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)