Passion and melancholia, red and black: The vicissitudes of the sexual in an analytic process

ABSTRACT

The sudden emergence of a foreign language in the course of an analysis is understood as a crossroad between the past and the present: The author links this emergence to Freud’s search for the meaning of the uncanny in different languages. She suggests that the uncanny is that which provokes curiosity and is at the same time rejected, as it refers to incestuous desires that are frightening, forbidden, and disgusting. The following question is raised: Is incest at the core of the riddle of anxiety? The author traces the multiocular structure leading to an understanding of what has taken place and the vicissitudes of the sexual and the melancholic in an analysis. It is the force of the repetition compulsion that enables repressed infantile sexuality to find its way in the transference, so that it can, for the first time, be named, in terms of its contradictory and opposing forces: red and black. The author establishes a link between Freud and Laplanche in the understanding that sexuality is only incompletely transformed into psychic reality.

L'émergence soudaine d'une langue étrangère au cours d'une analyse est conçue comme un croisement entre passé et présent : l'auteur lie cette émergence à la recherche de Freud pour la traduction de l’expression ‘l’inquiétante étrangeté’ dans diverses langues étrangères. Et de suggérer que l’inquiétante étrangeté est ce qui provoque la curiosité, mais est simultanément rejetée, car renvoyant à des désirs incestueux qui sont effrayants, prohibés et dégoûtants. Est posée la question suivante: l'inceste est-il au cœur de l'énigme de l'anxiété? L'auteur retrace la structure multioculaire menant à une compréhension de ce qui s'est passé et les vicissitudes du sexuel et du mélancolique dans une analyse. C'est en fin de compte la puissance de la compulsion de répétition qui permet à la sexualité infantile refoulée de faire son entrée dans le transfert, afin qu'elle puisse être nommée dans toutes ses forces contradictoires et opposées –le rouge et le noir– pour la première fois. L'auteur établit un lien entre Freud et Laplanche en appréhendant que la sexualité n’est en réalité qu’incomplètement transformée psychiquement.

Das plötzliche Auftauchen einer Fremdsprache im Verlauf einer Analyse wird als Wegkreuzung von Vergangenheit und Gegenwart verstanden. Die Autorin stellt eine Verbindung zwischen diesem Auftauchen und Freuds Suche nach der Bedeutung des Unheimlichen in verschiedenen Sprachen her. Sie legt nahe, dass es sich bei dem Unheimlichen um etwas handelt, was Neugier hervorruft und gleichzeitig abgewehrt wird, da es sich auf inzestuöses Begehren bezieht, das beängstigend, verboten und ekelerregend ist. Es wird die folgende Frage gestellt: Bildet der Inzest den Kern des Rätsels der Angst? Die Autorin geht der multilokulären Struktur nach, die dazu führt, dass es ein Verstehen des bereits Geschehenen sowie der Wechselfälle des Sexuellen und der Melancholie in einer Analyse gibt. Es ist die Kraft des Wiederholungszwangs, die es der verdrängten kindlichen Sexualität ermöglicht, ihren Weg in die Übertragung zu finden, sodass sie dann zum ersten Mal hinsichtlich ihrer zueinander im Widerspruch stehenden und unvereinbaren Kräfte benannt werden kann: rot und schwarz. Die Autorin stellt eine Verbindung zwischen Freud und Laplanche in dem Verstehen her, dass Sexualität nur unvollständig in die psychische Realität umgewandelt wird.

L’improvviso affiorare di una lingua straniera nel corso di un’analisi viene interpretato in queste pagine come un crocevia tra il passato e il presente, e l’Autrice connette questa emersione alla ricerca condotta da Freud sul significato del perturbante in lingue diverse. Ella suggerisce parimenti che il perturbante è ciò che provoca curiosità ed è al tempo stesso rifiutato in quanto riferito a desideri incestuosi che spaventano, sono proibiti e disgustosi. Si pone quindi la seguente domanda: è dunque l’incesto ciò che si trova al centro dell’enigma dell’angoscia? L’Autrice ripercorre quindi la struttura multiprospettica che l’ha condotta a comprendere gli eventi reali e le vicissitudini della dimensione sessuale e di quella malinconica nel corso di un’analisi. È la forza della coazione a ripetere ciò che permette alla sessualità infantile rimossa di trovare uno sbocco nel transfert, così da poter per la prima volta essere nominata facendo riferimento alle due forze opposte e contraddittorie che la abitano: il rosso e il nero. L’Autrice evienzia un nesso tra Freud e Laplanche che consiste nel loro aver compreso che la sessualità viene trasformata solo parzialmente in realtà psichica.

El repentino surgimiento de una lengua extranjera en el curso de un análisis es entendido como una encrucijada entre el pasado y el presente: la autora vincula este surgimiento con la búsqueda de Freud del significado de lo siniestro en diferentes idiomas. Se sugiere que lo siniestro es lo que provoca curiosidad y a la vez rechazo, en cuanto hace referencia a deseos incestuosos que son atemorizantes, prohibidos y repugnantes. Se plantea la siguiente pregunta: ¿el incesto está en el núcleo del enigma de la angustia? La autora sigue el rastro de la estructura multiocular que conduce a una comprensión de lo sucedido y a las vicisitudes de lo sexual y lo melancólico en el análisis. La fuerza de la compulsión a la repetición permite reprimir la sexualidad infantil para encontrar su salida en la transferencia, de manera que pueda, por primera vez, ser nombrada en términos de sus fuerzas contradictorias y opuestas: rojo y negro. La autora establece un vínculo entre Freud y Laplanche en la comprensión de que la sexualidad se transforma solo de manera incompleta en realidad psíquica.

Notes

1 Appignanesi and Forrester (1992) have suggested that this baby was psychoanalysis itself.

2 “Thus the shadow of the object fell upon the ego, and the latter could henceforth be judged by a special agency, as though it were an object, the forsaken object. In this way an object-loss was transformed into an ego-loss and the conflict between the ego and the loved person into a cleavage between the critical activity of the ego and the ego as altered by identification” (Freud 1919, 249).

3 This term is derived from Freud. In 1923, Freud states: “Internal perceptions yield sensations of processes arising in the most diverse and certainly also in the deepest strata of the mental apparatus. Very little is known about these sensations and feelings; those belonging to the pleasure-unpleasure series may still be regarded as the best examples of them. They are more primordial, more elementary, than perceptions arising externally and they can come about even when consciousness is clouded. I have elsewhere expressed my views about their greater economic significance and the metapsychological reasons for this. These sensations are multilocular, like external perceptions; they may come from different places simultaneously and may thus have different or even opposite qualities” (Freud 1923, 21–22; emphasis added).

4 In his letter to Fliess of 2 May 1897, Freud states: “the psychic structures which, in hysteria, are affected by repression are not in reality memories—since no one indulges in memory activity without a motive—but impulses [drives] that derive from primal scenes” (in Masson 1985, 239).

5 In a striking reading of Mourning and Melancholia, Ignês Sodré has suggested that the red and the black signify the rage and the sorrow present in melancholia: “rage and sorrow communicate the contrast between the mental attitudes of passive suffering and of the violently active attack, sadness and fury, despair and murderousness” (Sodré 2005, 125). In view of this reading, can one suggest that the wound is doubly inflicted by the mother in her statement about Madeleine's vagina? The mother becomes the castrator, and, in that process, she is also withdrawing—forever—the love for the daughter. As Sodré reminds us: “The complex of melancholia behaves like an open wound, drawing to itself cathectic energies … from all directions, and emptying the ego until it is totally impoverished” (Freud 1917, 253; quoted in Sodré 2005, 131).

6 One is here reminded of Lacan's formulations in that the I and the body image are accomplished in an alienating process that takes place through the mediation of the Other. It is the mother who indicates to the child that what she sees in the mirror is herself. “There, this is you”, she will say when the child is looking at herself in the mirror. In this process, her own unconscious relationship to her own body and sexuality will have an impact on her child, as discussed by many French analysts (Braunschweig and Fain 1975; Lacan 1973; Laplanche 1987). The child's body image is rooted in the way it is seen and invested by the demand of the Other. When thinking about this process, one can reflect on the impact of mother's comment on Madeleine's sense of her female body.

7 Catherine Chabert (2003, 14) has suggested “the double movement in an analytic process, the sexual and the melancholic”, “without chronological unfolding, woven together so firmly that all the motives that they produce are likely to be seized in both directions”.

8 One is also reminded of Freud's statement about melancholia: “when the ego finds itself in an excessive real danger which it believes itself unable to overcome by its own strength, it is bound to draw the same conclusion. It sees itself deserted by all protective forces and lets itself die” (Freud 1923, 58).