Panic attacks and contemporary individualism. Part Two Now consider the clinical urgency. It happens more and more that people are driven urgency. Not long ago I call a person in a state of high agitation, a bout of panic in action. This is a case in which no one can say: "Come in a week," we must be able to get away. It was a young veterinarian, who had started getting panic attacks when her boyfriend, who lived in another city to be near her had come to live in Milan. He had heard this move with a sense of invasion for a closeness that felt excessive. We see that the idea the idea is to protect themselves from relationships with others, and security in this case, the closure in relation to the world. On the other hand, he feels he does not want to get away from him, he feels as a person of value, he wants to continue having a relationship, and is typical in those situations desire the impasse in which it happens that you want and do not want the same thing. The panic comes from here, from this feeling of having no way out. In this case we have an example of a rapid therapeutic effect. The first patient is in fact went to the doctor, who obviously has prescribed medication, as she felt they needed to talk to someone. Come to me in fact, for a period of not more than a few months, the panic subsides and, in a sense, it is healed. But cured by what? The phenomenon del panico, certo, ma andando poi a vedere più a fondo troviamo che un piccolissimo segno sul volto, impercettibile, era da lei vissuto come un segno devastante. Era una bruciatura che si era fatta da piccola, e che l’aveva sempre fatta sentire messa ai margini. Da cosa era guarita allora? Dal senso di quel segno? Oppure era guarita da quello che i suoi sogni rappresentavano? Uno tipico era che cercava di curare una cocorita, e questa si ribellava, le beccava la mano. Questa cocorita in fondo rappresentava lei stessa. Sentiva di essere come lei. Era da lei stessa che doveva guarire allora?
Che cosa diventa il concetto di guarigione in questo caso? Che cosa diventa, in generale, considerando che viviamo in un tempo incentrato sul presente? Healing, in a classic Freudian model of therapy to the past, involves a review of its history, a review their experiences, seeing the traumatic, giving them a meaning, and once we made the journey back to the its inception it healed we go: we immerse ourselves in finding sources for their integrity. And 'the pattern of Ego-Psychology: you traverse the various stages of regression to the most archaic, then the path is reversed and the progression begins: the first regression and then progression. A future-oriented therapy as that of Alexander follows another pattern: we are engaged in negative ideals, as waste that does not make us live well. To heal must find a positive ideal. When we docked we have reached our goal, we made the shift to a new identification, an identification that will support us positively.
It 'hard to imagine what can be healing in an analysis that must be a society based only on the present. We do not have ideals which fill the central hole of existence, the girl I mentioned, is the sign that no plastic surgery could remove, simply because that was not the problem. This slight mark on the face was at the bottom of the externalized representation of the central hole of his existence, the hole from which he never recovers. Not for nothing that Lacan's definition of healing - as a date bar, but those that make us think - has been to say that the analysis ends when the patient has become incurable. It 'a truth, because the center hole of life is not something you fix, not something that we want to fill with the ideal, is not something against which we can return to a' before the trauma ', in a previous state, because we know that just around the trauma is the subjectivity as such, and so the trauma is not something that we can leave behind. Each subjectivity is constituted around the traumatic derivante dall’incontro con il linguaggio. Cosa vuol dire allora guarigione se non è pensata come prospettiva in avanti, verso un nuovo ideale, verso una crescita, né indietro, verso il paradiso pretraumatico perduto, e se deve corrispondere a una vita vissuta soprattutto nel presente?
Le domande che ci vengono dal mondo contemporaneo danno un’impronta all'esperienza della psicoanalisi. Ci sono per esempio oggi analisi molto brevi. E’ un tema sul quale abbiamo cominciato a riflettere a partire da una conversazione a Barcellona intorno agli effetti rapidi dell'analisi, che abbiamo ripreso e discusso a Parigi. Una volta Freud, in un’analisi troppo breve, avrebbe visto una fuga nella guarigione. Una remissione troppo rapida del sintomo sarebbe stata definita fuga nella guarigione perché si sarebbe detto che il paziente comincia a stare bene per non affrontare i propri conflitti profondi. Ma, prendendo un'altra angolatura, un'altra luce, cosa vuol dire affrontare i propri conflitti profondi, quando pensiamo che la divisione, la lacerazione, il conflitto non sia qualcosa che si ricompone come nella magia della dialettica hegeliana, dove il contrasto tra tesi e antitesi arriva a una sintesi risolutiva? Sappiamo che la divisione del soggetto, la lacerazione, il conflitto, è in ultima istanza insolubile, e costituisce il dinamismo stesso della vita. Non è qualcosa da superare, ma è piuttosto qualcosa da mettere a frutto. In questo senso allora non si può più dire fuga nella guarigione. Molto pragmaticamente, interrogato sul termine dell’analisi, Lacan nelle sue conferenze americane rispose che un’analisi è finita quando il soggetto si sente meglio.
Rispetto al tema degli attacchi di panico, che abbiamo messo all'ordine del giorno oggi, gli effetti rapidi dell'analisi corrispondono al fatto che un soggetto viene in un momento di crisi, dopo un po’ ha una di remissione della situazione di panico e se ne appaga. Dobbiamo forse dire che non va bene perché non c'è stato un lavoro profondo, perché non c'è stata una elaborazione inconscia? Ma quando c’è stata sufficiente elaborazione inconscia? Perché non riconoscere che un paziente può anche fermarsi a quel punto, invece di qualificare come interrotta un’analisi che, per quanto breve, porta sollievo al soggetto? Quando possiamo dire che un’analisi non è interrotta? Conosciamo poi situazioni di analisi nate dall'emergenza e che poi le persone chiedono di continuare e che slittano verso l’interminabile perché il soggetto incontra la necessità di un’elaborazione regolare, la necessità di punto di fissazione, un punto dove tornare. Non parlo solo di caso di psicosi, dove lo si può capire: lo vedo spesso anche in casi di nevrosi. C’è la donna che viene nell'emergenza di una crisi matrimoniale, perché è abbandonata dal marito: si trascina in una situazione of uncertainty for years, because he can not let go, can not decide. Then finally resolved, but wants to continue to come: the rituals, the regular sessions of the permit processing, a fixation point with respect to the anxieties aroused by the primal wound that was inflicted on the abandonment of their femininity.
There are people who use the analysis because of its value disangosciante, for which the regularity of the appointment itself becomes a factor analysis of relief from anxiety. After all, a striking effect of the contemporary conditions - by emphasizing a little 'things by putting them under the magnifying glass - is a kind of polarization analysis of very short, which go under the sign of the urgency and ending when the problem is solved, and analysis to slip towards the ending, which no longer have a defined objective, and are used by the patient as an accompaniment, as a backup. Of course not all are like that, we still have a classic analysis with a period of several years. It 's interesting though to see that, by the standards of the '50s, opens a range of possibilities. In the 50 patients entered into a device strongly hierarchical: the analyst was on the pedestal, not respond to questions and that made by the regression engine. The patient was infantile and this was referred to as regression, which was interpreted in a chronological sense.
Today we are far more possibilities. Recently, Comandatuba, we met to assess, after criticism of the standard classics, the operating principles of the analysis as we understand it today. This promises a variable geometry, in which the analyst must enter the order of ideas to be used in various ways: it must be flexible, as defined by Jacques-Alain Miller. Or, in a development proposed by Graciela Brodsky, must be the dummy, the dead of the bridge, the puppet, who assumes the role of which is invested by the patient for transfer from place to conduct the game and, through transference, in this position, make a different move that leads out of the repetition. It is therefore be used to invest in the object position in which the patient places us. There is flexibility in this, an answer to the request, a being a little 'a-la-carte, there is the fact that expand the range of choices: I would say that this flexibility characterizes the contemporary experience of the analysis, pleasant in the way we understand it. The sdogmatizzazione leads to a flexibility that allows many more moves.
need to develop an analysis at the level of subjectivity of our time, different from the past: this is the point. There is more panic because there is an authority meno forte, perché tutte le istituzioni sono indebolite, non solo l’istituzione paterna, e non possono più svolgere il ruolo che svolgevano prima. L'istituzione scolastica, per esempio, non ha quasi più i mezzi per governare le situazioni di crisi. Io faccio il consulente in una scuola elementare e molte volte le richieste che mi fanno riguardano bambini che non si riescono a governare, perché non hanno interiorizzato le forme di controllo sociale tradizionalmente trasmesse nella famiglia. Se in famiglia non interiorizzano dei freni superegoici, a scuola non rispondono più. Il rapporto con l'adulto diventa paritetico. Ho visto una volta una bambina che si era completamente chiusa e non parlava più: le insegnanti temevano un autismo. I talked a bit 'of times the mother and I realized that the problem was that it was unable to exert any influence on this child. One day, for example, the mother had seen her jump all the time on a network creaking constantly repeating, "See that you fall .. come down .. get down!" But the child was not even listening, until he fell down and hurt himself. So I asked his mother "Why did not he made to stop?" and she replied: "But I told her daughters to get off!" It 'clear that we are in a situation where the adult fails to impress its will as needed to govern a child. This mode is obviously not the most authoritarian pedagogy, but there must still be, we must find the means, you can not just give up. The decline of authoritarian education has left a vacuum: there are more instruments than before, but there are still new instruments.
E 'in this vacuum of authority that opens the space of the phenomenology of panic. Analysts traditionally inspired attempt to resolve the problem with the traditional media, with the oedipal clinic, the clinic that takes them to the past, the clinic of his father. It is for them to rediscover the meaning given by the fatherly role to buffer the emergency created by panic. But is this really the problem? The goal is to eliminate the panic by the way, if it is possible? Or should we rather say that panic reveals a truth that was hidden before under different appearances, different narcissistic compensation, other symbolic structures that give symptomatic and leaving the ungovernable burst of life? The panic is not the face of death - though in the DSM, among other items that qualify the panic attack is the fear of dying. In reality it is not death to throw into panic, rather than fear of life is unmanageable: the panic has emerged as a tear where life has got out of control. This is terrible, not death.
The panic then flows as a truth that can not fall out once, and the problem is not to bring him back to sense, to patch the tear through the sense given by the father. The problem really is, in the way I see it, draw the consequences of this truth. This is not to close the leak, because it would be to silence the truth, and would be a cosmetic way. Of course we can create hairpieces, put a little 'make-up, redial appearances. Are solutions that are not made. E 'can be given to the footings a person, offer him some suggestions. In a cognitive-behavioral therapy say it can solve the problem in 15 sessions! Yes, you can stop the panic, we have seen that we can count on rapid effects in the analytical, but not this way we say they have found the solution. Panic brings out a truth, it shows that life is not under the master signifier, outlines the hole in the heart of existence, the hole where anyone can fall, and you have to deduce the logic, we must take note of the hole, do not try of the cancellation. It is built starting from the hole taking it as a fact. We should not cover the hole, rather than demarcating, create signs, producing a force through the language that permits us to describe, to call this out of hand enjoyment of life that takes the form of panic.
The model that we can draw from Lacan is that of a reversal of his father. This is not to go back to the direction given by father, the Oedipal sense. There is a passage in Le savoir du Seminary where psychoanalyst Lacan argues that the analyst is in the same position his father's traumatic, we must hold that position, he says, but do the reverse of his father. If you want there in a bit 'when he speaks of Alexander's corrective emotional experience, but this is not the most meaningful sense, because I would say that we are instead something that takes us out of the Oedipal logic. The last clinical teaching of Lacan distances himself from the classical Freudian clinic, and appearance that I see it more useful and more interesting is what leads to the other side of Oedipus, the one where you configure a non-phallic jouissance. Enjoyment fallico in fondo è abbastanza addomesticabile ed entra facilmente nella contabilità del significante. Nel suo ultimo insegnamento Lacan invece configura un godimento al di là del fallo, il godimento femminile per eccellenza, esemplificato dall'esperienza estatica nella mistica.
Qui abbiamo Erminia Macola, che se ne è particolarmente occupata in un libro indimenticabile sull'esperienza della mistica: ‘Il castello interiore’, che su questo tema è assolutamente illuminante. L'estasi, nel modo in cui la concettualizza Lacan, è diversa da quella tradizionalmente descritta dalla mistica, che si realizza con l'unione fusionale. I mistici religiosi sentono di essere Uno con la divinità inesprimibile, di merge with it in one unit, and this certainly corresponds to the experience of ecstasy in the society where one exists, or in traditional societies, in which a One transcendent founder and holds the fate of the world: they are theological society.
In modernity is not so. Elvio Fachinelli had begun to explore the experience of ecstasy lay in one of his last books. He described moments that can happen to anyone: a day on the beach, for example, in an almost timeless, when you abandon yourself to observe the things around thoughtlessly, leaving almost penetrate or flow out, to cross the borders of their own identity in a sense che può perfettamente essere definita estatica. L'interpretazione di Fachinelli in quel libro era però ancora prigioniera della logica dell'Uno. Deteologgizzava l'esperienza dell'estasi ma la leggeva sempre in chiave fusionale. Nella lettura che possiamo darne con Lacan abbiamo invece una chiave diversa, che non è l'Uno, perché godimento femminile non sta nell'Uno, nella misurabilità del significante: è piuttosto qualcosa che riguarda l'esperienza del molteplice puro.
Questo, capite, è interessante se lo proiettiamo sulle modalità di vita contemporanea fondate sull'individualismo, su un'atomizzazione dell'esistenza non legata ad una unità sociale. E’ interessante perché nell’esperienza found ecstasy, as his other aspect, the phenomenon of panic. And 'the other side where the multiplicity is dispersed that no one is able to collect, that no one can bind as a whole, and that reflects an experience that belongs to each of us, crossed by the dispersal of modern life. All of us are missing elements, atomized, which are not in a social organic collects them. The problem in this sense is always in the relationship between the individual and society: what does it link? This is the issue that propels us into the new symptoms. The experience of loneliness, loss, sputtering penetrates our individuality is not collected by a founder of One embodied by the prince, the emperor, the president of the republic, by a credible authority principle that governs the whole row. This experience creates a natural bent toward panic, and this is why we see a strong growth of the problem of panic in the clinic today.
A decade ago we would have said that anorexia and bulimia were the emerging problems, and this was in response to another side of the modern search for security, which will appeal to more things than to people. It thus seeks to buffer the anxiety refuge in food, or the deprivation of it, it breaks away from the interference of the Other entering a process of self-destruction, closing in itself and in food. Drug addiction in new ways that we see being born, is something like: code breaking a tie with the Other, because we are afraid of the bond with the Other, and the addict tries to heal from the Other refuge in substance. For some years I have supervised in the community for cocaine on the outskirts of Milan. One day traders took guests on a trip with them and they did a game that was to draw the cittàla ideal city: "Design your home - have told them - in what is the ideal city for you." I later went to see the drawings. Were surprising: they were the houses where he lived with a girlfriend, a with their items, TV, Hi Fi, PlayStation, and the streets turned around houses but no one came. There were a whole maze of city streets none of which led to the house. Another had designed his home with a large garden and around a fence, a barbed wire to protect themselves from thieves and then, later, the city. His house was a fortress or a prison, where he was locked up. In this sense there is a self-protective isolation, is closing in with their own remedies autoerotic, what sociologists call cocooning, a cocooned themselves. Let
other similar clinical phenomena where security is such a relationship pathological with money: many depressions in the basic psychological safety as food, money, substance. We find that more affluent people, with income-generating activities, with flourishing industries, tormented by the fear of falling into poverty. It then goes to look at the underlying problem and this seemingly irrational fear becomes clearly visible. I've seen in supervision as a bit 'of time makes the case of a man who has had an active life, dynamic, master of that most lucrative industry, which has become rich. At the age of sixty falls down the stairs and broke both feet. From there begins to have a decline in depression: is invaded by the fear of disease and impoverishment. During the analysis brings out a special remembrance: belonging to a wealthy family, was sent to school by the nuns, who were very protective of him. Respected him and gave him a privileged place, as the son-in-a small country of one of the most prominent families. It was carried in the palm of your hand, lived in a kind of Eden. At one point he had to pass by nuns in the public school, where he was a baby like everyone else, nothing more than a number or simply no longer in Eden before. Of course, suffered greatly in this step. It 'the only vivid memory he has, but which already is looming in the background which then becomes the story of the fall. It is therefore un ricordo di copertura che è presenta il tema classico del paradiso perduto. Lo definisco ricordo di copertura non perché sia falso, ma perché si sovraccarica di valenze simboliche che non possono esprimersi che così, che non riguardano solo il singolo episodio ma costituiscono una matrice del rapporto con l’Altro. C'è per questo soggetto un essere lasciato cadere dall’Altro che si raffigura nel ricordo della scuola con la perdita d’amore che rappresenta, che si trasforma concretamente nella caduta dalle scale a cui segue la caduta depressiva. Questa depressione si focalizza sul tema della perdita di denaro e sulla paura dell'impoverimento.
Vediamo dunque che un aspetto della modernità sta nel privilegiare il relationship with things rather than people, and that gives shape to contemporary diseases such as addiction or anorexia-bulimia. The panic, if we look closely, it differs from such symptoms. Does not favor a relationship with things, there's nothing to panic that we can hold, where you can find refuge and safety. The depressed attaches to money, the anorexic and bulimic stick to food, toxic refuge in substance. In a panic but there is nothing to cling to, so it is difficult to classify new forms of symptom: does not hold any replacement, you can not substitute for any form of enjoyment, precisely symptom, panic non ha un valore sintomatico. Come distinguiamo l'angoscia dal sintomo così è necessario distinguere il panico dai nuovi sintomi.
Anche le più recenti pratiche sessuali mostrano la proiezione verso il rapporto con le cose tipico della società contemporanea. Cosa c'è di più relazionale della sessualità? In realtà tuttavia oggi vediamo quanto possa essere distante dal relazionale, e non tanto perché passi attraverso la mercificazione, giacché il rapporto con la prostituta c’è da sempre, ma implica comunque almeno che la si guardi in faccia, ed possibile anche scambiare con lei qualche parola. Le nuove pratiche sessuali sono piuttosto quelle che si svolgono nella dark room. L’incontro nella dark room has its origins in gay meeting places. The gay, it is known, often has a particular lability relational partner often changes, wants to hit and run the meeting. The typical coupling takes place in a gay bar with a quiet game of looks, which establishes the agreement, after which the two partners apart to eat quickly to the report, and the fact that a conversation is almost considered a breach of 'label. In these bars are designed for dark rooms, where several men come in and try erotically. They are places where we come in contact with each other, but only with his body. The rooms are now also meeting places for swingers in Bait: a number of people, men e donne, entra in una stanza: nel buio assoluto si cerca il contatto con il corpo di un altro e l'atto sessuale si svolge con il corpo di un altro, senza implicare la sua persona. E’ l'oggettualizzazione più estrema dell'esperienza sessuale, che va decisamente più in là del rapporto con la prostituta.
Marco Focchi
