-Between Oblivion and Memory: a way for the Future-
Dialogue between culture, Indian culture and psychoanalysis, starting from W.Bion
By Luca Caldironi
Salomon saith, There is no new thing
upon the earth. So that as Plato had an imagination,
that all knowledge was but remembrance; so Salomon
giveth his sentence, that all novelty is but oblivion.
Francis Bacon, Essays, LVIII (from J.L. Borges, The Aleph)
"I think it may be erroneous to assume that because there is a past that seems to bear a certain resemblance to the present, the present therefore bears a resemblance to the future, which can be described in terms of the past. I can perfectly well see that there may be a crisis of development in which the human being is absolutely terrified by the fact that the future is unknown, cannot be known by himself at the present time, and may only be known to certain people, described in terms of 'genius' or 'mystic', who have a peculiar relationship with reality."
(W.Bion, Cogitations, 1992)
Our intention, with this work, is to accept Bion's invitation, when he urges us to transform, a spur towards wisdom which is not, and cannot be, limited just to intelligence. Furthermore, we believe this commitment to be "urgent" and that it should arouse our own sense of accountability. As a matter of fact, there is a distance between the (easy) cognitive, fascinating technique-derived solutions and the difficult and painful ones of the inner growth. Thus, it becomes more important to be enigma-oriented, rather than solution-oriented, letting a state of suspension of judgment, of waiting prevail, with the ensuing development of a constantly open thought. The vision, like the issue we are trying to bring forward, proceeds from different points, trying to find a margin, by way of a strategic deviation. Fostering the emergence of the unthought-of, by way of a deviation, a retreat, to bring the different perspectives back into play.
We consider psychoanalysis as a cognitive practice that, born as the study of individuals' minds, has then always demonstrated to be a useful ariadne's thread="" in relation to the possibility of exploring ever new labyrinths of the mind, involving heterogeneous fields of knowledge, different places and cultures.
We will see how these ideas have become a common heritage, both of the different scientific and cultural areas, and the artistic languages and how psychoanalysis too can treat them and which language it can use. On this point, we know the extent to which
Getting inspiration from the conceptual artist Lawrence Weiner (Biennale of Contemporary Art, Venice 2007): "Matter so shaken to its core to lead to a change in inherent form", let us consider the extent to which we too feel, during the analytic work "so shaken". Pushed to a transforming process involving our deepest parts, the "core", something not involving just the "form", but the "sub-stantia" itself.
To explore these contents, we used the communication resources offered by the "myth". As a matter of fact, from Bion (1963), we know that: "the myth may be regarded as a primitive form of pre-conception and a stage in publication, that is, in communication of the individual's private knowledge to his group". The myth, an actual "collective transitional object" is to be found at the intersection between individual reality and the collective and social one, hence the great importance that this has for the investigation and the experience of the psychic life.
On this point, what seemed particularly useful to us is the comparison between the mythical perspective, that is present in Indian culture, with the 'ontogenetic' one offered by psychoanalysis. So, assessing the extent to which this relationship fosters a multi-perspective stare, a multi-dimensional thought, that is what, at first, makes this world look apparently 'confusive' to us westerners, forcing us to face the faultiness of our categorizations.
In particular, we used a cosmogonic myth of the Rig- Veda[1], (a sort of emotional ideogram of the thought theory), to get closer to the questions: How to think about the thought? and How to think the thought? Proceeding in an asymptotic way, through the themes of the origin, the thought and its transformations within the relation existing between
1-Then was not non-existent nor existent: there was no realm of air, no sky beyond it. What covered in, and where? And what gave shelter? Was water there, unfathomed depth of water? [2-3-4-5…]
6-Who verily knows and who can here declare it, whence it was born and whence comes this creation? The Gods are later than this world's production. Who knows then whence it first came into being? 7- He, the first origin of this creation, whether he formed it all or did not form it, Whose eye controls this world in highest heaven, he verily knows it, or perhaps he knows not.
(Book X, Hymn CXXIX, Rig-Veda)
Referring to this as to the experience of the 'without shape', the 'without limit', the 'without order', the 'non-defined', of the transitory and as Corrao (1990) reminds us, relating it to the psychoanalytic experience [too]: "The free association, revealing a consistent theme, is already influenced by the anxiety and so the consistency of ideas can be considered as a defense organization. At times, the patient needs the analyst to notice the lack of meaning, typical of 'a peaceful mental state' without communicating it, that is, without the need to organize such lack of meaning. The organization of the non-meaning is an exception, just like the organized cosmos is a denial of chaos. (…) It is only here, in this unintegrated state of the personality, that what we call creative, cognitive, can appear. When the creative, the inventive, can be mirrored and only if it can be mirrored, it can become part of an identified, organized personality…".
In the analytic couple, all this is translated into the possibility to let oneself be surprised, to tolerate the frustration and the fear to be destroyed by an internal implosion, to be crushed or fall to pieces. Thus, it becomes more and more important to develop a containing and transforming area. A true transitional area to contain turbulences, fears and the "fears without a name". The latter, little by little, through the narrative process, can be symbolized and named; shifting from the state of anxiety existing in the relationship between "thing" and "nothing", to its evolutionary declension in the relationship between "thing" and "no-thing".
Actually, there is a difference between fostering the increase of defenses ("a help to be stronger", "coming off well!"), and the possibility to "let oneself go", despite the terror, to be able to "get in the situation" more and more and in the fact of listening to oneself and one's own fears.
These aspects will be exemplified by way of the clinical situation offered by P., a young patient who came to see us because of a deep discomfort, hindering him in his affective relationships.
We will see how, after a long initial period of the analysis, during which no dreams made their appearance, something broke and several dreams in a row came up. There is no intention of expatiating upon contents, which echoed old anxieties, but rather upon the fact that, as he himself observed, "the apnea had been shattered". The shouts and screams of his family of origin finally leave the field to the expression of his words, and the chains, which used to oppress him with the weight of things unseen and unsaid, take up new dimensions and characters. Little by little, he comes out of a sentence of circularity without a way out, to enter the experience of re-including his own story and unfolding it.
A. is the second clinical case: the trust in the surrender to the present and the emotional experience leads to the possibility of recovering the capacity to experience feelings and also to the physical experience. A. has started to "notice" and to realize how expressing her anger is translated into a stronger tonicity, into an energy that is useful to her.
She acknowledged, by way of the feelings she experienced, the extent to which a primary affective need affects her, internally, where the mother-father is still a united whole, where the
In the third clinical case, N. appears to us like someone who has not experienced the body of the desire, the body of the fact of feeling thought as free and independent, free in his thoughts. He appears like someone who has experienced his body caged in someone else's thoughts. All along the analytic work, we will see how it is possible to
In such a situation, the setting and its construction represented both the possibility of providing a
To conclude
Observing our field of clinical intervention, we can state that more and more often, as analysts, we work with patients for whom the analytic treatment is not "the" intervention method, but only "one" of those possible.
Starting from the presented clinical situations and our daily activity, we can state that there is nothing more "natural" than our emotional world and at the same time, there is nothing more than this that one defends against. Bringing closer together the world of emotions, thought and thinkability is the present challenge of the human being, to remain psychologically alive.
Also, and most of all, thanks to psychoanalysis we know the extent to which the idea itself of knowing soon leaves its natural component to shift and enter an exhausting work of continuous differences and choices that the subject of knowledge must actively operate.
In the "container-content" dialogue, concerning both the different aspects of the personality and the turbulences between calcified or insuperable gaps, to which emotions that take on words such as birth, adolescence, latency, marriage, death are associated with, we find the thread of the topic, the language of possibility. A language bearing the burden of thinking, that through thought, penetrates the
(Venice, 21.01.09)
Luca Caldironi
