Outsiderness: A Meditation in Six Visions

Abstract

Life is not possible without outsiderness. Outsiderness is not possible without suffering. Is there a way to get inside of outsiderness without either rejecting its existence or reifying its reality? How can personal, political and professional experiences bring us to a, still escapable, edge of this black hole?

Keywords:

• outsiderness
• insiderness
• otherness
• memory
• agoraphobia
• stranger

Notes

1 Thanks to Sarah Schoen for drawing my attention to Greenberg’s “Oedipus.”

2 Brahma is one of the Trinity of Indian deities: Brahma (creator), Vishnu (preserver), and Shiva (destroyer).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gurmeet S. Kanwal

Gurmeet S. Kanwal, M.D., is originally from New Delhi, India. He is Supervising Psychoanalyst and Teaching Faculty at the William Alanson White Institute, Past President of the William Alanson White Psychoanalytic Society, and Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Weill Medical College of Cornell University. He is also a Fellow of the College of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis and a member of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis and the Journal of Psychoanalytic Discourse. Dr. Kanwal is coeditor, with Dr. Salman Akhtar, of Bereavement- Personal Experiences and Clinical Reflections (Karnac), and Intimacy: Clinical, Cultural, Digital and Developmental Perspectives (Routledge). Dr. Kanwal is in full-time Private Practice in NYC.