hillary and her general support of neoliberal economics, despite her progressive social platforms, would only have engendered more right-wing populism in the long term because the Left would continue to feel it could ignore the consequences of neoliberalism on the (white) working class. Perhaps the only positive of Trump’s victory is that it demands that the Left fundamentally re-think itself. It demands a "revaluation of all values," to paraphrase Nietzsche whose work On the Genealogy of Morals is perhaps more relevant than today amidst the dominance of left-wing moralism and impotent identity politics. If it doesn’t, we will have eight years of President Donald Fucking Trump and not “just” four.

And again, if there’s anything I have learned from psychotherapeutic work, it’s that the the incredible pain of traumatic events also, paradoxically, can provide openings for something truly and revolutionarily new because they demand something to be responded to; the intensity of horrible feeling they produce makes apathy and inaction impossible. Suffering, or to use the more clinical term ‘anxiety,’ is the prime mover of the human spirit. I hope, and honestly believe, that a beautiful new will come, though likely (and terribly) not until after some further horrifying times for people who aren’t me: who aren’t white, well-off, male, cisgendered, American or EU citizens, and so on and so on. But here I recall the Wheel of Fortune card in the tarot: it’s in fact when you’ve reached the bottom of the wheel that you have the most cause for optimism. Why? Because from there the only direction is up.

The Other with a capital O refers primarily to the image the child has of its caretakers—mother and father—before the child realizes that such an Other is barred, i.e., the Other does not have the power to determine the fate of the subject. The Other of the child, like all human subjects, is above all a speaking being, that is, he or she is submitted to the rules and regulations that make society possible.

...

The experience of being the object of the Other's desire of course implies that the subject registers that he could also fail to occupy that position. In Lacanian terms, this translates as: the child must come to grips with the fact that the mother is lacking, and that something or someone is able to fill that lack. This is why Lacan says that castration is the ability to recognize the lack in the (m)Other. The mirror stage, in that sense, differs from Winnicott's idea of mirroring. The mirror stage includes three agents, not two. The child views himself as the object of his mother's desire and through her loving gaze is able to identify with the perception of himself that he imputes to his mother. Yet such a recognition depends on a mother who conveys to her child the sense that her desire exceeds the pleasure that she derives from the sight of her baby. In other words, the child must "work" to capture his or her mother's attention. Yet such a seductive strategy requires that the child has figured out to a certain extent what it is that the mother lacks. What is the nature of her desire? Where does she go to get what she wants?

(Feher Guervich, 1999)

This is precisely the difference between not only object relations theory (pre-Oedipal or ”two-person psychology”) and Lacanian theory (Oedipal or ”three-person psychology”), but also classical Freudian theory and even cognitive-behavioral theory, which posits the importance of conscious individual cognition and has no substantial interest in affective relationships and their histories).

The distinction between “two-person psychology” and “three-person psychology” is best elaborated on by making reference to their perception of the most fundamental relationship structure and history that human beings are bound to. For the former it is the mother-child relationship, and all of our relationships afterwards (via the phenomenon of transference) are ways of re-experiencing, re-living, and, in the words of Melanie Klein, making reparation for. This is the story of a child who idealized their mother as a divine savior and life-giver, only to be disappointed and enraged by her inevitable failure to live up to these impossible standards. It’s the story of a child who so cannot tolerate the idea that the idealized mother image never existed, so forces themself to imagine that the “good” and “bad” mother are two separate beings altogether, freeing them up to guiltlessly attack the “bad” and love the “good”. It is also the story of a child who eventually realizes that the “good” and “bad” mother are actually the same mother, and must confront their guilt upon realizing all the horrors the committed (in reality or, most prominently, in fantasy) upon the “good” mother who they mistook for the “bad”. It’s a story of realizing “good” and “bad” are one in the same, they work in dialectical tandem with one another, and the psychic consequences of such a profound conflict.

For the latter, it is the mother-child-father relationship, the Oedipal triangle that Freud imagined but in very different form. This is the story of a child who also idealized their mother as the perfect partner: someone their presence absolutely fulfilled, and someone whose presence absolutely fulfilled them. It’s similarly the story of a child who in a moment almost outside of time realizes that this fantasy tale of absolute, fulfilling partnership isn’t reality, and that their mother has desires the child cannot fulfill, and summarily, that the mother herself cannot then completely fulfill their own desire of being for someone else everything that they desire. And instead this is also the story of a child who looks outside of the mother-child duo to find out how to return to the original, idealized fantasy; and in doing so, the child recognizes that the other whom the mother desires is the father. The latter is the story of a child who begins a life of struggling with the mystery of what the father has that he does not (for Freud and especially Lacan, this is what the symbol of ‘the phallus’ represents), and how to get it or become it in order to win back the mother’s affection and return to their original union. It’s a story of hopefully, eventually, recognizing that the father himself doesn’t fulfill the mother either, the father never did, and of recognizing that one has been yearning for a reality that never really existed (in Lacan’s terms, “traversing the fantasy” and coming to terms with the infinitely-deferred structure of jouissance, or in simplified terms, enjoyment).

The Lacanian story is much more complex; it is literally more dimensional with the re-introduction of the figure of the father (who Freud, in my opinion, over-emphasized). Object relations theory reacted to Freud by raising the question of the mother and theorizing her, but in doing so over-marginalizes the role of the father. Lacan’s theory performs a delicate, dialectical balancing act of seeing the child, mother, and father, as inextricably linked in a substantive triangle. I say “substantive” because under the surface Freud’s original configuration of the Oedipus triangle was in truth quite flat in shape, fundamentally being an exploration of the child-father relationship with the mother playing only a supporting role. Of course many Freudians would disagree, likely even Lacan himself who proclaimed to know what Freud really meant, thus famously self-titling his theories as a proper “return to Freud”.

In my right hand, I hold the world in a death grip.

In my left hand, I hold my right and I am squeezing it until it bleeds.

If both hands are demanding to cause harm, I worry I won’t be able to write anymore. I worry my only power will be in my ability to shed tears.

I worry that I will loose so many I will drown, and all that will be left over are my two hands, locked and broken above the surface like relics of an ancient civilization.

Written by John Steiner, psychoanalyst:

As a brief summary: in the paranoid-schizoid position anxieties of a primitive nature threaten the immature ego and lead to a mobilisation of primitive defences. Splitting, idealisation and projective identification operate to create rudimentary structures made up of idealised good objects kept far apart from persecuting bad ones. The individual’s own impulses are similarly split and he directs all his love towards the good object and all his hatred against the bad one. As a consequence of the projection, the leading anxiety is paranoid, and the preoccupation is with survival of the self. Thinking is concrete because of the confusion between self and object which is one of the consequences of projective identification (Segal, 1957).

What is the effect on the meaning of our bodies as we increasingly quantify them? What do we accomplish by our attempts to evaluate our bodies via (supposedly) scientific measures? We can now even step onto an electronic platform or wear a small computer on our wrists and immediately receive various statistics about our physical composition, none of which are vacated of social and cultural values that judge the “healthiness” of our bodies and, subsequently, our associated choices of daily living.

We live in an age of an unprecedented and thoroughly normalized reduction of our bodies and lifestyles to numerical assessment. As a result we are offered an infinity of (consumer) interventions aimed at helping us achieve, or rather perpetually attempt to achieve, ownership of a ‘Healthy Body.’

“Choose your ingredients wisely, and spend your free time working! Avoid leisure at all costs, or if you absolutely must sit still, be sure to at least allocate some percentage of that time to guilty ruminations and somatic anxiety.”

Is this a cultural neurosis? It appears to me as another way of chasing the horizon, so to speak. Of chasing immortality, even if we consciously shrug off such a dramatic reading as nonsensical. If nothing else, what does the dream of owning a Healthy Body (the alienation implied here is intentional) offer if not an escape from suffering and a deferral of death?