Having A Life: Self Pathology after Lacan

171 Pages·2004·3.93 MB·English

by  Lewis A. Kirshner

Having a Life
Self-Pathology After Lacan
Lewis A. Kirshner
THE ANALYTIC PRESS
2004 Hillsdale, NJ London
© 2004 by The Analytic Press, Inc., Publishers
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmit
ted in any way whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published by The Analytic Press, Inc.
101 West Street, Hillsdale, NJ 07642
www.analyticpress.com
An earlier version of chapter 6 was previously published in Imago, Volume 60,
number 2, and appears here by permission of the publisher.
"The Self" from WITHOUT END: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS by Adam
Zagajewski, translated by Clare Cavanagh, Renata Gorczynski, Benjamin Ivry
and C. K. Williams. Copyright © 2002 by Adam Zagajewski. Translation copy
right © 2002 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. Reprinted by permission of
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.
Typeset in Sabon 11/13 by EvS Communication Networx, Point Pleasant, NJ
Index by Writers Anonymous, Inc., Phoenix, AZ
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kirshner, Lewis A., 1940-
Having a life : self pathology after Lacan / Lewis A. Kirshner.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-88163-401-8
1. Self psychology. 2. Intersubjectivity. 3. Psychoanalysis. 4. Lacan,
Jacques, 1901- I. Title.
RC489.S43K57 2004
155.2—dc22 2003057939
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21
To Adam, Phebe, Ben, Sarah, Sabine, and Freddi:
UChaim!

The Self
It is small and no more visible than a cricket
in August. It likes to dress up, to masquerade,
as all dwarfs do. It lodges between
granite blocks, between serviceable
truths. It even fits under
a bandage, under adhesive. Neither customs officers
nor their beautiful dogs will find it. Between
hymns, between alliances, it hides itself.
It camps in the Rocky Mountains of the skull.
An eternel refugee. It is I and I,
with the fearful hope that I have found at last
a friend, am it. But the self
is so lonely, so distrustful, it does not
accept anyone, even me.
It clings to historical events
no less tightly than water to a glass.
It could fill a Neolithic jar.
It is insatiable, it wants to flow
in aqueducts, it thirsts for newer and newer vessels.
It wants to taste space without walls,
diffuse itself, diffuse itself. Then it fades away
like desire, and in the silence of an August
night you hear only crickets patiently
conversing with the stars.
ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI
Vll

Contents
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
The Case of Margaret Little 7
The Psychoanalytic Subject 27
The Cultural Construction of Affect 55
Trauma, Depression, and the Sense of Existence 69
The Objet Petit a 103
The Man Who Didn't Exist: 125
The Case of Louis Althusser
References 143
Index 151
ix