Originally written: Wed, June 6, 2007 - 11:05 PM
And he
a little charleychaplin man
who may or may not catch
her fair eternal form
spread-eagled in the empty air
of existence
--Constantly Risking Absurdity
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Symptoms are often thought of as obstacles on the path of health or happiness, or some other via regia. Western medicine treats symptoms and in doing so, treats symptoms as indicators of dysfunction. Curiously symptoms belong to the patient (they happen to the patient) whereas they are called ‘signs’ by the physician (one could say that signs happen to the doctor). Symptoms require a relationship of the sufferer to the suffering and may not become signs to anybody else until they become complaints. In the medical model, the signs and symptoms of suffering are the projects in need of fixing. They become the vocabulary of a specialized relationship. In the psychoanalytic arena symptoms are the specialized language of one’s personality. In this sense, symptoms are obstacles and invitations to communication. At times they are secrets (the symptom of narcissism thinly veils the secret of feeling un-grandiose and not special) or demands for something to be different (anxiety as dread that perhaps something will not change, or too drastically change) but too often the sense of a symptom eludes articulation while pressing forward in its need to be expressed and recognized.
The early psychoanalysts were comfortable talking about symptoms as attempts at self-cure (most mechanisms of disease, in the medical model, suggest the same thing—a fever is the sign of the body’s attempt to sterilize itself by heat) but nowadays this formulation is not maintained as a useful way of understanding. For one, to suggest to a patient that their illness is a best guess at self-cure fails medicine-as-a-model for how humans should live. Who wants to pay money and time to philosopher when you want to stop feeling depressed? On the other hand, going to your internist for Prozac to address the signs and symptoms of depression isn’t much different than scoring a hit from your local dealer when neither is likely to listen to the story of your depression. (I often think of talking about depression and anxiety in a physician’s office as equivalent to synopsizing the Iliad by naming the chapter headings). Even if you receive a prescription, going back to your therapist may only satisfy the story-telling instinct but then what do you have? The symptoms keep telling the story. Most people get the meds but do without the therapy. It’s the American way.
Nevertheless the symptoms stick around. I have often wondered about the role of the symptom of suffering as desire. Symptoms tell you that the grass is always greener on the other side. A symptom says there is something else to want; another satisfaction to be sought. I want something that I think I do not have so what I suffer from is the experience of wanting and of lacking. I don’t want to be depressed, so I want to be un-depressed. I want to be happy, so I don’t feel depressed. The stage is the same; the characters change clothes and names, so to speak. In between the want and the lack, a gap has to exist. In Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), Freud notes what we all know, between the pleasure of getting (what we think) we want and what satisfaction actually results “provides the driving factor which will permit of no halting at an position attained, but . . . (presses ever forward unsubdued).” Life is the tightrope strung between wanting and getting.
Does the sense of a symptom reside in balancing what you want and can’t get, or is it more about reconciling desire as a relationship between an aim and its starting place? We often think of desire as the measure of distance between what one has one’s eye set upon but what about when a symptom reflects having too much of something? I am not sure if I refer to a state of too much desire, or too much lack?
The symptom paradoxically illuminates the lack of something while proposing that psychological ignorance is a viable way to live. Symptoms are a Winchester Mystery House with doors leading nowhere while suggesting that it should lead somewhere. The symptom convinces by its apparent success. You can have this pain with its promise that it can be undone (this is what psychoanalysts call a symbolic equation, or the collapse of potential space); that is, there is no gap. The symptom promises satisfaction by providing a form of satisfaction (psychoanalysts call this a compromise formation) by filling in the gap. When a symptom provides partial satisfaction, this is what Freud pointed out in his formulation that a dream fulfills a disguised wish. A symptom, to borrow from the philosopher-analyst Jonathan Lear, makes “every problem look solvable.” The symptom promises fulfillment and distraction, a pleasure in itself, by replacing something seemingly unmanageable or potentially overwhelming (that is, a trauma) with something that has grab-irons. If the space between desire and the desired is filled by a symptom, who needs to think? Moreover, who needs to feel?
And he
a little charleychaplin man
who may or may not catch
her fair eternal form
spread-eagled in the empty air
of existence
--Constantly Risking Absurdity
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Symptoms are often thought of as obstacles on the path of health or happiness, or some other via regia. Western medicine treats symptoms and in doing so, treats symptoms as indicators of dysfunction. Curiously symptoms belong to the patient (they happen to the patient) whereas they are called ‘signs’ by the physician (one could say that signs happen to the doctor). Symptoms require a relationship of the sufferer to the suffering and may not become signs to anybody else until they become complaints. In the medical model, the signs and symptoms of suffering are the projects in need of fixing. They become the vocabulary of a specialized relationship. In the psychoanalytic arena symptoms are the specialized language of one’s personality. In this sense, symptoms are obstacles and invitations to communication. At times they are secrets (the symptom of narcissism thinly veils the secret of feeling un-grandiose and not special) or demands for something to be different (anxiety as dread that perhaps something will not change, or too drastically change) but too often the sense of a symptom eludes articulation while pressing forward in its need to be expressed and recognized.
The early psychoanalysts were comfortable talking about symptoms as attempts at self-cure (most mechanisms of disease, in the medical model, suggest the same thing—a fever is the sign of the body’s attempt to sterilize itself by heat) but nowadays this formulation is not maintained as a useful way of understanding. For one, to suggest to a patient that their illness is a best guess at self-cure fails medicine-as-a-model for how humans should live. Who wants to pay money and time to philosopher when you want to stop feeling depressed? On the other hand, going to your internist for Prozac to address the signs and symptoms of depression isn’t much different than scoring a hit from your local dealer when neither is likely to listen to the story of your depression. (I often think of talking about depression and anxiety in a physician’s office as equivalent to synopsizing the Iliad by naming the chapter headings). Even if you receive a prescription, going back to your therapist may only satisfy the story-telling instinct but then what do you have? The symptoms keep telling the story. Most people get the meds but do without the therapy. It’s the American way.
Nevertheless the symptoms stick around. I have often wondered about the role of the symptom of suffering as desire. Symptoms tell you that the grass is always greener on the other side. A symptom says there is something else to want; another satisfaction to be sought. I want something that I think I do not have so what I suffer from is the experience of wanting and of lacking. I don’t want to be depressed, so I want to be un-depressed. I want to be happy, so I don’t feel depressed. The stage is the same; the characters change clothes and names, so to speak. In between the want and the lack, a gap has to exist. In Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), Freud notes what we all know, between the pleasure of getting (what we think) we want and what satisfaction actually results “provides the driving factor which will permit of no halting at an position attained, but . . . (presses ever forward unsubdued).” Life is the tightrope strung between wanting and getting.
Does the sense of a symptom reside in balancing what you want and can’t get, or is it more about reconciling desire as a relationship between an aim and its starting place? We often think of desire as the measure of distance between what one has one’s eye set upon but what about when a symptom reflects having too much of something? I am not sure if I refer to a state of too much desire, or too much lack?
The symptom paradoxically illuminates the lack of something while proposing that psychological ignorance is a viable way to live. Symptoms are a Winchester Mystery House with doors leading nowhere while suggesting that it should lead somewhere. The symptom convinces by its apparent success. You can have this pain with its promise that it can be undone (this is what psychoanalysts call a symbolic equation, or the collapse of potential space); that is, there is no gap. The symptom promises satisfaction by providing a form of satisfaction (psychoanalysts call this a compromise formation) by filling in the gap. When a symptom provides partial satisfaction, this is what Freud pointed out in his formulation that a dream fulfills a disguised wish. A symptom, to borrow from the philosopher-analyst Jonathan Lear, makes “every problem look solvable.” The symptom promises fulfillment and distraction, a pleasure in itself, by replacing something seemingly unmanageable or potentially overwhelming (that is, a trauma) with something that has grab-irons. If the space between desire and the desired is filled by a symptom, who needs to think? Moreover, who needs to feel?
wow. I like the way you mind works. nice writing and great insights. thank you.
ReplyDelete