Crisis

Briefly, I want to talk about what brings a person to crisis -- specifically a narcissistic crisis. I intend to talk about chora, borrowing liberally from Plato here. The chora has everything to do with repression, where our drives hold sway, and serves as the receptacle of, first and earliest, the prohibition placed on the maternal body. (comment 1) There is a dichotomous process at work here, one that I believe is "centripetal" -- it wants to situate the ego at the center of a system of objects. When the process reverses, or becomes "centrifugal," it begins to produce meaning: to the Other, language, speaking. The beginning of the speaking being, and his first steps toward an eventual narcissistic crisis; that is, when the speaking being encounters too much strictness on the part of the Other OR when he confronts the lapse (or collapse) of the Other. (comment 2) Abjection in this case can be (is perceived as) the loss/death of the ego and its transformation from loss/death to rediscovery/rebirth. Once new borders are formed, and the I is resurrected within (in opposition to) the re-formed Other, the fight begins again to maintain the borders of self... (comment 3)

Narcissism: the beginning, the real

Today I want to explore the earliest stages of life, after we experience the first, ultimate separation from the mother, that is, birth. I feel quite strongly that there is a lot going on in the mind of the infant (0-6 months) that theory has ignored. Surely there are some formative things going on in that tiny, fuzzy head that carry over into other stages of development that have been thoroughly explored (like Lacan's mirror stage and Freud's oral stage). (comment 1)

I am thinking of this term "primal repression" and its rather confused definition in Freud's theory. Since I see a close connection between motherhood/the maternal, and this early stage of human development, I will explore it and its relation to the abject.

Now for a definition of primal repression: first, it has to do with the speaking being...even early in our development as people we are, in some way, haunted, dogged by the Other (in very early stages, by the mother who both holds us close and rejects us in our first experience of jouissance) and fascinated (yet horrified by) our ability to separate, reject. In this case, what is the abject? How about this: the abject as the "object" of primal repression... (comment 2) Primal repression differs from the clinical term "repression" as it is commonly used in that this early repression comes before language -- because...why? Because significance is inherent in the human body. (comment 3)

Abjection at this stage comes about (and remains with us the rest of our days) because of the initial separation we experience -- a space becomes demarcated.... the abject separates from what will become a subject and its objects. As we develop an ego, as we define the I, the self, as we begin to recognize our boundaries, our limits, we explore this primal repression (which replaces "the unconscious"). (comment 4) In the early stage of life, we are closest to the real (that is, where we experience nothing but need without language). Where theory falls short is when approaching the maternal in relation to the real, and how a new being interprets what he experiences when interacting with the mother. The mother occupies a unique position -- that of primary provider (as the locus of all desires/needs) of satisfaction/life. But she is also the one who teaches the new being language, thus tearing him (violently?) away from the real. (comment 5)

What I learned in psychoanalysis

I have always been fascinated by language -- how we use it, how we read and understand it, and how we acquire it in the first place. It is this abiding interest in language that draws me to psychoanalysis. It is why I entered into psychoanalysis myself. But what did I learn there?

First: Transference. That was my ultimate goal -- I had to be part of it, had to experience it fully and completely before I could really understand it and apply it to my own work.

Second: motherhood, the maternal, my relationship to my own mother. These things I had to grasp in a way I never could before...

These are the most important things I learned in psychoanalysis, and I intend to use them fully in this book.

There are several things about motherhood, about mothers, that I need to acknowledge before I write any more: 1. we should trust mothers -- they have a wisdom we should be learning from and believing in; 2. we need to recognize what mothers contribute to civilization as the first teachers, and best ones, especially when it comes to language acquisition; and 3. we ought to celebrate the wonder that is the mother -- an individual who both separates herself from her children but also loves them and teaches them to communicate with the wider world. Feminists don't think or talk about this person much, and we keep her down in wider discourse (for example, in the popular representation of mother as housekeeper/"homemaker") -- if only feminists would embrace and praise her for the miraculous things she does, with no prejudice: sons and daughters both receive these gifts from the mother. Without them, where would we be? (comment 1)

When I learned about psychoanalysis, then went through it myself, I learned about jouissance, how it affects the I.

The problem with jouissance, with simple enjoyment without desire, is that for the object of jouissance, there exists no understanding of why or how it(I) can please the Other. Unlike with desire, where I understand what attracts the Other to me, jouissance is a mystery and profoundly disturbing. This fear, this sort of primal disturbance, brings on abjection. The Other, with the unknowing help of the self, (I am thinking that this is the creation of the "alter ego") creates a topology of catastrophe (comment 2) that leads to the existence of the abject.