The act of thinking is an aesthetic experience. The love of thinking leads me to question the things I though I knew. Ever since I was a child, I remember playing with the stories I was told, making them into games and transforming them, creating new scenarios and outcomes and these games became a part of my private world. Through games we try to quell the terrible confusion caused by the lack of knowledge. As a little girl, I created a fantasy world which I took very seriously. Now that I am all grown up, I still play these games, they have matured and become more sophisticated, but in essence are the same: the attempt to understand our world through pure thought.

When we think we create a fantasy realm, we imbue it with love, we give it our time and energy; It helps us make sense of the world through the filter of knowledge. At first, these stories were given to me, my life story, the stories of the culture into which I was born, but these stories eventually became my own. These thoughts became part of the game I used to play. They stemmed from the desire to understand the world around me, by turning thoughts into games I could begin to view these stories more critically; stories about life, the world and about why. Thinking for myself makes a concrete experience abstract, it is much more fulfilling than concrete knowledge. The beauty inherent in others’ thoughts opens new pathways, and the connections between different abstractions are much richer than concrete knowledge per se. When I listen to other people talk passionately about themselves taking part in this game, without being afraid of thinking, a very powerful intersubjective space of knowledge is created. This is why it is very important to encounter people who are not afraid of thinking. Thinking is accepting with socratic wisdom that we are blind, and this estrangement from knowledge leads me to search continually. The enigma of knowledge is meant to be an enigma, however, I will keep on searching, For me thought is a constant battle against oneself which rages on as long as the physical body lasts.
Psychoanalysis has taught me that an essential part of thinking is thinking against oneself, especially concerning those things one is unwilling to think about. I try to think about the profound fears inherent in being human. This has shown me that I am capable of thinking, sometimes it is frightening, and it is certainly easier to avoid this altogether, but without this conflict it is impossible to truly learn. Learning does not guarantee knowledge, we must experience our surroundings through the senses, interpret them through the filter of reason. Often times we rely on only one aspect of knowledge, either experience or theory. However, conflict arises when these two facets are not considered equally; this is the origin of dogmatism and intransigence. I do not believe that this is the best way of going about things, we cannot blindly accept enigmas. There are many things we may never know, but there is great usefulness and pleasure to be derived from trying to solve them.
My time on the analyst’s couch has allowed me to question things that have been imposed on me, and to analyze why I must question what was once the gospel truth. At the same time, as a psychoanalyst, I have learned how to listen beyond the words being spoken. I chose a career which compels me to think for myself. One cannot apply cookie-cutter solutions to the patients’ grievances, nor patronize them with a facile interpretation of what ails them. This would be dishonest to them, but especially to myself. Psychoanalysis is a two-way road of self-discovery and reflection in which we clarify the effect that thought and memory has on the psyche.

Magallanes, Fernanda (2012). One of many reasons to read Freud. http://www.fernandamagallanes.com/2013/04/freud/

My favorite theorist is Sigmund Freud.  When I was younger, I was very attracted to the idea of dreams as something that could be interpreted. This lead me to study his texts. At first I understood very little, and despite the fact that I have read—and re-read—him over the years (an will still read him) it seems to me that the more one gains knowledge about what is contained therein, the less one understands. This is all very intriguing.

I would like to write about a text which I find captivating at the moment: “‘A Child is Being Beaten’ A Contribution to the Study of Sexual Perversions” (1919). This is a text that was construed by the post-Freudians as an elucidation on female masochism. I think that this was done as an attempt to answer Freud’s question about femininity, “what do women want?” This is an enigmatic text which raises many questions. In “A Child is Being Beaten”, Freud observed that people often times have the fantasy of a child being beaten. This fantasy is broken down into several phases: The first is represented by the phrase, ‘My father is beating the child… whom I hate’ (sadistic); the second by, ‘I am being beaten by my father’ (passively). It is the direct expression of the guilt that makes him succumb to the love of his tormentor (masochism). Freud noticed that in women this becomes a lasting memory and explained it by speculating that it has to do with her being entwined with the excitation of her parental complex. This is because the girl is lovingly fixated on her father, developing hate and competition with her mother which evolves into a tender dependence. Being-beaten becomes not only guilt, but also eroticism which finds an outlet in masturbatory stimulus. In the third phase,  the patient is an observer and both subject and object are altered to impersonal and ambiguous individuals. This is also masochistic, and in both men and women the fantasy stems from an incestuous liaison with the father.
Because of this, we see the world through a neurotic phantasm which would become perverse if acted out. If this neurotic phantasm doles out enjoyment drop by drop, the perversely oriented phantasm is an ocean .
I think that this text is  astonishing because it divulges how the relationship with the Other is always one of enslavement. In neurosis this enslavement is due to love for the father. This love for the father prevents the neurotic from loving someone else, by being unconsciously subjected to the fantasy of being beaten. In Spanish, when someone feeds on their own suffering, they are called “azotado”, literally beaten, but implies to play the victim, to be a glutton for punishment. This phrase condenses quite succinctly what happens in neurosis. In any social setting this is exacerbated by enthroning an idol as Master.
This leads me to think about “Totem and Taboo: Resemblances Between the Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics” (1913). In this work Freud invents a myth which was later elaborated upon in psychoanalysis as an operating concept that explains the constitution of the family: the myth of the primeval horde. This myth states that in the beginning, there was a man that ruled over lesser men and held all the women. These lesser men killed him in order to have the women and subsequently ate him. By eating him, they metaphorically incorporate his power into themselves, and also identify with the prohibition imposed by the father. In this way, by wishing to free themselves from having to obey him, the dimension of guilt appears alongside the law that states that nobody can have the women in the clan, and nobody can kill the father. The resulting guilt is the foundation of ethics, of institutions and religion. For Freud, there is no religion that is not based upon guilt. He postulates that the foundation of the family implies the commission of a crime where every descendant bears the blame from the moment of birth. It is the genius of Freud that, through a simple idea taken from the aborigines of Australia, he was able to explain the whole of civilization with the myth of the primeval horde. In “A Child is Being Beaten” and the fantasies proposed by Freud are derived from the same situation that led to the founding of civilization in which guilt is as powerful as the Œdipus.
The implications of this idea are tremendous, for we could then say that, in essence, every family is erected on the fantasy of the beating. The law of the father is instigated symbolically by imposing his name on the family; this law states “you shall be my son”. This is to mitigate the relationship between mother and son out of fear of the woman’s power that incites the œdipal struggle. The mother cedes this law to the father. With the death of God, the paterfamilias is promulgated as the law, and the beastly feminine power is abated, which is unthinkable. One way of tempering this femininity is by feeding the fantasy of being beaten by the father, as the love for him remains. The suffering borne by those afflicted with hysteric or obsessive neuroses can be extrapolated to social situations. I believe that the current educational crisis is intimately related to how, at the onset of modernity, God is dead and the father is no longer God incarnate. This has serious consequences as the subject cannot place himself completely in this function. The fantasy of being beaten cannot but grow to support the idea that the father exists. If the father beats us, the father exits. The consumer culture is sustained to sustain the Father. A few days ago, I listened to some coaches talk about how the third generation of a family business, tends to be mired in chaos. I speculate that this may be due to the fact that the law was imposed by the founders of the company, but when they die, the father-figure wavers and the second generation cannot sustain themselves as the transmitters of the law, which is why they unconsciously sabotage their parents’ creation. They act out the fantasy of being beaten. This holds true not only in companies, but in other societies as well.

I believe David Lynch is the most intriguing filmmaker because he deftly intertwines surrealism with what appears on the surface to be reality. He has created a world of psychic automatism, unregulated by reason and with the sense of a meta-reality which is divorced from the real world. Lynch seems fascinated with showing stories as the disjointed corpses of traditional narrative; the real world is often interpreted through fantasy or symbolism, but the Lynchian reality is subsumed in an otherness where conventional rules do not apply. There is metaphor and symbolism, along with the other aesthetic elements of cinema, present in this alternate universe, endowed with an unrealness where there is something profoundly broken. He can portray places and situations which at first glance are utterly ordinary and make them entirely opposed to our expectations. He brings out the strangeness those things which seem familiar. His masterful use of sound and music to create an ambiance that is disconcerting yet meshes perfectly with the scene, and can make the most innocent situation appear ominous. He deliberately challenges the viewer through misdirection, confusing us at every turn, and leaving us perplexed and in a state of wonder and turmoil about what we just saw.
I would like to take some time to further explore one of my favorite films by Lynch, Mulholland Drive. It is a phenomenal film which portrays how the main character, Diane Selwyn, becomes divorced from reality. The junction of her ego is rent from the outside world and several superimposed reconstructions appear laying waste to objectiveness. All through the movie there are several preternatural elements which Diane has woven in to a loose weft, which soon breaks down, and which are somehow related to a blue box we see throughout the film. This box can be seen as a metaphor for the mnemic trace, which is overwhelmed by the senses and begins to confuse hallucination with reality, in effect a barrage of false memories. The images generated by this process are jumbled and undifferentiated, it is impossible to tell who is who. This blue box is neither empty nor full, leading Diane to straddle the fine line between sanity and delusion until parental figures begin persecuting her. What Lynch is saying is that something is broken and comes out as flesh, as something real. “No hay banda! There is no band! Il n’est pas de orquestra! This is all… a tape-recording. No hay banda! And yet we hear a band. If we want to hear a clarinet… listen.” to quote Bondar, the presenter at Club Silencio.
I remember seeing this movie for the first time with other people, we were all confused, but there was a general consensus that the scene at Club Silencio, where we see a woman crying, is utterly terrifying. There is a stark contrast between the red and blue elements of the mise-en-scène and the film reaches its climax. It shows a theatre of the impossible, a narcissistic blow where Rita (who is also Camilla) and Betty (who is also Diane) indifferently stare at a woman who tearfully sings, waiting for love, alone. Is this not how we become human? Through contact with others? In the Freudian sense, humanity is endowed through the mother’s breast; this woman cries and two (or four) of the protagonists cry before her as if the construction of the ego were fragmented, and not in a single piece, as in psychosis. What is especially terrifying about this scene is that the woman who is singing drops dead but the song keeps playing, the voice is not really coming from her. This is sheer genius, that which interconnects us is broken and the sense of existence is lost. It is from this moment on that everything goes crazy. There is an ever-present undercurrent of hate, hate that drives Diane to kill Camilla and then kill herself. Sinister characters appear, such as the monstrous man at Winkie’s and strange objects of paranoia. Bion interpreted these as something that is expelled and which chases after whoever attempted to eliminate it. In this case it is the older couple, Irene and her companion, who act as ersatz parental figures, bearers of the fundamental signifier which later appears in in the two miniature figures which metamorphose into Irene (perhaps symbolizing the Eirinyes—furies). It s the absolute fury of the superego that leads Diane to commit suicide.
The film also remits us to the identification with melancholia as postulated by Freud, in which the death of what is beloved leads the mourner to fully with that which died. At the beginning of the movie Diane says she decided to become an actress after winning a jitterbug contest and having lost an aunt who was also an actress. Diane becomes a new person who is not really any different from her kaleidoscopic self-construction. Diane creates a new reality where she is Betty. The transitional space of her internal Weltanschauung is so limited that the outside world becomes a surrogate for the transitional space which she lacks.

At the same time, there are symbolic elements, such as the pearl earrings that Rita (Camilla Rhodes) wears. At first they are long, but they subsequently shorten. Rita/Camilla is impacted by a car which is cleaved in two equal halves and survives with a fragmented memory (the same as Diane). In the aftermath of this crash, a pair of pearl earrings are discovered by the detectives who are investigating the accident. The earrings are a sign of life, they are important because they are worn by those who take the place of the mother within the psyche. Pearls are a cyst that is formed around an irritating foreign object inside a mollusc’s body. Isn’t this the same feeling that Lynch produces with his films? The sense of extreme foreignness, the inclusion of reality into a nonsensical world. These pearls that remain are a reflection of the encapsulation which emerges through the use of sound in Lynch’s films. There is a scene where Adam Kesher throws a pink mass at his wife’s pearls, as if trying to quiet the ferocity of femininity and its guises, threading what is real out of chaos. Another recurring element is the mirrors which remind me of Lacan’s mirror stage (le stade du miroir) in which the image is not fully constituted and is interrupted by the terrible din of the expulsion of fragmented internal objects. David Lynch is an amazing filmmaker because he is able to venture into the fragmented matter and transform them, enriching them with symbolism and imbuing them with meaning. In his films he very ably opens a window into the world of psychosis, where at times hate predominates, and shows us the breaking with objective reality and with others, the supplanting of love with something else. He does this so very cleanly, with absolute perfection and emotional engagement. Very few are capable of making that horrific world into something of aesthetic value from within.

I was especially captivated by Le Apartomatic, a one minute advert for Stella Artois directed by Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola: A man takes a woman by the hand and leads her to his apartment. The apartment is an impeccable example of 1960’s inspired retro-futurism, a record starts playing and we hear upbeat music. Our protagonist pushes some buttons to light up the room and we see the drapes covering a large picture window which is framed by two images of pinup girls at either side. He leaves the woman in the living room and does a zany little dance and the walls open to reveal two illuminated fish tanks. He enters a closet, emblazoned with the words “auto pressing”, to change into something more appropriate. Meanwhile, the woman—who is seated on the sofa—finds a switch panel on the coffee table and begins flipping different switches. Chaos ensues as we see lamps coming out of the ceiling, televisions switching on and off and the fireplace bursting into flames. Suddenly, an automatic beer-serving machine emerges from the table, pours a glass of Stella Artois and scrapes off the excess head. As this is happening, the sofa flips and devours the woman. The man emerges from the closet with different clothes, while we hear her muffled cries of “Richard, Richard”. He seems unfazed by his companion’s disappearance and stares longingly at the glass of beer while sighing “oh, mon amour”. The scene changes to the view outside the window and the superimposed text: “Stella, she is a thing of beauty”.
This is the perfect example of what media should be, it is a highly effective advertisement that is also a powerful and exceptionally creative metaphor for the general malaise which currently affects culture and society. The problem of rampant consumerism is a symptom of the absence of God, not as deity but as father figure—the bearer and personification of the Law—and the man who supplants this Father. As a response to the Father’s downfall, an anguished remembrance of the Œdipus becomes manifest: the son who wishes to displace his father in order to obtain women. God is dead and we no longer have a Father to sustain us. This advertisement exemplifies this affliction, and the abject fear of the feminization of the social body (which I will explain below). These elements are condensed and the underlying conflict is exposed very eloquently.
The setting is an idealization of the 1960s, an era in which everything seemed possible, the era which sent a man to the moon before the decade was out. There seemed to be no limits. However, limits serve to guide and encourage us to move forward. When limits are absent, they are replaced by fear, external limitations become internal. In the advert, this fear is expressed by the possibility of obtaining the woman.
The woman is important here, she is both denigrated and idealized by being left behind in the living room. Nevertheless, this masks his anxiety, and the ostensible reason why Richard left her alone was to allow her to observe his exquisite apartment. Richard seeks her approval to reaffirm his ego, he is a man of means and refinement—a very suitable mate. His doubt stems from the downfall of God, he is unable to take His place. He is part of the modern tragedy: a society dominated by consumerism as an attempt to amend this unsustainable law. The woman’s gaze is what holds him back in this fantasy. A neurotic wants to know: ‘What am I to the Other?’, this advert suffers from the same question which is why we can identify so strongly with its message.
When Richard enters the closet, we are presented with a lighthearted yet chaotic montage where the apartment seems to come undone, showing so many hidden things. When the woman pushes the buttons, it could be seen as a metaphor for self-exploration in which frightening elements appear, but to which Richard is oblivious. Women have a greater threshold for pain and suffering than men, for women are able to bear children, often finding great pleasure in this process despite the agony. This leads to femininity being revered but also feared by patriarchal societies. This moment in which Richard is faced with this overarching femininity which dominates his desire and his environment, he prefers to hide, to suffer a metamorphosis into something more acceptable to this seemingly omnipotent entity. Both the advert and the apartment seem to agree with him, she is devoured by the sofa and is presented with a substitute: Stella, the beer, as surrogate for the woman. Richard is a man of means, conforming to the societal ideal of what a man should be, he has no problem in convincing an attractive woman—indeed, our protagonist conforms closely to the societal ideal—into accompanying him to his apartment, and yet he eschews her company in favor of the beer. Wealth and beer give Richard the illusion of being in possession of this higher Law, however, the idea of having the beer remains precisely because of this lack (manque) in his being. His fear of the woman is fundamentally a manifestation of the phantasm, and in this funny commercial it is very effectively condensed: The woman is hidden, but does not disappear, as we can hear her muffled voice crying out “Richard, Richard!” as a voice that acts out her desire, mimicking Richard in his ostentatious display of manliness.
The static shot suggests the idea of always remaining in the same place. It is through this shot that the spectator is a witness to what happens in the living room, and making evident that the relationship between the two central characters is really a depiction of the Urszene (primal scene). What we are shown is that there is no such thing as a sexual relationship, to paraphrase Lacan, each one lives out a masturbatory experience. The man assuming himself as bearer of the phallus and the woman as the phallus itself, which prevents them from relating. There is no love between them because their desires are in opposition vis-à-vis the phallus. Richard sets himself up as the bearer of the phallus through his apartment, his desirability and the beer. The woman, faced with this lack, identifies with what he desires without allowing herself to be taken; therefore, she is transformed (by being consumed by the sofa) into yet another appliance in the apartment. Both of them place the ego-ideal in Richard because they fear the feminization of the social body and the “chaos” which takes place in the apartment. They are unable to derive enjoyment from each other because of the symbolic lack of the Law of the Father. This lack incites jouissance. In spite of being very amusing, the advert presents an absolutely violent subtext where through identification there is an obligation to derive masturbatory pleasure from consuming a beer, it seems to imply that all is necessary to obtain this gratification is to simply press a button. It conveys a narcissistic message and enjoins us to partake in its revelry.

Una mujer se encuentra siempre – a menos de que juegue a la mujer fálica- en vilo en el plano de su identificación imaginaria.

Serge André

¿Qué pasa con el escándalo del discurso psicoanalítico con respecto a la mujer? ¿Ha reducido o solo ha cambiado de aspecto?

Freud en su época se enfrentó a una mujer no solo inmersa en la problemática fálica sino también cautiva de un estado de la sociedad sin salida fuera del matrimonio. Hoy es diferente solo en lo segundo, generalmente las mujeres ante un compromiso definitivo corren con el mismo distanciamiento que un obsesivo. Pero no vayamos por la fácil, a pesar de ese cambio, a la mujer en la sociedad actual, se le ofrece un modelo que trabaja bajo la lógica de la histeria entregada a un amo, es una lógica fálica. A la histérica, ser de falta, se le propone el esquema capitalista: tener. Esto le mete en un embrollo pues lo que necesita la histérica para asimilarse mujer no esta en tener sino de aceptar reconocer el enigma del sexo y tomarlo a su cargo. Un problema hoy es que el ideal de equidad de género ha entrado en lo real. Habiendo roto con esquemas anteriores que acarreaban sus problemas también acerca de lo que se supondría que es una mujer, hoy el amor y la feminidad, se encuentra enfermos de semblantes.

El entendimiento de la mujer siempre ha tenido sus problemas. Freud intentó trasladar el Edipo masculino a la mujer pero se encontró con desmentidas por lo que planteó su famosa pregunta “¿Qué quiere una mujer?” (Was Will Das Weib). Esta pregunta dejó entredicho que el Edipo hace al hombre pero no a la mujer. Freud acentuaba que la demanda de amor era propiamente femenina. La variante de deseo en la mujer resultaba estar bajo la forma de tener el amor de un hombre o de un hijo pero no había algo que fuera más allá de esto. Freud se preguntó acerca de la posibilidad de que la feminidad perteneciera al ámbito de la pasividad diciendo luego que esa concepción resultaba inadecuada y cerrando ese capítulo, diciendo que no pertenece al psicoanálisis describir esto. Otros autores, curiosos ante este cierre de tema, más adelante hablaron de que la feminidad no es pasiva sino receptiva de, cosa que implica mucha actividad. Freud a su vez dio cuenta que la referencia del falo no agotaba la cuestión de feminidad, a pesar de hablar de un masoquismo femenino, no confundió el más allá del falo con la pulsión masoquista. El tema quedó abierto.

Más adelante, Lacan apuntó el forcejeo derivado de Freud de trasladar a la mujer a la talla masculina (entendible para la época en que vivía Freud). Lacan, intentando ir más allá, planteó un más allá del Edipo donde la mujer (refiriéndose a la mujer no como sexo sino como posición de feminidad), soporta el ser de la significancia, y va más allá del goce fálico incluyendo este en el goce suplementario que se sitúa en otra lógica que no es de conjuntos como el fálico sino del no-todo. Explicó así que la Mujer (escrita con mayúsculas) no existe, cosa que no impide que la condición femenina sí.

Las mujeres histéricas a diferencia de las mujeres en posición femenina, no pertenecen al registro del no-todo sino que están identificadas a lo que está sujeto a la castración. Algunos analistas y psicólogos les piden en su práctica erróneamente adherirse al todo fálico como en Freud quedando atrapadas de nuevo en un impasse.

Lacan a lo largo de su obra habla en dos vertientes. La primer época, más freudiana (al rededor de 1958), donde habló de la significación del falo y sexualidad femenina y luego otras tesis entre 1972-1973 y en el seminario Aun. Lacan no objetó el falocentrismo del inconsciente, incluso afirmó que el semblante fálico es el significante-amo que ordena a nivel simbólico la diferencia de los sexos y la falta en ser que el lenguaje genera para todo sujeto. Lo que Lacan dijo es que hay una parte del goce que no pasa al Uno fálico y queda real, fuera de lo simbólico por lo que cuando dijo que la mujer no existe se refirió a que ella no es más que uno de esos nombres del goce real. No es que las mujeres (hablando de la mujer en posición femenina) tengan una naturaleza antifálica sino que van más allá del falo.

Freud acentuaba la demanda de amor como propiamente femenina y aquí Lacan no estuvo de acuerdo e insistió en que la falta fálica de la mujer se vuelve un beneficio de ser el falo, ser lo que le falta al Otro, ser lo que no tiene. La mujer en Lacan es entonces ser el falo, ser objeto causa de deseo y finalmente el síntoma en que pone otro su goce. Una mujer en posición femenina se muestra solamente enmascarada pues en esa forma va el objeto causa de deseo, cubierto por el hábito. En la mujer esta mascarada llega hasta una abnegación de su ser (Verwerfung) y esto es lo propiamente femenino.

Es entonces que Lacan se responde a la pregunta de Freud “¿Qué quiere una mujer?”, quiere un deseo extraño a la búsqueda de tener y que no aspira a ser la demanda de amor. Es un goce extasiado que no sabe de qué goza pero es deslocalizado y su causa escapa la representación fálica encontrándose sobrepasado por este goce real.

El hombre afirma su virilidad en el tener, la mujer en posición femenina en el amor, es decir, el amor es femenino. Un hombre cuando ama, ama como mujer, ama porque es sujeto de la falta. En la mujer aquí puede surgir en el amor un plus de tristeza porque en el amor en la mujer no hay un modo de reencontrarse.

La mujer para Lacan es un síntoma (del verbo ser) en tanto se presta como cuerpo a su partenaire para que saque de allí su plus de goce vía inconsciente y por medio de ese gozar del inconsciente, tener acceso al goce del cuerpo (goce fálico). Por esto, algo de la feminidad es rebelde a la socialización de la cultura.

En el encuentro sexual la mujer esta dividida entre el sujeto que ella es como ser hablante (goce fálico) y el Otro que es como hablante ser (goce otro). Es por esto que la mujer es demandante de amor pero entre la pareja siempre queda el muro de lenguaje. Pero, sobre lo real del cuerpo sexuado no se puede decir pues lo real esta fuera de lo simbólico y estamos en relación con eso por el goce. Por esto la mujer en posición femenina solo tiene un decir de sí misma por el brillo de la metáfora, la cosa materna es el lugar de la metáfora.

Cuando una mujer en posición femenina fracasa, seduce, compite por el falo pero raramente recurre al goce sexual que aumentaría el aniquilamiento y por lo tanto la mujer constantemente pregunta si es querida, para asegurarse como sujeto de su enlace fálico. La mujer en posición femenina es veleidosa y siempre en vilo en el plano de su identificación imaginaria.