What can we do with nothing? Â We try to fill it, with a feeling or a word. Â We try to turn it into a thing.
We look outwards, and we see things. Â Things hit us, they are perceived by us. Â We look inwards, and we see nothing except fantasy objects
What do we do with nothing? Â We call it ânothingâ.
What are we talking about here, if not a terrible confusion between the signifier and the signified? Â A confusion between thoughts and things? Â We take âthingsâ for granted, take it for granted they there are there.
âIntolerance of a no-thing, taken together with the conviction that any object capable of a representative function is, by virtue of what the sane personality regards as its representative function, not a representation at all but a no-thing itself, precludes the possibility of words, circles, points and lines being used in the furtherance of learning from experience. Â They become a provocation to substitute the thing for the no-thing, and the thing itself as an instrument to take the place of representations when representations are a necessity as they are in the realm of thinkingâ.
People ask, why are you (still) having therapy? Â You cannot sociably say âI donât knowâ to this question. Â So we say something else â anything. Â The something else is our symptom â a cover for our analysis. What if we dispense with this cover? Â We say something like, âI donât know why I am in analysisâ or âI am in analysis because I donât know know who I amâ or âI am in analysis because I have made a fuck-up of my lifeâ.
So why have you made such a fuck-up? Â I could tell you, but if I did, I would have to give a reason, a cause. Itâs because my father left when I was young. Â Itâs because my mother held me too close. Â Itâs because I didnât think my father loved me. Â Itâs because my mother loved me too much. Â Thatâs why I donât understand how to be a man. Â Thatâs why I canât stand up to certain people. Â Thatâs why I flirt to get my own way (which never works). Â Etc etc.
This is very nice: a rationalisation of my own sense of persecution. Â Rather that than the awful sense of loss I would feel if I couldnât name the reason, if I couldnât be a little paranoid.