One of the ways out of this kind of dilemma is to find a way of uncoupling oneself completely from that which imposes these rules and regulations upon you. If you can step outside of them then, you can find a place of autonomy where you don’t have to be made miserable by them. You can know their deficiencies as such if you want to involve yourself in these rules and regulations. However, they are not going to cloud your every move. Can you imagine a situation where your best friend, who has just listened to your most intractable problem and says, ‘Just get over it’: well, just getting over it is never enough. It might be more than enough to say, ‘This vision of my life is crippling me; how do I shift my daily thinking from what my mother would do to what I want?’ Well, one way of uncoupling oneself would be to recognise that you are not your mother’s dream and she can just fuck off. Being able to realise that as a possibility is a way of uncoupling, as with rolling stock.
What is interesting for me in the consulting room is the radical nature of psychoanalysis. You can enable somebody to think differently about what their possibilities are when they feel trapped in a series of impossibilities that don’t feel helpful to them. You are able to open that door for somebody and think about what different relationships there might be to the liberal social order. Psychoanalysis can be the catalyst which enables the patient be more ingenious in his engagement with the Big Other. Should psychoanalysis also be the vehicle to find a way of facilitating a mourning of the Big Other?
References
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Fearn, N. (2001) ‘The New Statesman Profile – Adam Phillips’, The New Statesman 23.04.01.
Freud, S. (1919e) ‘A Child is Being Beaten: A Contribution to the Study of the Origins of Sexual Perversions’. S.E. XVII.
Hanlan, C. (2001) ‘Psychoanalysis and the post-political: An Interview with Slavoj Žižek’ in New Literary History, 2001, 32, 1-21
Marks, N. et al. (2006) The Happy Planet Index. London: New Economics Foundation. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-07/uol-uol072706.php posted 27.07.06
White, Adrian, (2007) ‘A Global Projection of Subjective Well-being: A Challenge To Positive Psychology?’ Psychtalk 56, 17-20.
Žižek, S. (2006) ‘Freud Lives’, London Review of Books 28.10.06.