害怕崩溃

在唐纳德·温尼科特(Donald Winnicott)关于崩溃恐惧的经典文章中，他向一位病人传达了一个著名的信息:他强烈恐惧的灾难实际上已经发生了。受温尼科特启发，诺艾尔McAfee的崩溃的恐惧:精神分析和政治(哥伦比亚大学出版社，2019年)，探讨了崩溃恐惧对民主实践的影响。你可能还隐约记得，民主要求人们有能力承受差异、容忍损失，并敢于向未知倾诉。与此同时，我们生活在这样一个世界，如果我的临床实践和个人生活有任何指示的话，人们往往更喜欢写作而不是说话。想要改变日程安排的患者——在精神分析中从来都不是中性事件——给我写信。我对反对者说:“这是一种口头疗法。让你的钱花得值。说话!”在亲密关系中，坏消息是我经常读到的。我猜测，在表达欲望或传达痛苦时，人们会寻找一个幻想中的接受者，一个理想的倾听者，他就像一个被炸毁的娃娃情人一样，可以被调用、控制，然后随意放气。回到差异和损失，那些不能反映我们已经存在的思想的想法会发现自己被打到公园外的其他地方，不值得阐述。 Cultivating a protective bubble—such a heartbreak right? It seems there is something about democracy that frightens the shit out of us. Deploying the work of Winnicott, Klein, Green and Kristeva, Mcafee reminds us of our original loss—what she calls “plenum”. That loss, to the degree it is recognized, initiates our undoing. Mother’s other—be it her lover, her piano lessons, a visit to the dentist for a cavity—tears a hole in our emotional shield. In her wake, we cling to seemingly strong leaders, a father, or failing that potent ideologies reeking of misogyny, all the while hoping for compensation for an unfathomable loss. Embedded within democracy lies the demand that we see other than ourselves. This demand challenges the thin-skinned among us. And all of us are thin-skinned from time to time. How to manage? Mcafee adds her voice to the popular chorus of those practicing applied psychoanalysis and suggests we embrace mourning. It is an inarguable position yet also nice work if you can get it! Of course, with the original disaster elided, like sleepwalkers in our night fog, we will helplessly seek it out; worse, we will make it manifest, with a vengeance. What is not remembered gets repeated. Trapped in America, as I am, one wonders about democracy. What might lure us to revisit the sight of the disaster, “the thing itself’,” to quote Adrienne Rich, “and not the myth?”