“the process upon which psychoanalysis is based lies at the heart of Freud’s discoveries – the return of the repressed. The ‘mechanism” is linked to a certain conception of time and memory, according to which consciousness is both deceptive mask and the operative trace of events that organize the present . If the past (that which that took place , and look for the form of , a decisive moment in the course of a crisis ) is repressed, it return in the present from which it was excluded , but does so surreptitiously.” (Certeau, 1986, p. 3)
-In conversation with Molly Merson, M.F.T.
In her paper published on our last issue of Critica, Merson (2021) calls us to action as she questions the ways in which whiteness is continuously preserved within the psychoanalytic field. She explains that “psychoanalysis is well positioned to take up this work of linking things that have been kept separate (like the social and the personal), and de-linking collusions with systems of oppression— if we can prioritize these efforts within ourselves and our institutions, too.” (p. 34) The pressure to assimilate in psychoanalysis emerges as a mandate to accept the status quo. In that context, what is ‘other’ is conquered/colonized while difference is smashed and denied. From the perspective of the assimilator, it is a forced imposition out of fear of losing an always precarious position of privilege. The assimilated, on the other hand, is the one who left something behind to become ‘part of’. An ongoing pressure to assimilate leads to a deep sense of dis-location and uprootedness, an inner experience of foreignness and otherness, while maintaining a quest for becoming less other, and more equal, more of the same. Otherness then hides underneath a shadow of pretend belonging, while preserving a concealed narrative of exclusion and oppression.
Rosa & Nogueira (2017) while considering the search for diversity in immigrants as they seek to become ‘other’ describe the foreigner condition as one of exile and uprootedness, much as our human condition relates to the enigmatic dimension of our unconscious. They explore the ethos of the analytic position as the space to grant in-dwelling or a way of being, as the trauma of uprootedness calls for an analyst able to sustain working through the unsayable in the transference – the shared experience of the field allows for connection and separation, leading to the construction of in-dwelling. They propose a transferential field that allows the construction of a shared intimacy. The patient will then be able to encounter the other and the uncanny familiar, while the field itself becomes the refuge, from what was once experienced as invasion of privacy, to become an opportunity for deep intimacy with the other and oneself. In addition, Rozmarin highlights the ethics of psychoanalysis as situated in what Levinas describes as responsibility for the other because someone was responsible for us; highlighting that the analyst’s “aim should be to step into the other’s place, take on the his trouble and guilt as one’s own burden—assume the other’s history and potential as one’s own responsibility.” Gonzalez explains that “it is precisely what does not melt or assimilate, where the medium is no longer pliable, where irreconcilable difference meets, that the new emerges.” (Gonzalez, p. 35) An expanding field is a receptive space for integration, where ‘other’ and oneself encounter in a creative dialogue and the new may emerge. Receptivity then is the opposite of assimilation and oppression. It means an encounter in which the field expands into a shared space of intimacy with otherness from within. Contact is re-established and transformation is experienced as a fleeing sense of belonging emerges.
Psychoanalysis emerged as the creative and integrative work of Judaism in an Anti-Semitic environment while engaging with the forbidden secrets of human sexuality in a Victorian society. As such, it always struggled with negotiating a desire for recognition and inclusion in order to resist oppression while concealing a need for exclusion in order to assert ownership and legitimacy. In its dark chambers, the uprootedness of the ‘foreigner’, the ‘uncanny’, the ‘other’ remains disguised. Interestingly enough, psychoanalysis became a sacred field for assertion of whiteness privilege, forgetting its forbidden past in order to assimilate, and avoid persecution. Otherness was pushed even further into the deep well of our collective institutional unconscious. Merson invites us into becoming antiracists, laying down a path for inclusion and diversity as we attend to our politics, racism, biases, and complicity in our practices, theories and personal lives. She proposes a new ethos in psychoanalysis which de-links the complicity with systems of oppression while establishing links where separation and denial preside. In our current times as psychoanalysis struggles with the quest against assimilation while facing its demons around being dis-located from a comfortable position of privilege, one can only hope the result would be a crossbreed field, one in which integrated life-lived difference is incorporated, generating systemic change while welcoming learning, participation and freedom of ideas and thoughts. A field that sustains a working through the unsayable of oppression and forceful assimilation, and upholds an ethics of responsibility for the ‘other’. A field that enlarges with otherness, enriching itself and creating meaningful exchange. A field that recovers the forgotten history of its birth, maintaining the creative aspect of its otherness without needing to assimilate into whiteness in order to guarantee its legitimacy. Like Merson pointed to me in a personal conversation, a field that can deconstruct the dynamics of oppression by deeply interrogating itself. One can only wonder – is that possible?
References:
Certeau. M. (1986) Psychoanalysis and its History. In Heterologies – Discourse on the Other. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. p. 3
Gonzalez, F. (2016). Only what is Human can truly be foreign: the trope of Immigration as a creative force in psychoanalysis. In Immigration and Psychoanalysis – Locating Ourselves. Routledge: New York.
Merson, M. (2020) Going-On-Becoming Antiracist Psychoanalytic Practitioners, Critica Newsletter, issue 1.
Merson, M (2021) The whiteness taboo: interrogating whiteness in psychoanalysis, Psychoanalytic Dialogues, volume 31, issue 1.
Rosa M. D. & Nogueira, T.S. (2017) Intimidade e alteridade: a experiencia do refugio e a clinica psicanalitica, Caliban, 15:1, 186-198.
