KICKING THE GONG AROUND

Thursday, February 28, 2013

Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life-Getting It

Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life Getting it or not getting. How can it ever benefit to not get it. The example is the infant who can't communicate his needs to the mother. He benefits in learning how to cope on his own. This essential perplexity is highlighted in the contrasting aims of psychoanalytic treatment, in the question of cure; is the aim of psychoanalytic treatment to increase the person’s understanding of herself or to free her to desire? Phillips, Adam (2013-01-22). Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life (p. 59). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition. If you talk to people, he suggests, they lose interest; if you ignore them – or, rather, if you ignore them by talking to yourself – they are engaged. As though curiosity might sometimes be preferred to consolation, listening in or overhearing preferred to communication or comprehension. The wish to understand or be understood – to, as we say, communicate or be accessible – might give a false picture, might be a hiding place, might be a retreat or a refuge. Phillips, Adam (2013-01-22). Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life (p. 61). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition. Psychoanalysis is, in fact, the treatment that weans people from their compulsion to understand and be understood; it is an ‘after-education’ in not getting it. Through understanding to the limits of understanding – this is Freud’s new version of an old project. Freud’s work is best read as a long elegy for the intelligibility of our lives. We make sense of our lives in order to be free not to have to make sense. Phillips, Adam (2013-01-22). Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life (p. 63). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition. sadomasochistic contract; the masochist says, ‘You can do what you like to me as long as you never leave me (indeed, the worse the things you do to me are, the more I know you will never leave me)’; and the sadist says, ‘I can do what I like to you because we both know that you will never leave me (indeed, my doing what I like to you is proof that you will never be able to leave).’ Phillips, Adam (2013-01-22). Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life (p. 66). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.