Narcissism
Françoise Dolto locates the roots of narcissism in the privileged experience of words spoken by the mother directed more at the satisfaction of desires than in response to needs.
(Like when your mother tells you that you’re the one she loves most in all the world, that you’re the most beautiful thing she has done in her life, that her life was worth living if only for this, to have you, to have had you, that of course giving birth is not exactly a pleasure cruise but there’s nothing more beautiful in life, nothing, that she thinks you’re so very intelligent, that she wishes she had talent like yours, that naturally she avoids saying it too often, but of course you’re the prettiest of all the little girls she knows, that just because she tries not to say it too often, doesn’t mean she’s not thinking it, that she will love you forever, that that will never end. Never, never, never, you understand?)
Homosexuality
Freud was not interested in valorizing, degrading, or passing judgment on homosexuality, but first and foremost in understanding its causes, origin, and structure from the perspective of his new theory of the unconscious. Hence his interest in latent homosexuality in neurosis and even more in paranoia. Freud used the term perversion to designate sexual behaviors deviating from a structural (and not social) norm, and he classified homosexuality as such. He did not assign it any pejorative, differential, depreciating, or on the contrary, valorizing character. In a word, he brought homosexuality into the whole of human sexuality and humanized it by conceiving of it as an unconscious psychological choice.
In 1920 he formulated a canonical definition: homosexuality is the result of human bisexuality and exists in a latent state in all heterosexuals. When it becomes an exclusive object choice, its origin in girls is an infantile fixation on the mother and disappointment with respect to the father. And he stated “…to undertake to convert a fully developed homosexual into a heterosexual is not much more promising than to do the reverse…” In a letter dated April 9, 1935, to an American woman worried that her son was homosexual, Freud wrote: “Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation; it cannot be classified as an illness; we consider it to be a variation of the sexual function, produced by a certain arrest of sexual development. Many highly respectable individuals of ancient and modern times have been homosexuals, several of the greatest men among them. It is a great injustice to persecute homosexuality as a crime – and a cruelty, too.”
The Kleinian view, although liberal, considers the female version of homosexuality to be an identification with a sadistic penis.
A lover of literature, Freud often stressed that the great creators of art were homosexuals.
Subject
A common term in psychology, philosophy, and logic. It is used to designate an individual who both observes others and is observed by others.
Suicide
Suicide is the act of killing oneself so as not to kill another. It is not the result of neurosis or psychosis, but of depression or a serious narcissistic disturbance.
Perversion
A term derived from the Latin pervertere (inversion) used in psychiatry and by the founders of sexology both pejoratively and positively to designate sexual practices considered to deviate from a social and sexual norm. From the middle of the 19th century, psychiatry categorizes as perversions sexual practices as diverse as incest, homosexuality, zoophilia, pedophilia, pederasty, fetishism, sadomasochism, transvestism, narcissism, autoeroticism, coprophilia, necrophilia, exhibitionism, voyeurism, sexual mutilation.
Sadomasochism
A sexual perversion founded on a mode of gratification from the infliction of pain on another and from pain suffered by a humiliated subject, as well as on the reciprocity between pain passively suffered and pain actively inflicted.
Two processes: the reversal of aggression against the subject him- or herself and the inversion of an active function into a passive one. This process can be accomplished only by means of an identification with the other in the order of fantasy. In sadism, one inflicts pain on another and feels pleasure in a masochistic way by identifying with the suffering object.
Moral masochism is performed through language, based on a sense of guilt, it is the most significant and most destructive. It is characterized by its apparent remove from sexuality and a loosening of ties with the loved object, attention being focused on the intensity of the pain, whatever its source. It is a matter of being able to sustain a certain level of suffering. Psychoanalysis has progressively shifted sadomasochism to the core of ‘normal’ individuals.
Nazism
From the moment he rose to power, Adolf Hitler implemented the National Socialist doctrine, of which one of the principal objectives was the extermination of all Jews in Europe as an ‘inferior race.’ Similarly, it was seen as necessary to remove all those considered ‘defective’ or bothersome to the social body. Thus Nazism treated homosexuality and mental illness as equivalents of Jewishness according to their theory of hereditary degeneration.
Hysteria
This condition’s distinctiveness lies in the fact that unconscious psychological conflicts are expressed in a theatrical manner and in symbolic form, through paroxysmal physical symptoms. (I mentioned them, screaming, ragged breathing, blocked diaphragm, the need to lie down on one’s back, the tendency to drop to one’s knees, the cries, indifference to being watched by others or even experiencing pleasure in it, slapping one’s own face being the epitome, an actor rehearsing in front of a mirror, crying jags, nervous breakdowns, lying on the ground, messages left on the answering machine saying “I’m begging you, please” and ending in a sort of groan, audible even on the machine.)
Desire
It is connected to mnemic traces, to memories, it is realized through the unconscious and hallucinatory reproduction of perceptions that have become ‘signs’ of satisfaction. The demand is addressed to another, it is apparently directed at an object, this object is not essential because the demand is a demand for love. Desire is directed toward a fantasy, towards an imagined other, it is the desire to be the object of another’s desire and desire for absolute recognition by another at the cost of a fight to the death, which Lacan identifies with the dialectic of the master and the slave.
Schizophrenia
A type of mental illness with symptoms that include incoherence of thought, emotion, and action thinking, withdrawal and delirious activity. A pure state of insanity characterized by the subject’s internal entrenchment. The patient, male or female, falls into such a state of delirium that he or she seems to lose his sense of reality.
Night and day, eyes staring, eyelids never raised or lowered. Attempts are made to speak with the afflicted, he or she does not hear. A shard torn from the tomb, a kind of victory of life over death or death over life. But abruptly able to stop trembling and slowly say “the angels are all white.” (According to the clinical case of Louis Lambert.)
Loss of vital contact with reality and intent on not being himself.
There is “schizophrenic art,” wild, like art made by children and primitive peoples.
Foucault refuses to make any diagnosis but finds in the madness of Artaud, Nietzsche, Van Gogh, and Hölderlin the final instance of the work of art: “Where there is a work of art, there is no madness; and yet madness is contemporary with the work of art, since it inaugurates its time of truth.”
Applications
I see myself primarily in the two statements: Paranoid individuals love their delusion as they love themselves. And: It is a matter of being able to sustain a certain level of suffering. And in others on contempt and delusions of persecution that lead to destruction.
I recall having said, in reference to Seen from Above, that rape was good, “of course rape is good, otherwise we couldn’t bear it.” There was no doubt in my mind, at the time it seemed to me to be inarguable. I was quite simply: paranoid.
Nadine is intolerable and I’m not th
e only one to say so. “It’s a pathological defense mechanism, people become paranoid because they cannot bear certain things.” When we’re at table and she goes on and on about her problems with film shoots, Catherine Decourt here, Dupont there, Durand, Emmanuelle Vigner, who gave her an insanely expensive watch for Christmas last year. She was in the film, Mari et Femme, with André Dujardin, which I went to see in Sète and she’s presiding over the dinner after the screening, Marie-Christine sitting next to her, the crown princess, they burst into laughter at each other’s refined jokes. The entire table follows suit. Like the king, when the king laughs, the entire court joins in. When the jester makes the king laugh, the entire court doubles over. Marie-Christine, I’m neither sitting next to her nor across from her, but catty-corner along the table. Other friends are there. From Montpellier, doctors, professors, whom Nadine knows, lay it on as soon as she’s near, they ask Marie-Christine, “How’s Nadine? Is her film going well? And Decourt? How are things with Decourt? Of course we’d like to have dinner with Nadine.” Or, “I love Dupont.” And, “Nadine is a very warm person, and very generous.” They ask questions about Decourt, offer their opinions, list the films of hers they liked, inquire if, in fact, there is a ‘Decourt effect.’ Nadine calls her “Catou” to tease her gently. She recounts impossible moments on the set. Delays of unbelievable rudeness (but all in lavish juicy detail), and what she did to show Decourt, to teach her some respect, which they owe the technicians and the production team, NC. To embarrass her, to make it clear to her that everyone was waiting. I’m remembering Dominique Quentin in Edward II, her scream in the middle of the movie, I’m on another planet, this scream exists, no one is thinking about it. The conversations are all about plays that will be opening, about restaurants they’ve tried or want to try, about the third Michelin star given to the So-and-so brothers, the Pourcels and their Jardins des Sens, and about film ticket sales.
Paranoia is based on delusions of reference, Quentin or Eustache, I alternate. Persecution, jealousy, grandeur, of course. People become paranoid because they cannot bear certain things. That’s the way it is. Marie-Christine tells me, “I saw Nathalie Bayard, I had dinner with Nathalie Bayard, we went with Nadine to the beach where Nathalie Bayard always goes, if you saw how Nathalie Bayard is with her dog, everything revolves around the dog, she chooses the beach for him, she loves him.” This because she knows I don’t like the way she is with Baya, her dog, but if I saw how Nathalie Bayard is, I wouldn’t make any more comments. I saw Chambord, I’m not just speaking nonsense. Besides, Freud compared paranoia to a philosophical system because it’s so rigorous, because its expression is so logical, and because thought, intention, and action are so clear and ordered. Obviously “people become paranoid because they cannot bear certain things,” that is my case. Except for one scene, the film is so academic, it pretends to be sensitive. And even a little revolutionary, for example with the way it goes after the image of the star. “Look, I’m filming Decourt’s thighs, I’m bold enough to do it, she’s sixty years old and I dare film her thighs.” There was a scene in which Decourt was panic-stricken, I don’t remember what was happening to her (because on top of it all the screenplay is completely muddled), Decourt was supposed to get up and leave right away. But you know what she did right at that moment? Nadine was telling us (this wasn’t the first time I’d heard this anecdote), she said, Catou said, “and my bag?” Can you imagine, Nadine goes on, the bourgeois reflex that is deeply grounded, very deeply grounded inside her, she’s thinking about her bag. So I told her, “but Catherine, you don’t care about your bag at the moment, you really couldn’t care less, Catherine, you leave your bag, naturally, you don’t even think of it.” And everyone at the table agrees. Naturally, she doesn’t care about her bag at the moment. They all agree. Maybe there’s a picture of her son or godson in it, what do they know, all of them?
(I’m annoyed that I changed the names. It makes the book less good. But better that than paying damages.)
The object is not essential, what counts is the demand for love. I was asking her to spend Christmas with me. For a while, I thought I could master it. I said to myself “she’ll come back to Montpellier on the 25th, we’ll celebrate Christmas on the 25th.” I don’t like to celebrate Christmas on the 25th, I don’t like eating a big lunch. I can’t do celebrations at noon. A poor man’s Christmas, playing catch-up, the real celebration having been on Christmas Eve, I couldn’t, the foie gras from the evening before would still be weighing on her stomach, and the champagne, a magnum of Ruinart, in Paris, the real feast with twenty friends, and the godchildren, the godchildren, the godchildren, especially the godchildren, “me, I don’t have any children, of course, I was touched when Nadine asked me two times to be godmother to her children,” the children she feels closest to, whereas Léonore…if writing were visual I’d make the gesture of a finger tapping on a cheek swollen with air, which means ‘that’s rich,’ but she doesn’t give a shit. Léonore isn’t a part of her family and never will be, she doesn’t give a shit. Léonore’s just a little girl who is nothing to her, as they say. She gets a day-after Christmas, after the most urgent needs have been satisfied, the cousin, honor where honor is due, and the godchildren, the crown princes who will inherit her legacy as first cousins, closest kin, whereas Léonore is nothing to her and never will be anything to her. Never. Less even than her dog. The cleaning woman, the cook, the little poor child. She has never taken Léonore for a walk alone, even though she takes her dog out everyday. Alone with Léonore, she doesn’t want any part of it, not to the movies, not for a walk when I’m not there, not even going to pick her up from school, not once. For Christmas, it’s a Barbie doll put under the tree “from Marie-Christine” who’s celebrating in Paris after having trawled through the boutiques on the Boulevard Saint-Germain with her cousin who gets a forty percent discount at Prada and Jil Sander, while Dominique Quentin has to pay full price, as do I. It’s disgusting, clothing designers don’t care, just like everybody else.
Afterward I said to myself “no, I could never go meet her, getting out of the plane, exhausted from Christmas Eve, from the celebration, the real Christmas celebration, the night before. I get seconds.” We were meant to leave for Rome on December 28th. I’d reserved a hotel near the Piazza del Populo, the same week she’d promised to do everything she could to stay in Montpellier, and with Léonore and me. She hadn’t really wanted to, that’s what she says now, I’d pressured her, she had kept warning me, she wouldn’t do it if it would cause a scene. Scenes, conflicts. I tell her, Rome, I don’t want to go to anymore. It’s December 4th, our tickets are canceled. The hotel was called Hotel Quantin. We’re breaking up because she loves Nadine Casta and I love Dominique Quentin. It’s a real philosophical system, with a proper foundation, what causes me distress is the famous “insidious development” and the subjection to internal causes and that continual progression that doesn’t stop once the trigger sets it in motion, the engine starts, and it cannot be stopped. It’s in motion. Not a single phone call from Marie-Christine, it has now been more than ten days since the delusions set in, not a single phone call, not one visit, was able to stop me. The system is delirious, enduring, and impervious. I’m not the one who invented it. I won’t go to Rome because it will persist until the end of the year. The demand for love is made at the cost of a fight to the death. Last night Claude came by to see me, he said, “Oh Christine, your face is in tatters.”
Nazism, I persecute Marie-Christine for being homosexual even though it’s just a variation provoked by an arrested sexual development. Several highly respectable individuals of ancient and modern times have been homosexuals. But I have a sadomasochistic structure, which no one can deny, and, by the way, no one does. I am not the first, or the last, to persecute homosexuals, even if it’s cruel, I freely admit it. Why? Because my father was homosexual. He wasn’t, I’m raving, I’m exaggerating, I’m spouting nonsense, but the sodomy he practiced on me and on a certain Marianne, as he
told me, brings him close to them. Bisexuality is human. It exists in a latent state in all heterosexuals, Freud said this as early as 1920. It’s one aspect. Not to mention his limp wrists, which he was always twisting and turning. Everything can always be twisted around.
Yesterday she said to me on the phone, “you destroy others because you yourself were destroyed,” that’s always nice to hear. Soon she’ll tell me she pities me. Paranoids can’t stand that, it’s intolerable, intolerable. In-tol-e-ra-ble.
I wept. She talked to me then:
—This may be our very last phone call. Do you have anything to add?
—Merry Christmas.
—I doubt it will be particularly merry.
—And Happy New Year.
Moral masochism. It the most destructive, for me it’s essentially expressed through language. I won’t go into the details. I’m a sadomasochist, that’s hard enough. I have conversations in my head, a lot, in that spirit of torturing, with Claude, Marie-Christine, my mother, and others. With others, there’s no harm, it’s not serious, the pleasure of sticking someone’s nose in his own shit, and the situation is not reversed. You’re a sadist, the other person, surprise, thinks they’re in the wrong (and they really are in the wrong), they argue, instead of – there’s only one thing to do, only one, it doesn’t occur to them – putting themselves in the role of victim, it has to be surreptitious, for me (me or another sadist) to switch, immediately, to apologizing, to reverse the process, to feeling pleasure in the pain in turn, to become at once the victim, which I am in my fantasy, right then, the moment I apologize and now, in turn, to feel pleasure in pain I’ve inflicted and in pain I receive. It’s not very original but that’s what I’m living and I don’t enjoy saying it. Taking pleasure in the pain you cause and the pain you’re given. ‘Everything can always be twisted around’ could have been my motto. I’m looking for a new one. People who know me, answer, suffer, or say, as Claude did yesterday “I don’t hold it against you, I know.” Suffering from what is said to me, and at the same time taking pleasure in what I say to others, I just can’t do it anymore. I’d like it to stop.
Incest Page 8
