Hello and welcome to the sixth session of The Man Who Knew Nothing, From Neurodiversity to Practical Schizophrenia. We have two presenters today. They are Joseph and Alexandra, and I'll now pass the microphone to Reza. Thank you very much, everyone. So today we will continue building up the past few sessions, which is essentially we are delving deeper and deeper into the enigma of the self, as that which phenomenologically or phenomenalistically at least is very palpable, but rationally and empirically extremely eluding.
Today we will talk about some theories of trauma and how the theory of trauma or traumogenesis is another blow to what you might call to be conventional phenomenalistic understanding of the self. This is all such that we can come to these certain kinds of experimental and ethical prescriptions about the care of the self, the cultivation of the self, in
the remaining sessions. So, with that said, maybe we should start with presentations. So, I'm not seeing Alex in the sidebar here, so it looks like only Joseph is here at the moment. So perhaps you can present. Alex actually emailed me. I don't know where she is. Hmm. Okay. Let's start with Joseph. Sure. Yeah, I can begin. This presentation is not as developed as I would like. So if there are pauses, just excuse me.
I hope that this won't be disastrous. It won't be more disastrous than my own lectures. Yeah, we'll see about that. So following the reading that was assigned, I'm sure most of you know about RN, the schizophrenic, who suffered quite horrific instances of infantile sexual abuse, childhood sexual abuse, on a repeated basis over the portion of their childhood development. And this led to the emergence of a fairly, well, extremely pathological split ego,
something that a frenzy called the murdered ego, at which point they've experienced so much trauma that the ego was dissolved almost entirely. And what was left was just what he calls the ashes of earlier mental sufferings, which are rekindled every night by the fire of suffering. And as hinted by Reza, in this, Frenzy found what he terms the alien will, which is another fairly unsettling notion. So in the alien will, he sees this in the case of B
and RN, which are two separate schizophrenic cases. In the case of B, their innermost self has stopped performing independent actions of its own ever since an alien will, alien decisions were opposed on it. Almost everything that has developed since the trauma is in fact the work of that alien will. The person who does these things is not me. This also in a separate essay calls this the malevolent register of an oppression that keeps on haunting us. So it's kind of it's a molding of the abused and destroyed ego onto the whims of a will that corresponds to our abuse and our abuser.
Such that, you know, when we are subject to kind of systematic abuse, our ego is kind of continually or continuously becomes more identified with that system of abuse. And so in, well not in response to this, but ongoing the development of the case of RN, we see the emergence of what Parenzi terms mutual analysis, which is actually something RN introduced themselves. And this was, to me, quite an interesting development in psychoanalysis.
I was unaware of it previously, and I think it's a pretty interesting idea. So the impetus for this was RN was, they felt that frenzy in their analysis was not fully open with their antipathies towards the M. Ellis and RN. And they felt that the
only way that they could expurgate all of these ulterior motives, these ulterior desires, these distastes that Ferenczi really had for the patient was to engage in a counter analysis by which Ferenczi's own distance, his own psychological distancing from his patient that he used to kind of cordon them off would be dissolved. And then as a result, he would be able to to really properly engage in analysis. And in turn, what he realized, not only would he more kind of optimally engage in analysis,
he would feel less tired, he would, in his openness, make significantly more progress per session. He found that the identification of his own suffering with his patient allowed for significantly more deep, cathartic kind of solution at the end of certain sessions. He, RN initially expressed hesitations about this. He felt, she felt rather, it will never be possible for the doctor to really feel the
events I'm going through. Thus, he cannot participate in experiencing psychophysical, intellectual motivation. And then he replied, except if I sink down into her unconscious, namely with the help of my own traumatic complexes. So effectively, it's a kind of co-suffering session by which each of them, using their own traumatic complexes, can kind of unite in their common suffering to then understand and resolve what underlies these complexes. in a manner that would not be possible if this distance of authority, this imposed kind of super ego,
by which one only pedagogically imposes a set of, you know, moral impositions or ethical impositions onto the patient. And the difference is the prior is significantly more effective in actually resolving the deep traumatic issues that originally existed. And so in his words, if one has a certain confidence in one's abilities to be impressed ultimately only by truth, then one may resolve to risk the sacrifice seemingly so horrifying
of putting oneself in the care and control of a madman. And that's effectively what he felt was necessary if one was to take up the role of an analyst. One had to give up one's authority, one's own hesitations and anxieties with dealing with the mentally ill to then actually come to a kind of intersubjective understanding that is necessary for therapeutic healing. And in context with psychoanalysis as it was done at the time of Ferenczi's writing. He was very, well,
it's rather, it's not just what he felt. A lot of people in the practice simply did not really think that psychoanalysis was even a therapeutic endeavor. And even Freud felt this after his initial optimism. And it's something Renzi terms, therapeutic nihilism, the notion that patients are rabble, erotics are just, they just exist for analysts to make money. There's nothing that can be done. And one fully adopts the position of authority by which one just imposes pedagogical impositions, moral impositions that don't do anything and
really prolong the patient's suffering and Ferenczi noted that it was effectively just it was a way for the analysts to expunge their own neuroses and complexes to then really just further traumatize the patient. So nothing was done except making the patient suffer even more. And Reza also there's a quote he said, Freud's vision of psychoanalysis fails miserably. if the psychoanalytical investigation can indeed be another form of exploitation and trauma. And in the, so in mutuality, the reason this really works is because
effectively, well, I guess there's a few things here. One, I guess, I don't know if I have enough time to really go into this. There's a notion of an ir-ir trauma in frenzy, by which, and I guess one translation is a pre-primal trauma, which is a trauma, an archa-trauma that's kind of fundamental to the constitution of any binded individual, whether that be psychic or even perhaps inorganic. And in this view, the formation of an individual corresponds to an original trauma, which is a rupture from what he calls like an original love,
which would be like the love, the binding between the mother and the child, which even though isn't in memory is kind of still implicit or hidden as a trauma by which all variations of trauma are really how would you say, they are not effective, but they spring out of this original trauma, I guess you could say. And in his view, this is really the way that one can heal the ego.
because the, sorry, let me find this quote. So he finds that in psychoanalysis, the repetition of trauma, which is also reflective of the pathological or compulsive desire to repeat trauma in traumatized individuals is really not good enough unless one repeats trauma with a difference which allows for favorable outcomes. And he finds in this difference something which involves the
relinquishing of one's own rigid authority and the hostility hidden in it. And that is the giving up of one's ego, such that one opens oneself to the dissolution in trauma, accepts it, and then comes to accept reality as it is, but then enter into what he calls a semi-dissolved state by which the ego is reformed. And he says it allows for us to bring the dead ego fragment back to life, that is cure and remember it. I might be already significantly over time.
There's more to it, I guess, just very quickly. He mentions very optimistically that he feels In reality, there's really a second reality principle, as opposed to Freud's, by which the ego is purely paranoiac, which it asserts itself in a manner which seeks to destroy others, to impose its will. He finds in even inorganic processes something he calls the appeasement principle, the principle of Peace, he uses a few names here, and he sees a great deal of potential in mutual analysis and in some of the insights that he's kind of unveiled throughout his works throughout
his career. The potential of developing ethics in a progressive fashion towards, I guess, an optimum point of resolution between people using in in concordance with this principle um and he also he mentions a few things about psyche and fusis and uh relations to the future and there are many comments that could be made about um you know the development of possible worlds and how um you know the dissolution of the ego the open dissolution of the ego opens oneself to the possibility of a different world, of a different future. And so I guess there's much to be said
here. It's frenzies. Work is extremely, I think, fruitful if one wants to kind of go in that direction. And I guess I'll leave it at that. I guess I'm over time. So yeah. Thank you. Thank Thank you so much. Really, really excellent. No, it was actually better than my lecture. A question for you. Of course, I don't expect you to answer this question, but I think that's something that we can think about it. So we can think about, so in terms of this mutual analysis and this counter-freudian, frenzian idea of analysis, where you actually try to
connect to a traumatized person. We can think about this not merely in terms of trauma, But in terms of something like the cash word today, lived experience. So we have different lived experiences. And if we were going to be analysts, how could we actually, basically, create a certain kind of connection between people who have lived different lived experiences. For example,
I was brought up in Iran-Iraq war. Someone else might have had some other lived experiences. Another person might have different experiences, so on and so forth. So I think this is actually This is why I suggested this text, precisely because of the mutual analysis point here, which to me is also a gateway to a kind of a political understanding of why psychoanalysis matters at the end of the day, in this sense. Because isn't it the whole point of today is that everyone wants to be in their own
micro local indigenous earth. But if that is the case, then we are basically living in an atomic society, atomic as atomically individualistic society. And what is actually the worth of living in this society? I mean, Michel Jolebeck had already talked about this in full. So if there is no way to bypass or kind of, not even bypass, but to overcome the differences between lived experiences, then there is absolutely no luck for us humans.
So, do you think, so what do you think, how this frenzied idea of empathy or connection with the patient or a traumatized victim can translate into something more prevalent and probably less severe, namely people with different lived experiences. As I said, this is extremely a challenging question to which I have absolutely no answer. But nevertheless, I'm basically just trying to bait you to say something.
Yeah, I'm trying to recall something from the text in relation to this, but I'm gonna have to think about it. Anyone has any answer to these kinds of stuff? Because we are actually living in that kind of society now. One thing that kind of pops up for me is that that Forenze talks about when he's being analyzed, having to become the child and to recognize the Amosan as the authority keeping watch over him. I don't know how important that really is, but the idea of the person who is supposed
to be expressing their trauma or their lived experience actually giving up their authority to someone else in that trusting relationship doesn't really seem like the way it's framed now in terms of like the authority actually goes to the person who has the unique experience. So to me, that seems kind of like a- Yes, well, what you are talking about is something what I would call the epistemic trust in the sense that we have it also, for example, in things as simple as sciences, right? know, sure, we are not well versed in science. But then we also know that scientists are
doing kind of their job. So, for example, with the issues about vaccination, with the issues about the fate of the universe billion years from now. Most people actually don't trust, put their trust in scientists. But I think that yes, there should always be an epistemic trust. Because an epistemic trust, the reason that I'm saying epistemic as a qualifier for trust. It's precisely epistemic trust is something that
is not a blind faith. And that's, I think, what is missing here. Yes, I think the figure of authority is usually interpreted today, you know, after all the basically stuff that happened in the 20th century as just like a despot. But I don't think that is the case really. I think we have at this point to differentiate between different figures of authority. Not every authority is your sky daddy. You know?
someone people Carl I think is just like contemplating at this point oh I can see your face Carl yeah yes I'm trying to write some notes and sort of develop some kind of thoughts Reza can you hear me yes Stefano speaking Stefano yes oh yes Stefano yes Can I raise another question? Yes, of course. Which is related to all of this? Okay, thank you. In what sense precisely do you understand the alien will as pertaining to a political domain?
Because I've seen on your post blog which you discuss this about the relationship between the alien will and the political domain. So I was just wondering about if you... Sure. I think Joseph actually mentioned something. You see, the thing is about the theory of trauma, which I actually wanted to make this clear. The early theory of trauma is not actually something that is basically localized, right? So if you have literally in the theory of trauma, there is no such a thing as one trauma that you can actually solve it, that you can
actually overcome it. Because the whole point of trauma is that it is more like an opening that leads to other openings, namely other traumas. You should understand that the very idea of trauma is is kind of like a splitting right a division so um in early uh psychoanalysis otter rank and probably freud sabina spierlin they talked about trauma as original splitting
And what is that original splitting, you might ask? Well, it is the splitting between man, the human and nature, right? But this splitting, you cannot look at it as a splitting, because you are tangled within it, right? You can't see a split as a split if you are on one side of the pole of this split. Hence, Hegel had this idea that looking at a split as if you didn't have any part in it is like looking at a bullet being shot from a pistol.
It just doesn't work. The idea of psychoanalysis tries to triangulate, tries to look at this split in a different way. Not in terms of the original understanding of the splits, because that just is not possible by human cognition. But by way of something else. So think about this. Think about a fork, right? A fork has a split,
or two horns, two basically things. But the way a psychoanalyst thinks about the split, is something more like a tuning fork. Essentially, there is a resonance of vibrations that goes from pole one to pole two, pole two to pole one, and constantly. This is where psychoanalysis starts. is the very idea that the only way that we can talk about the split between human and
the nature as the originally split is by looking at it in terms of how we make nature. And true that coming with the facts, empirical facts, as how nature makes us write it. It is at its bottom a very Copernican gesture because the Copernican gesture has three slogans really and this is what all psychoanalysts believed at the at the beginning of 20th century
that the task of psychoanalysis a la copernican revolution is to disturb the peace of this world one the second one is uh what you might call to be forming an extreme line of thought in the sense that if you think that you are traumatized, well you haven't seen the traumas from which your palatable traumas have come from. Essentially it's a speculative line in order to deepen the field of traumas of individuality or
individuation. The third one is that there is no such a thing as a self, as an expression of isolation or discreteness. The task of psychoanalysis is to remorselessly deliver every expression of discreteness, self, trauma into the open. So with that said, you can then think about this, that, so I have a trauma, right?
These are Marxist pieces, actually, by the way. So I have a trauma, you know, I basically, according to certain kinds of social bonds and social relations, I got molested as a child, right? But then you can go further and turn it into a political proposition about traumas. Why is that such social bonds are in place to begin with, to bring about the opportunity of child molestation?
You see, this is how it becomes political. This is why psychoanalysis at the end of the day is a fundamentally a Marxist thesis. That's why Hitler hated Freud, because he associated Freud with Marx. Not because they were both Jews, but because they were coming from the same origins of thoughts. Isn't there a divide here between Freud who has this sort of idea of original trauma,
which has this result of like a failed adaptation, sublimation, which is never complete, etc., And then someone like Jung, who was embraced by the Nazis to a certain extent, who had this idea of self-fulfillment, fruition of the people, etc. I have stopped to talk about this, but they're not really consequential for our class. But yes, you're right. Actually, I think I've said about this before, Jung was considered to be just a psychoanalyst for rich Prussian women or kleptomaniacs.
So this is actually true, though. This is actually true. So the majority of his patients were basically these rich women were kleptomaniacs. And, you know, they had shoplifted a piece of jewelry or something. And then they come to Dr. Jung asking for absolvation, making the confession as if they were in a church. Jung, unfortunately, I don't want to say that he was utterly wrong, but I think that the fallout between Jung and Freud, well, of course, it was for so many factors,
but the main reason was because Jung, unlike Freud, was not an energicist. He couldn't understand the nature of the drive. He always wanted to symbolize it. thoughts laughter's heckling swearing So you said that trauma is a split, but each trauma is also an opening to another trauma.
Yes, they are nested in nature. Yeah, and you also said that there's an original trauma which created a division, splits between man and nature. So is this the original trauma or are there other traumas? I mean, if I go deep into the split between man and nature, will this open me to other traumas or is this the original one? You see, well, I mean, we should understand that Freud and Frenzy were thinking about a framework that had given them by German idealism. They thought it, yes, as the original
trauma, as the old trauma, in the sense that basically the difference between conscious psyche and inert matter or inorganic matter for them was the actual trauma have any of you have read thalassa by frenzy the confusion of tongues It is one of the greatest books in psychoanalysis.
In Totem and Taboo, Freud calls it the most horrific exercise of psychoanalysis, in the sense that frenzy had the courage to tap into the most horrific aspects of the origins of trauma, of division or splitting. So basically this book very briefly is about, it starts from a very kind of mundane psychoanalytic premise. In the sense that, you know,
if you're a child, you play mommy and daddy, doctor and nurse, right? with adults. And your tongue is very innocent. It is asexual for a good deal. It might be sexual, but it is not what you might call to be the sex of the adulthood. So when you play these games, your adult guardian who plays this game with you might actually
confuse your signals as adult vocabularies. Like when you say that, Daddy, can you sleep with me?" The adult person might actually confuse it with as if it were a sexual in mutation. So, Frenzy begins the book with this premise that majority of traumas begin
with the confusion of language between the child and the adult and to restore what you might call to be the wholesomeness of the self, we must go back into the origin, namely an infantile language, not an adult language. So, again, this is a very political idea. Infant politics precedes adult politics. And, in fact, we have to go to infant politics. So this one, so he begins with this premise in this book, but then the book turns into
something of akin to a horror story, literally a horror story. He asks, do you know why humans actually prefer to go to the beach in the summer? Those people who live by the sea, you can't find them in their houses, in their abodes. most likely will find them on the beach, sitting or resting on the beach, looking at the sea.
This is a metaphor for him, that every action that we are actually making is a yearning, is a drive, a compulsory drive toward where we have come from. Frenzy calls us sea apes. Sea apes is just an index or what you might call to be an avatar. for human psyche. Human psyche unfortunately cannot live in its own sphere. It always
wants to go back to where it came from. This is not a religious idea though, it's an energetic idea. Like literally, in Thalesa, he uses theories of Lamarck and Darwin and so many other people, Humphrey, so on and so forth, to conclude that every evolutionary act that gave rise
to sapiens was a splitting from the source. And in every act that we make, whether sexual or not, we just want a little piece of peace of the Source. Getting back to the Earth. Thoughts,
slanders, curses, uh ressa what you mentioned about the the sea apes uh and the trauma uh reminded me of this uh note that appeared in the in the infamous uh interview with uh daniel barker and there they have a in the text there's this reference to elaine morgan and the aquatic cape i recently was rereading the text and I found that book. I don't know if that, I haven't read Elaine Morgan, but I don't know if this relates to what Firenze is talking about in- Yes, yes, of course. That's actually the source. Yeah, yeah, it is. Yes, yes. Carl? Oh, yes, please, please.
please. So, I'm trying to understand why human beings, as you said, want to go back to nature. Why we have such an impulse, strong impulse, or in every step of evolution, we want some part of this original unity in nature? Sure, that is actually the greatest question. Here, this is the thesis of psychoanalysis, early psychoanalysis by the way, not really later, in the sense that in early psychoanalysis the psychic
self is just a product of blind forces of nature. Sure, it acts by itself, it has an autonomy, it has freedom, but once in a while, more than once in a while, quite often, such a psychic sphere is being impinged upon by natural forces to the point that the psyche as the sphere of desires and beliefs wishes to go back to where it came from such that these impingements no longer
occur these impingements are neurosis hysteria psychosis suffering so on so forth so you see See, this is psychoanalysis 101 at the end of the day, early psychoanalysis 101, in the sense that if you have a self, then you have a suffering. And if you have a suffering, then perhaps the solution is to get rid of the very edifice, namely self or ego, that created all these predicaments for you to begin with.
Of course not all psychoanalysis believes in this. I'm merely talking about the early ages, early phases of psychoanalysis. So that's basically the answer. Of course it is not a good answer, but nevertheless, I think that it shines light on the precariousness of human self. The human cell is only integral, solid and robust to the extent that we can see the cracks in it.
The cracks which are made by forces of originary traumas. Is it time for a break? Sure, we can do this. Yeah, okay. Good, good, good. Back in two minutes. You are getting very astinchy, Alex. Two minutes. Okay, five minutes?
No one? Stop smiling at me. Carl, maybe you should say something because I know that this is Yes, I have a couple of questions. Sure, sure. First one that is a bit on the technical side, but certainly sort of historiographical one. It's sometimes or often said that sort of the real inventor of the unconscious is that
appears that Freud is Schelling. And if this is the case, and I can certainly sort of recognize the structure and sort of the sort of the inferency of the fork, but as opposed to sort of a Hegelian sort of dialectic. Anyway, what I wonder a little bit about is sort of does Freud or someone else in this sort of early psychoanalysis at some point reference Schelling and do you if so do you know sort of which of Schelling's works are sort of the sources of inspiration? Before you answer... Actually, Autorank makes a reference to Schelling but I can't remember
I can't recall what the word is. I don't recall whether Freud or Frenzy ever actually make a reference to Schellenick. Sure, they make a reference to Schopenhauer. Not Schellenick. But I think Otto Rank does. Can I offer... you've probably read von Hartmann. And I mean, von Hartmann is where, you know, philosophy of the unconscious truly develops. And Schelling is sparsely, I would say, very, very in limited fashion mentioned
in von Hartmann's literature. Generally, more so taking the opposition of nature and mind through Schelling's identification of analogical structures and operations as determined by the mind is invisible nature, a nature invisible mind argument. But yeah, I mean, do you see some sparse mentions of Schelling and von Hartmann, which is where I think, like, you know, perhaps the most fundamental philosophy of the unconscious has developed. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'll go back and look there.
The other thing I was sort of thinking a little bit about is sort of how the relationship is sort of the alien will to our last session and where we, or I, as of course, talked a little bit about sort of this possession by space. and if not sort of the alien will and this sort of is another threat that can occur and that the sort of fragile self can be subjected to in the form of the superego. When you are talking about threats, do you mean it's called as a real threat or
a positive threat, like a security measurement? I think I mean it as a real threat. But here, something actually quite interesting arises. If you look in the history of early psychoanalysis, when we say unconscious, when we say drive, compulsion, impulsion, hysterionics, neurosis, so on and so forth, they are not all materialists. They actually mean it in a very rationalist sense.
For so many people who are unfamiliar with the genesis of early psychoanalysis, they think of psychoanalysts as basically these materialist people just prancing around and bringing up stuff about what materials can do to us. I think it's completely the other way around, in the sense that the threat is something that psyche should pose it, not nature, in the sense that even if this, I would say, really the fundamentalist slogan of early psychoanalysis,
even if we were living in a trauma-free world where every individual psyche was integral, we should still posit the possibility of something or someone who can impinge upon our psyche. So the idea of the unconscious, the idea of trauma, is not actually in the early psychoanalysis, it's fully materialist. It is what you might called to be a postulate of pure thought in a Kantian sense, that reason puts limitation
upon its operations or function. Go on, Karl. Yes. No, with that in mind, I think I will slightly modify my statement, as far as what I mean by really, I mean only something that could conceivably happen. I think we had different ideas in mind. perhaps, whether or not it is sort of positive or whether it is...
Please go on. Please go on. Or whether it is, as it were, sort of a material, I think is... Or rather, sort of within the notion that the threat is posited, can it not also be real? Of course, of course, but that's the counterfactual scenario, isn't it? Yes, certainly. And that is the sense I meant it. Yes, yes, of course, of course. And the thing is that, you see,
This has become, this became actually a very, very protracted debate between Adolf Gurrenbaum, of Psychoanalysis, the writer of Foundations of Psychoanalysis, and the psychoanalysts of his time, Melanie Klein, Paul Wicker, and so on and so forth. The thing is that a psychoanalyst cannot simply adopt the vocabulary of causation.
Because to talk about causes, you get into some sort of really gnarly scenarios. Like, you knew it. Like, what do you mean by cause? This is what Gurrenbaum asks. So, do you really mean that X did something to Y and Y basically produced W, an effect? Well, that's not a cause. The thing I would say that I very much would like to kind of synthesize Freud and Frenzy with
Grunbaum's analysis in the sense that psychoanalysis is actually not about causal factors. It's about hypothesis, about what might be the cause of factors. And majority of such causal claims are made in counterfactual scenarios. I have a not really a question but a jumping off point for you to speak about in a position
that perhaps you have not spoken about and I do apologize I was a little bit late so So I hope you haven't already discussed this element of it. So there's this, I don't know if your entire class is very familiar with Jean Laplan. She's not always, you know, he's not mentioned. I'm quite a little bit familiar, a little bit familiar. Yes. You know, he's not necessarily as well known as Freud and Jung and Lacan, but one of the... Very much earlier. He's earlier. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He is.
So one of the things he talks about is that Freud understood this term, Nachtraglichkeit, the idea that history does not simply move forward, but that events at a later moment retain, let's say, like presentism, and sort of underground connection to moments in the past, which they seem to revert. this is very familiar in psychoanalytic thoughts of the unconscious. Laplanche uses the language of phenomenology sometimes even to show how there is a thread, a guiding thread between them. But retroaction is another term that sometimes is used by Laplanche. So my question is,
for Laplanche, he is attempting to resolve this confusion by detailing the differences between Freud and Jung, that Jung conceived of retroaction as a movement that reverses arrow of time by rewriting the past from the position of the present, and from Freud it's conceived primarily as a subterraneous operation by which cause takes effect belatedly in a future distance from it. So, you know, the text that we read and only perhaps a chapter of, but still nonetheless, I'm curious if there's an approach to this from Sandor Ferenshi. and in general if you think that there is like an approach to retroaction that
psychoanalysis still holds and is appropriate for us or should we purely look at these through you know like churchlandian neural philosophy uh a more material as you were saying a bit earlier or making the comparison of materialists. Well, the point is that I think that they are both mistaken and they are both right in a sense. Essentially psychoanalysis, as I mentioned, psychoanalysis begins with gesture, which is the splitting trauma.
But the trauma is not something that you can actually see it as a bifuricating fork. Only when you become one pole of the fork rather than the other is when you understand what trauma is. So this is also, I would say, quite important with regard to church land
and all those physicalistic doctrines. You see, human self is not just this or that. Yeah, well, many philosophers can say that it's just this or that. But I really think that psychoanalysis pinpointed to something fundamentally important, in the sense that the self or psyche is something more like a felt. A felt. non woven, fibrous, slender fibrous threads pressed together.
In this scenario, you just don't get to simply get the empirical side of it without not having their rational model stuff up, jazz about it, nor you can get to basically separate a rationalist fiber without the empirical naturalistic side of it. This is what self is, it is a felt, a non-woven material. Reza, you know Wilfred Sellers, he was not very sympathetic to
to what he called folk psychology and the reason was that he insisted about the nature of our understanding of mental events and to regard, I believe you called it the compendium of knowledge of mental states as a theory is hallmark of features were how they were modeled rightly or wrongly upon the visible or intersubjective features of language utterances and those features not upon, not immediately available to introspection but that are undergoing. But you know, this is perhaps a fundamentally incorrect way to dismiss
psychoanalysis because these fundamental intersubjective features are explicitly what psychoanalysis attempts to account for. Yeah, yeah, yes, yes, yes. The thing is that, But with Siddhar's, with all due respect, I think that Siddhar's neither understands the nature of language fully, nor understands the predicaments of psychology.
But of course that's just, you know, my thesis, which you can throw it into garbage bin. No, I think it's a good, I mean, I'm curious is there a way to sort of like bring naturalist scientists, scientifism into and mend it with psychoanalysis, because I mean, it's psychoanalytic discourse, at least in like, post, post Lacan, post La Planche. I don't know. I mean, I don't read psychoanalysis journals and such as I do philosophy journals today. But I don't know that
there's been, you know, terribly novel psychoanalytic theories. And no, they haven't, they haven't, they haven't, precisely because they have been scared of by the more scientific side of things, by neuroscience. I actually have an example for you why psychoanalysis is important. It's a metaphor, it is not anything big deal, it's just merely a metaphor. How many of you have watched Richard Feynman interviews? You know that he's a very charming person,
even though a very kind of prick at the end of the day. So Richard Feynman talks about this thing. this thing. There is actually a metaphor that is quite German idealistic. So think about man or human and nature versus nature. It's a kind of mirror relationship. As you heard, the kind of a splitting that we are talking about is not fundamental, it's actually like a theory.
It's more like a mirror, our mirror functions. So you have reactions to the mirror and the mirror reacts to you. The thing, however, the relation between psyche and nature Psyche and nature should be re-understood or rethought. It is more like that, haven't you noticed that when you are actually moving against a mirror, the mirror actually reverses the right and the left? But unfortunately, never.
It reverses the difference between bottom and the top. Your forehead never becomes your chin, and your chin never becomes your forehead. Why is that as a metaphor? someone. It's because of something like an incarnal, there's a word for this. No, no, no, no. It has nothing to do with incarnal.
It is pure optics. It's pure optics. But what about the blind person? They still do not make this mistake. We are not talking about blind person, because a blind person cannot see if the mirror actually reverses the left and the right. But we can do a similar thought experiment for a blind person, can't we, without using optics, but by using apperception. They could imagine a surface that's inverted and still there would be some retention of like mind or bodily uh i don't know what the term would be but it would be like body awareness there's a term for
this so i'm forgetting the term sometimes used in but but but those cases are yeah sure Sure, you can say that in so far as they are not acquainted with the principled way of understanding things, sure, they can come up with different kinds of understanding. But that's not what you're talking about. We are talking about a metaphor whose context is like Homo sapiens. And we are not talking about senses, really.
It's just a metaphor. Why is that? the mirror when we are looking into the mirror the left and the right hands are being exchanged whereas the bottom and top remain the same invariant This is a very relationship that we have to nature. Thoughts, thoughts, comments.
Can you, so the thought experiment, as it relates to the mirror, can you explain it one more time, the conditions for this experiment? It's simple as that. You look into the mirror. Let's call this mirror nature. When you use your left hand, it appears right on the other side. When you use your left hand, it appears right on the other side. But the thing that remains constant is that there is no distortion between bottom and top.
Do you really think that when you look into the mirror, your face, your head gets 100 degree rotation? No, it doesn't. so the question is why despite your left hand appearing as if it were on the right side one still is not troubled by the fact that there is or what so what is the the conclusion The conclusion is that why, yes, why is that there is no inversion of vertical axis?
Okay. Yes, I mean, no, that, of course, that's a purely optics-based question. So you see, when we look at nature, sure, we say that, you know, we are not nature, we are merely talking about nature. But also we are nature in a certain sense. Or of the nature. And that's what you might call to be the vertical axis. We never change this. So the metaphor holds. Essentially, we want to impose norms on nature and we understand that nature impose constraints
upon our norms, but there is something in our ego or our consciousness that this allows us from fundamentally disconnecting from nature, from our own mirror image in nature, because we know that there is something that nature imposes on us, which is indispensable.
Maybe I have a thought. I don't think it's, it's Aladdin. I don't think it would answer the question, but it made me think about the idea of symmetry. I don't know if you're familiar with this quite obscure with this biologist, Adolf Portman, that wrote a book in the 60s. Sorry? Please, please go on. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I wrote this book in the 60s called Animal Shape. And he talks about the fact that, yeah, in his analysis of as a biologist, he realized that like the exterior body,
like the external shape are never like asymmetric instead of the organs that inside that it's always asymmetric actually and like as nature are imposing like a kind of symmetry on the outside and I don't know it's not an answer exactly it was just a thought about if you avert the top and the bottom like the chin and the front head then it's not asymmetrical anymore it's not asymmetric in fine man actually makes an answer to this which maybe that should be your homework to think about the relation between self and nature in terms of a mirror metaphor
So Feynman says that mirror actually doesn't have left, right, up and bottom vector. The mirror actually has this kind of metaphor. It's coming to you and you are coming to it. And that's what makes such speculations about nature possible. Think about this metaphor and write something in terms of the relation between self and
nature. Okay. do you have any thoughts on narcissus the myth of narcissus and the you know the this an optical perspective towards the mirror because i've always thought can you ask a narcissist person to talk about himself but you know there's like a fundamental distortion of the reflection the lake that narcissus sees and is almost attempting to like recover from that that distortion and well i think the narcissism uh uh narcissus myth is you know
So it's kind of under explained. I remember in Figuring the Space, the stake of the mobile, Gilles Chatelet actually refers to this with regard to the idea that I see myself in the mirror. But what mirror has for me is a thing in itself that looks back to me. The thing in it as in noumena?
I don't think that it means noumena but something more like what you might call to be a reality that is not accessible by the conscious Oedipus. Well if you are a Kantian you might call it noumena. but otherwise so is chateau's position that the mirror image gives the thing in itself form or that the mirror image is the presentation i assume it's a former you know it's not that we get some
type of specific information about the thing in itself through the marriage but rather that the the mirror image that exists in the mind, the apperceptive. Yes, that's the whole point. You see, when we are talking about self and nature, the relation between the two, we are talking about the postulates of the self. The self is capable of, very capable of positing certain kinds of scenarios as what is out there. and it looks into those possibilities and sees a reflection, a vague reflection of itself.
And the thing is that this is very much like this scenario. You see, I don't know whether Shatley agreed to this or not, but the whole point is that You have to posit a reality outside of you in order for you to be capable of looking at yourself as not fixed. One-on-one principle of ethics.
Outside is not an ontological space, it is literally the necessity of human psyche. We should posit it in order to come to this concrete consciousness that is not integral yet. So it looks like Alex is preparing to present, is that the case? Oh yes, yes, yes. Alex, where were you?
Hold on. Can you hear me? Yes, yes. I actually don't have to. I was messing around trying to figure out the configuration. Was I interrupting something important? No, no, no. We were just talking bullshit. Don't worry. Okay. Now it's my version. Yes. So, I think that there might be something of a connection here if we start talking about asymmetry. Asymmetrical languages between reason and unreason. Unreason being the language of the mad, right?
Or the crazy and the traumatized. And reason being its opposite. And something that I was interested in looking into for NC was, I'm going to move this so I can read this, was that the truth and its construction is something of a bugaboo in dealing with the psychoanalytic relationship, both in theory and in practice. I mean, it's always been a problem for therapists who are trying to get to something like countertransference, which is Ferenczi's project, which he was ultimately almost, you know, excommunicated or at least immediately whitewashed from the psychoanalytic community of his time, right?
He was an absolute heretic and he broke with Freud over this, over his experiments, which were thought to be very dangerous by Freud, right? And this was mostly because he was entering into a dialogue with unreason, kind of unarmed, like not prophylactically screened with the beard of authority normally given to the analyst, but wanting actually to annihilate himself, annihilate himself as an analyst and become analyzed, become an analysand, right? And this was, this still, this still has this charge to me when I was reading the clinical diary,
again at how dangerous this actually felt how vertiginous actually it was you know this like substance that was passing between these two people one being extremely traumatized rn who shares your initials right um who was actually a woman named elizabeth severin a completely self-made psychoanalyst who started out selling encyclopedias door-to-door and just had completely gotten quite a cult following at that time and had submitted herself to analysis with Forenzi because she admired him and because he was also known as the
analyst of lost causes, of last resort, and with good reason. So anyways, this is something that Foucault was interested in, right? Like the dialogue with unreason, where the transcendent truth of madness or unreason, and he never clearly distinguished between these two, confronts that which has split itself off from it. So the world of reason defined and embodied in the moralizing psychiatric humanism, that sadism, what he called the moralizing sadism. And he says such a dialogue would have a salutary effect on both reason and unreason, only if both
partners, the representatives of reason and unreason, were willing to place their positions on the table and submit them to scrutiny. And he had two approaches to this program of unreason, one of which was the project of transgression, and then the other which was the dialogue. And he wasn't ever really able to make up his mind about this, which is at the heart of madness and civilization, right? But in the end, it seems like he was was tempted to prioritize the project of transgression, and so wasn't able to sustain his endorsement with the dialogue,
with the dialectical relationship with unreason. And this is where Firenze can be reappraised for his opposite commitment, you know, to sustain and to exacerbate and to develop past the safety of that vocation and the position to the point where he compromised himself. And he was labeled as mad himself. And so I was interested in how psychoanalysis is a limit practice itself. Whereas this other idea of transgression is actually a scatological.
It's, you know, miracle working. It's like the final cure, but it's also something that ultimately makes a metaphor out of illness, out of mental illness in some ways, right? And the psychoanalytic dialogue with unreason is supposedly a mutual enterprise, and that is because of some of the innovations by people like Firenze and Counter-Transference, which he was developing by going to like psychic mediums and learning from mediumhood you know so the world of occultism but but this intense participation that's necessary inside of the
psychoanalytic contract is itself not symmetrical it never can be because the analyst will always be the representative of logos, right? And has this like elevated position. So it's not truly a dialectical position, right? And so here, the argument is that the situation is inherently rigged in this dialogue with unreason, because one asks unreason to enter into a dialogue with reason and so surrender itself to the demands of logos from the very beginning. This is something that I wanted to bring up and ask if others had noted in their readings of
Ferenczi. I can stop sharing my screen now. Thank you so much. Really, really fantastic, Sucinct presentation. Really great. Thank you. Any comments? I know that some of you want to put your dirty pause on Alex's presentation at this point. Bring it on. What? I mean, why? Why am I teaching this class when you are always silent?
Carl, I know that you have a lot of stuff to say. Yes, I do. I'm unfortunately a very slow thinker. So I'm trying to sort of piece something together. Hopefully I will have done so before the session is over. But I think it was a very sort of set of very interesting reflections to sort of bring the early Foucault into this. And it's something I hadn't thought of too much myself for a while. So it's I need to sort of bring up a couple of madness. Max? We don't really have anything yet.
I mean, if it's okay, I saw, I think what you bring up in terms of unreason and madness, I mean, I'm quite interested in this. interested in this and just to consider how the metaphysical hypothesis of madness has been considered as a philosophical fulcrum. In Descartes' metaphysical hypothesis and meditations, where Foucault and Derrida once vehemently disagreed, in fact, in History of Madness, Foucault argues that Descartes separates reason for madness while structurally attaching this to a historical observation. For Foucault, Descartes is a pivot point of the radical separation of reason from unreason
because he published Meditations in 1641 and just predated the great confinement of 1656, which saw the creation of the Hôpital Général in Paris, and it was here where the mad were confined and the moment that Foucault locates in Western modernity's sociological perturbation, medical confinement replaced the leper houses of the Middle Ages, that the mad and the deviant were for the first time confounded together with the spontaneous elimination of the asocial and rampant figure of madness. Then Derrida in his 1963 criticism of Foucault called Cogito and the
history of madness. This was originally published in the history of madness as an introduction in the very first French version, but it hasn't been published in editions thereafter. Derrida questions the precedence of this historical departure. Recalling Descartes, Derrida underscores that it's both the suspension of belief, the experience of hyperbole as doubt, and the supposition of total madness that produces Descartes' hypothesis of this evil meddling genius that Descartes calls it that contorts perception come belief. For Derrida, it's the dream that can be considered as an attenuated form of madness, meditation being itself a kind
of waking dream. Descartes' hypothesis, of course, is that he's a dreaming methodological postulate that advances through suppositional world beliefs, mathematical and geometrical principles, analytic a priori beliefs that for Kant will deal with space and time, these remain indubitable. And I would posit that these are the very substance of our dreams. And what is it not for a psychoanalyst to not approach madness and dreams as if there is some homologous relationship between the two. So really my comment is just a historical historiographic one about
madness and dreams and just being sort of woven into the discourse. Any other person? I don't know if I can chip in with something that Eken brought up about the demonic and the evil genius and let's say how, and Alex as well in her presentation of let's say this blurring of the lines between the insane and the one that is being treated and the one that is treating the patient and in Forency there's this fragment called
Who is Crazy? We are the patients and he actually talks in this fragment about the demonomania Rodrigo, what page is this? This is page 92 of the clinical diaries and I don't know if I can quote a brief passage Sure, you can you can okay uh thank you so uh the idea comes to mind that the ill will of an insane person can transcend time and space as well and persecute one even in one's dreams in other words he can destroy one demonically and i wanted to know what either raza or alex or anyone thinks about this
quote about the demonical that appears in the insane patient and that can actually, let's say, turn the table around. Any other person? Reza, you know all about demons. Please tell us, you know. No, no, I love demons. Demons are my friends. I have so many good demons. Any other person? Any comments on Alex's presentation? I kind of have one comment in trying to separate difference between reason and unreason.
I wasn't, I'm not completely sure how to make that separation. And I'm wondering about like what Forenzi talks about and when the patient has kind of like reached this hopelessness and despair that will the sees that hopelessness and despair and injustice is like we'll just keep going they kind of break from this alien will and he talked about this deficit of desire and ability on one hand but also this like tremendously widened horizon for having glimpsed the beyond and I wonder about like that sort of tremendously widened horizon. Is that kind of where the unreason quote unquote sits? But how much is that like maybe the beginning of a new form
of reason as opposed to like the antithesis of reason? Or like how do those between each other. Very, extremely, extremely fantastic question. Alex, are you online to answer to solve these objections? Sorry, Max, can you summarize it again? Just one line, if possible? I know it's hard.
Yeah. Is the break between reason and unreason actually the moment when unreason breaks from reason is actually the moment where reason, the possibilities of reason is actually expanding and pushing what was kind of like a closed form of reason of the analyst like kind of into the past sort of or like it as a previous sort of form and but the analyst can't see the unreason as may repeat it so Alex essentially he's asking you that okay so you are positing
a kind of beyond for reason, and you call it unreason, right? But the thing is that if it is unreason, then how do you know about it? How can you actually talk about it? So obviously it's going to be a new species of reason in the sense that to expand the domain of unreason will lead into expanding the domain of reason. Yeah, I mean, I think that I might answer that kind of elliptically.
I'm sorry, because I really went over the top because I really love... No, no, no, there is nothing to be sorry about. Okay. Absolutely nothing. Great. Just to say, right, okay, so then maybe this is the realm of the imaginal, however horrible. I mean, another way that Foucault, since we're based on him now, had speaking of unreason was that it was reason that was simply dazzled, which is kind of mysterious sounding right but that might you know do the opposite of shed some light on it it was like blinded in some way um because that's a strange way of talking about it
as well because nomos itself was seen as like a ray of light you know so it would be like the other side of the moon like the thing that's being split through a prism you know but then the question would be for you Alex do you really want to stop at the dark side of the moon do you really want to stop at what you cannot see the blind spot no I think that maybe unreason is asking us to see in the dark you know yes of course it is merely what you might call to be a beckoning for a better reason. For a better reason. Yeah, maybe something like abate or something like that.
But how to make that experience with unreason collective or move it beyond like the privatized self is I think still like a major yes yes I agree that was never actually solved by the project of transgression which did an easy thing really it just made it into or by the project of reason yes yeah I completely agree I agree yeah so I mean since there was also some interest in demons and And there is a question, I think, around demons. I did want to talk about it a little bit, too, in terms of, again, who is the subject?
Not only who is the subject of unreason, like who is, you know, how do we figure that person politically? And that was the project of madness and civilization. Well, isn't it the case that unreason doesn't have a subject? Yeah, that's, yeah, I think so. I mean, not in any way that we can reasonably constitute, right? Constitute, yes, yes. And so what states of being can we admit as being, you know, conducive to thinking beyond realism? I think that something that I don't totally agree is the way, it's a mistake to universalize here. You know, we have to...
Yes, but you see, Alex, universalization is sure, in the time of Kant, it was basically a kind of what you might call to be a whitewash over local exigencies. But we have matured to a certain extent, to a certain extent, in the sense that we no longer think that universality can be achieved by simply imposing a prescription, an ontology upon everyone. In the sense that if there is a universality,
it should come spontaneously from local exigencies and nothing more. But what I'm actually interested in is that how many demons do you have? Spill the beans. Well, I mean, do you have the rest of the day? I wanted to talk about this idea of, this is a horrible thing. No, no, no, no, no, no. What? You're not basically sidetracking.
I can tell you, and essentially this whole course is about being honest to each other, about the idea of self, psychology, the sufferings that we have went through. So I actually want to know how many demons do you have? They're innumerable, Reza. They're like stereoscopes. They're like stereoscopes. At least a couple of them. At least a couple of them. OK, well, I think this is one for me is this thing that I wanted to talk about is the ghost fetus that hangs around me as like a reproductive animal
and how that sort of forestalled or incomplete future as a reproductive person, a person who's chosen not to reproduce is something that's like, you know, might be called hauntological or something, but is also real. It's like a future- You are getting a little bit too vague here. Okay, well, here's a picture. Yes, yes. Do you really mean it? I mean, no, let us speak really frank to each other at this point. Everyone needs to be frank. Is it some sort of fear of living alone?
Analyst Reza has stepped into the... No, I actually want... No, I like this. I think that this class should be about honesty. Yes, this was a compliment. Analyst Reza was a compliment. There was a good read. You need to have analysis for the win. So, Alex, let us know. don't worry about any sort of consequence. We are not going to tweet about this kind of stuff. What am I supposed to be disclosing now? Disclosing that what you just said, what that kind of fear actually means,
is it that you think that you are alone? would alex have access to this would she know what it is i don't know i don't know no no it's probably just a fear yeah it is ultimately a fear of being alone um in the sense that nothing will continue at maine right i mean like like the most basic way to pass something on is to just why do you think that it's a fear oh i don't think it's a fear but you're asking me no no i understand i understand let me tell you this uh you see i'm not anti-natalist but i actually don't want to have a child i told my dad
from early on, and he was always laughing at me saying that, oh no, you're going to have a child. I said that, no, your name will be discontinued with me. I think that this is actually a really great recipe. You see, you have come to this conclusion that there is a certain kind of restrictions and constraints that either negatively constraint you or positively constraint you to do something.
I think that you went for the positive constraint in the sense that I am myself, I'm afraid of living this life alone but nevertheless I will do it. Isn't it the greatest ethical recipe? Alex? That of accepting one's essential aloneness in the black void of all. Yeah, totally.
Good. Glad to hear about this. Can you prod someone else? sure i will okay who is going to get cattle prod someone share uh sure so i cannot go to sleep it's very difficult for me i stay up until like 10 a.m sometimes not sleeping and the demon would be a you know I don't know is there like a sleep demon does this count this is the most like demonic elements is this like inability to
but you know I mean like it's something that I absolutely feed by watching films and writing and staring at the computer screen incessantly. You are getting too awake. I do not sleep and then when I do sleep, it's sleeping until like all of the morning times when the sun is out. This is like living nocturnally. They are not exciting demons. They are insomniac demons. Let me say that are sexual demons. Okay? Confessional. go on and maybe other people can join and say what other demons they have because this class is simply about this
we thought we had this self but what if ourselves is just a bundle of different kind of things that are beyond our consciousness. As about the beings, maybe someone else should contribute at this point. and talk about it theoretically everyone is so silent the sexual demon is so you know because that it's so difficult because
it's you know yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah but there's a bit about reproduction then there's a bit about like perversion there is no such a thing as reproduction in actual sex that's just what evolution tells you psychoanalysis actually tells you that sex is fundamentally counter counter reproductive yes well what i want you know what is it to speak of you know in like a very banal way perhaps, when I want to be whipped and tattered and stepped on and so on. This is, is this like something inherently sexual
or is this now related to the exchange of power and so on? It is actually about self. There is nothing actually fundamentally sexual. Yeah, there is an element of sexuality in it, But this is what fantasy looks like. You see, the only way to get out of self is fantasy. And I actually wanted to talk about this last session. Unfortunately, it didn't happen. But nevertheless, we did read Alan Kirk's, you know, you know chronicle of his own fantasies yes fantasies do matter
if they are made systematically if they are engineered in the sense that you can say you know I'm not going to act out on my worst kinds of impulses. Instead, I'm actually going to intensify my fantasies. That's when a true schizophrenic comes to the foreground. This is tricky business, Reza, because then it intensifies.
The one to perform this, it either intensifies or one becomes like this incel who lives in their sexual fantasy and is more and more content with legal. And the fantasy is no longer just, you know, a productive force, but a reproductive governing force that not only, you know, where I escape into like this masturbatory space of creating fancy, fancy, fantasy. The thing about incel culture is as simple as that. It is a kind of culture that's merely basically
have fantasies without desires please go on what do you mean by desires? or rational or rational scenarios to effectuate them whereas someone who is a true fantasist in a good rationalist sense, rational imagination, always wants to test these against the real world. Some of them might backfire. Some of them might actually fulfill you.
Some of them might be neutral. No, insult culture is just what you might call to be imagination imagination, productive imagination, without action, without intentional action. In the sense that they really don't have intentional action. Because if they did have intentional action, they wouldn't have been incels. You know, Lacan would like sleep with all these wives and such and as an adult.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no quite a few wives but so did derrida and all of these but ties but that's right you can actually assist but ties life that's really bad bad bad bad bad you know it will backfire
do you really want but i come after you no you don't but there's something to be said for like the psychoanalyst creating a rational situation of the desires ex decision simply by listening to the analysis I mean there it's odd because perhaps psychoanalysis is the only exchange where the analyst is not you know they're they're getting something out of this transaction too they're not simply guiding in a therapeutic form they are performing something and this is something that you know people like Bruce Fink who write about clinical approaches to psychoanalysis emphasize.
Any other person who wants at this point to talk something you know Nikki, Alex, any other person, Joseph, Jared, Max, whoever, I had one thought. I don't know if any can hear me. Sure. I had a moment of interpolation earlier in this class about sea apes, because when in the last class we were talking about places you construct to go, maybe to prevent or to protect yourself during trauma.
I definitely go to like a beach. Uh-huh, uh-huh. And? And? And? And? And? I don't know, does anyone else go to a beach? It's just like this place with no society. No language. Anyone has any thought about this? Maybe Alex? Or if not, maybe some of you.
Whether we like to go to the beach? Is this the question? Yes. a nude beach to New York. We don't want to hear about that. We are talking about the ontological prescription of going, the necessity of going to the beach. Thoughts? Firenze was really into like uterine regression, right? Like the return. to the C, the lossal regression. It's really interesting. I've been reading his What do you think about Alex? I think it's an interesting idea for design actually.
But as far as the psychoanalytic component of it, I mean I don't, I'm not as interested in that. Okay, I see, I see. The private question though, do you actually go to the beach? Not recently. I've never gone to the beach. You've never gone? You live in Connecticut. Yeah. And that's actually a surprise, yes. I actually think that yes, there is a, we, you see, in psychoanalysis, self is just like
a bundle of mess and a bundle of suffering. So you have to, by any means possible, in terms of psychoanalysis, to kind of mitigate this is suffering. Go to the beach. Or perhaps, according to Sabina Espirilin, sleep with your mother. May I say something about this? About the amniotic element of going to the beach?
Yes. Yes, because, for example, let's say in the context of my country, and I think that generally in Latin America, we Colombians in general are quite paternalistic. We're looking for either a symbolic father or a mother unconsciously, like in the worst oedipic sense. And it's curious that whenever there's a vacation schedule here, like, you know, holidays or everything, it seems that everybody has a country house that is directed to the sea. Or people travel directly to places where there's a lot of heat, you know, like the heat of the motherly womb. It seems that it's something that people try to search here.
So it's curious that, I mean, I personally don't travel as much. I actually don't travel at all. But many of the people I know, probably like 90% of the people that I know like to go to the beach or this heat that probably is like this amniotic, symbolic thing of the mother sleeping with the mother. Yes, yes. There is also one thing that... I don't know if you know about this Alex or Nikki, do you know where Oedipus, the figure
of Oedipus actually came up in the ancient cultures? It was not Egyptian. humans simply kind of solidified what was about the problem of Oedipus Rex. So this thing that you go back as an apese to the ocean is very much like the Oedipus Complex. Do you know where Oedipus complex came from? Anyone?
Alex, make a guess. You are good at it. You're muted. Yeah. Okay. Greek dramaturgy? I mean... Pophicles? Yeah. No, actually not. No, no, no, no. It actually came from the old civilizations. not really civilization, tribes, in which, and there were so many of those tribes, you know, back then, in which a boy actually drinks a whole pitcher of semen.
Thanks. please tell me more about how this is what connect this a bit more i mean i no i'm not going to connect this anymore so the boy drinking a pitcher of semen you're saying the boy drinking a pitcher of semen predates the oedipal myth but it's the same it's the same myth essentially the whole point uh in the in the early tribes of humanity was something like that that a boy has lost its way but does the boy not know he should because what's important about the Oedipal myth is there's you know the lack of like knowledge that
this is the father I have killed yes yes yes but the thing is that the Oedipus is always a figure father you know it's not So basically, this is how it went, that the majority of the early tribes in the human history had this initiation for you becoming an adult, right? And to do that, you had to, basically, my apologies, drink a copious amount of semen.
Virility for virilates. Yes, precisely because that gave them manhood. in the sense that they did not think about the teenage girls, teenage boys as girls and boys. They actually thought that they should go through certain kind of initiation to become man. So manhood was never actually something natural. It only came with initiation at the onset of civilization.
I have actually some really good books to suggest on this topic. So what happens at that moment? Well, the point is that it's a very symbolic, extremely symbolic kind of action. drink a cup of semen and you simply suddenly miraculously become a man.
Is this akin you're saying to killing the father and sleeping with the mother and becoming a king? Yes, yeah. The thing is that Oedipus Rex also has that kind of element. So Oedipus is just an adolescent teenager roaming around so on and so forth and suddenly realizes that I can become an adult by sleeping with my mother. But he precisely does not realize that. The tragedy is that he doesn't know.
He doesn't know, but you should say this from a psychoanalytic perspective, that it is actually the unconscious part of his ego. So he did, precisely because he had that kind of unconscious to begin with. okay but we can't call unconscious apprehension knowledge right it is not knowledge no no no it's absolutely not knowledge it's not that he was repressing you know like that at any point this might be my father this like he had no you know it's only in retrospect he's able to put this
together but the boy drinking the semen even if he thinks he's drinking milk and he later finds out He has not committed a transgression, the likes of the Oedipal transgression, which is... But you see, the whole story about these kinds of cultural practices, also Oedipus Rex, is that they are not stories about the conscious, the psyche. They are about the materials and processes that buttress your consciousness. That's really the scary thing. So I think just regarding this question of knowledge, this brings up an interesting point,
which I think Lacan develops to a certain extent, which is whether or not something being unconscious has to imply that I, in some sense, know it, it's just hidden from me, or whether it can be something where the unconscious is instantiated in a social process, such that the fact that there's all of these significations prior to me are what constitute it as having this force of the drive. Right. So that rather than say, well, you know, Oedipus at some level knew that this was his mother, that he was killing his father, that, well, no, that wasn't the case. But he was embedded in this process of of signification, which preceded him and which was this sort of unconscious revelation of that fact.
Yes, very much so. Yes. And I would say that Frenzy would say that the task of psychoanalysis is to exactly locate where that signification came from. And what kind of consequences it had upon the self. this is basically what you might call to be the ethics of the selves in terms of the psychoanalytic tradition Reza you know Shakespeare's Titus
Andronicus of course the greatest cannibalistic yes this reminds me a bit of you know I mean obviously there's something edible in the consumption of one's children but it's all you know it seems very a contingent upon this reveal by an outsider be it an oracle no no no absolutely you're right you see the thing about any sort of these kinds of stories, you should understand that these stories become
subjects of curious morbidity to the extent that they are historically shared among us. Right? Like any person could actually eat another person. But when it becomes part of historical narration, then it becomes something fundamentally different. It becomes a myth. And that's basically how things like Shakespeare,
like Bible, so on so forth, Quran become powerful. Thoughts. Alex is like contemplating, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I've seen that face in my class before. So we're coming towards the end here, so perhaps you can suggest to us some readings for the next time.
Is Jason Bobak Mahaqqir's Omnicide available on Libgen? I shall see one moment. I mean, I have a copy, a digital copy. I recently Electronic? Yeah, I can share. I can share that. Okay. Okay. If that you have it then yeah, sure. I also have my review that was published. Jason liked it. It made me happy. I can share the document, yeah, because it's not on LibGen, but I think Jason would be OK with us.
Oh, Jason would be totally informed. So I'll send that to Alex. OK, OK. Alex, if you actually be kind of I'll post it to the drive and to the Facebook message. Sorry? Oh, so I would post it to the Google Drive or the the classroom page rather, as well as to the Facebook messaging. The thing is that I would actually, so if you are going to read it, read Robin Mackay's introduction and the first chapter. If you can do that, that would be good.
So then is there anybody who would like to present on Omnicide? I can present. It's Nikki. Is that Nikki? Yeah. I know Nikki is Jason's student. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, really? Yes. I will be in the class. Oh, okay. So we should have one other presenter. Is there anybody else who would like to present on this side?
Yeah, I can do it. Excellent. Which part? Should we divide the intro and chapter one? I mean, you know the chapters of that book are very, they're quite short and they're each in relationship to a different author. I feel like it could be helpful to, if there's a specific chapter to also, because it's like There's Joyce Mansour, Adonis, Ahmed Shamblick, all these, there's these paragraphs that begin each chapter. Essentially, all I actually mean by this is simply as that, something that we have been talking
about since the last session, where we talked about Kirk Allen's case. So how can you be truly a schizophrenic without being a sociopath? There is a key to life. So is there one person who would like to present on the introduction and one on chapter one? Or you can divide it up some other way as well. I don't mind. I never read any of it. So, um, yeah, maybe we could figure it out. Like after I, I kind of want to scan it.
Sure. That's fair. Um, yeah. Are you both in the Facebook message group? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So you can discuss there. The forward is available online and I will certainly have the PDF sent by before the weekend I can assure that. The most important thing is that with Jason, you see he's a Middle Easterner. See, do you know how Middle Eastern think? It's just that time is unbound, right? Again, time is unbound. The space is also unbound.
The space is something, what we call the desert. It's a non-place. Do you know what happens in the desert? Well, you can have a community. You can have democracy. All these old stuff, concepts, are out of the window right away once you live in a desert. A desert is a non-place that allows you to think about the possibilities of what a place
can look like. That's, I think, is where we should start. Ethics is not about what these values are, what humans cannot do, but what humans can do in virtue of such constraints in which they are entangled? Apparently it's quite difficult to find this book in Iran. I had an Iranian philosophy student.
I actually sent a few copies to friends and they were all confiscated. Really? Yeah. I had an Iranian friend, they read my review and they asked me to send them a copy of the book. So I was going to do this. Don't send them. Don't send it. If you can get the PDF, just send the PDF. it's actually, you know, it's going to be confiscated and they will be actually questioned. Don't do it. Don't do it. I will not do it. Interesting, because really, I mean, okay. We don't need to discuss this complex issue.
So, shall we say goodbye? And of course, I can stay for a few minutes if there are comments and so on and so forth. All right. Thanks so much, Reza. Thank you. Thank you, dearly.