Possession

Intelligibility – Ownership

April 21, 2009

Dreams, Found Object, Play, Possession, Repetition, Secondary Revision, Transitionals, Winnicott

If the found object must begin as animated and vital and only later can it move on to become irrelevant and inanimate, an object properly speaking and, hence, potentially a possession, then property and its corresponding experience of privacy may not be entirely childish but instead the effects of a process of concretisation and a rendering static, a “this is mine and you may not have it, use it, or change it” that the subject brings to bear on the object. I am expanding the references of “subject” and “object” beyond “child” and “teddy bear”; I have in mind any subject, regardless of age, and whatever object it may “find”—be it a toy, a body, an idea, a work, a grouping, or a property.

To my mind, this process of concretisation runs parallel to the systematising secondary revision Freud had identified in the work of dreams. Indeed, the principal function of secondary revision is to lend cohesion to the otherwise fragmentary content of a dream, “to establish order in material of that kind, to set up relations in it and to make it conform to our expectations of an intelligible whole” (The Interpretation of Dreams, 641). Secondary revision moulds the material offered to it “into something like a day-dream” (ID, 633) (∗); it re-writes, corrects, and edits that material so as to produce a definitive and self-evident story, the “official” story as it were, whose pleasure depends on its ability to pre-empt the need for any further explanation, and hence any further work, by either the dreamer or anyone else for that matter. This is a story whose pleasure lies in the fact that it does not stimulate(∗∗), that it does not produce other, which is to say different and hence unsettling and potentially transforming, stories. Therein lies secondary revision’s status as a form of censorship; it is a revision that may not be revised and a process whose aim is not only an “intelligible whole” but also a consolidation of that whole and a prohibition against anyone else to “have, use, or change” it, to dismantle it and, in so doing, to expose the richness of its underlying disorder and unintelligibility or, equally dangerously, to introduce into it the opportunity for new and unforeseeable uses or transformations, disorders or unintelligibilities. Ultimately, secondary revision is an injunction against mutation, and hence against transitionality and against finding.

It seems to me that secondary revision and private property are meant to secure the wish for, respectively, an incontrovertible intelligibility and a possession beyond doubt; together, they secure and authorize the ownership of intelligibility and the intelligibility of ownership. Utterances such as “this is so” and “this is mine” are not statements of fact but “demands” (∗∗∗) that are designed to eliminate any and all room for movement, for fragmentation, and, most importantly, most threateningly perhaps, for loss. Everything fits at the end of a revision; if the story is to be told again, the same elements must be recounted in the same order and in the same tenor, otherwise the result is a threatening distortion if not an outright falsehood (including the falsehood of a claim to ownership). Similarly with possession, its story ought to be clear as to where and to whom everything belongs so that it may both enforce the right to exclusivity and pre-empt the disorder of theft (including the theft of intelligibility).

My hypothesis is that neither property nor revision need be reduced to the expression of an unshakeable repetition compulsion or a primordial death drive (∗∗∗∗) ; rather, each may very well be the fulfilment of a wish to preserve a certain state and protect against anything that might threaten its stability (∗∗∗∗∗) . In light of this, the found object’s eventual loss of meaning (TOTP, 233) is never truly definitive and its relinquishment is hardly an outright rejection nor is it evidence of an irrevocable abandonment as with secondary revision’s finality, its “once and for all.” Much as the found object’s meaning is eventually displaced onto newer objects, its reappearance can, and often does, trigger a charged fund of memories of people and places, thoughts and activities. This object is relinquished not so much when it becomes utterly irrelevant or when its destruction is of no consequence to its finder but rather when its destruction is not a looming danger, when the other to whom it is relinquished is trusted, invested with the hope, and entrusted with the responsibility not to destroy it and along with it those parts of its finder that have become intertwined (“woven”) into it. Perhaps then the subject’s possessiveness, its “this is mine and you cannot have it, use it, or change it”, ought to be understood as a “this contains, and hence is, part of me and I don’t trust you (or at least not yet) not to destroy it and me in the process.” When given over to the other, the object is liable to manipulation and transformation, to mutation; and while the subject may be confident that the found object can survive its own aggression, it may be less than certain that the both of them together can survive the aggression of that other.
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(∗) We shall revisit this daydreaming effect soon enough under the Winnicottian heading of phantasying and its logic of the dead end.
(∗∗) While this may sound highly counterintuitive, it is precisely in terms of such a stasis that Freud understood pleasure.
(∗∗∗) Freud is very clear on this quality of secondary revision; see The Interpretation of Dreams, 642.
(∗∗∗∗) In a topographical context, secondary revision belongs to the system of the pre-conscious; it is hence far removed from the strictly speaking unconscious workings of any such compulsion or drive.
(∗∗∗∗∗) Short of adopting Freud’s principle that the libido is pleasure-seeking and that stability is the guarantor of survival and hence the epitome of libidinal pleasure, the question as to why stability is so desirable remains unanswered.

Murky Subjects

April 15, 2009

Culture, Found Object, Language, MetaTherapeutics, Play, Possession, Subjects, Transitionals, Winnicott

Though he insists that any given found object must eventually be decathected, Winnicott does not so much privilege the experiencing that occurs between the inner and the outer over and above the found object. Winnicott grounds the found object in terms of the experiencing, and vice versa. Without the found object, the experiencing cannot take place and all that the subject is left with is hallucinations and/or sensory perceptions; without the experiencing, the found object is precisely nothing but an object—concrete and lifeless. Eventually, and as the experiencing is displaced and/or dispersed onto ever-newer objects and situations, it is also opened up from the singular illusion of play to the plural collusion (as in the co-, and hence shared, illusion) of culture, from the other-than-me to the more-than-me. Presumably, the subject of this experiencing has shifted in its sense of itself as solitary, autonomous, omnipotent even, to the experience and recognition of, which is to say the collaboration with, the other as subject. With such a shift comes the possibility that the subject might get caught up in a grandiosity that undoes the work of experiencing and ends up holding the cultural as, this time, a less-than-me.

The shift from omnipotence to collaboration brings out yet another layer to Winnicott’s understanding of the found object as something that will be relinquished. While an adult subject may come to recognise that a particular found object is not a true possession but the ground for a cultural experience (an idea, a relationship, or a community), a much younger subject is likely to reject even the slightest suggestion that the toy or blanket it has “found” is not entirely its own; it will not look kindly upon the adult’s attempts to mend or clean or in any way alter said toy or blanket; it will tolerate even less the prospect of having to share anything it has found with those around it. As the first “other-than-me” possession, the found object is not necessarily registered as an “other-than-mine.” Two provisional implications arise here; and both need to be tested. The first implication is that the passage from “other-than-me” to “other-than-mine” is one that the subject will have to undertake if it is to look both forward and backward in time on the objects it has found and experienced, and eventually acknowledge them as found. The second implication is that Winnicott may very well have inadvertently paved the way for an assessment of the experience of the object that is “acquired” and “private” as inherently childish.

Much as these thoughts may convey a cohesive and unified theory that describes a developmental journey from object recognition (and objectification) to subject recognition (and subjectivisation), they are not entirely convincing, not to me at least. If, indeed, the found object is found by virtue of the fact that it has already been recognised as more than an object, if, in other words, it has already been subjectivised, then the subject’s capacity to recognise subject-hood, even if at the most elemental level of vitality and animation, is a precondition for the very possibility of an event such as “finding” and “experiencing” rather than its subsequent developmental achievement. Perhaps then a major fault-line in Winnicott’s thought has to do not so much with its attachment to a developmental model, as many (especially Lacanians) have argued, but more with its (and its detractors’) investment in a murky and, I suspect, not entirely warranted language of subjects and objects, at least as far as the psychodynamic underpinnings of “experiencing” are concerned.

More than an object

April 1, 2009

Culture, Found Object, Lacan, Play, Possession, Transitionals, Winnicott

Winnicott tells us that the found object is part of the world of the real—and hence not merely the product of a delusion—while also belonging to the subject’s inner reality. Here, Winnicott sets up the triadic topology of external life, experience, and inner reality and locates the found (a.k.a. “transitional”) object and its corresponding phenomena in the space of an inherently illusory but no less tangible and no less crucial event of “experiencing” (”Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena”, 230-31). Topology and function combine in order to charge the found object with the capacity, nay the task, to facilitate the passage from inner to outer, from oral erotism to object-relationship. The found object will henceforth bridge the otherwise insurmountable gap between omnipotence and solipsism on the one hand and encounter and interaction on the other, between limitless delusion and limited and/or limiting action. In this sense, the found object makes it possible for the subject to transition, in the words of Winnicott, “from (magical) omnipotent control to control by manipulation (involving muscle erotism and coordination pleasure)” (TOTP, 236).

In its earliest manifestation, the found object is the first other-than-me possession (a toy or a piece of fabric, for instance) the subject will incorporate (“weave”) into an already existing personal pattern (TOTP, 231). It is more than an object that the subject discovers only to observe and catalogue, and then perhaps reserve for a future time when it may prove beneficial. The found object is hardly inert; it is found at the very moment, and insofar as, it introduces itself into an already existing schema in which it participates; it is an object that unsettles, disorganizes, and reconfigures. Moreover, and insofar as it is put in the service of and, in the process, transformed by the psychodynamic needs and/or wishes of the subject that finds it, the found object is an object-in-use, which is not to say that it is an object-of-utility, i.e., a tool that has been designed for a predetermined and specific function. The found object is in fact experienced as displaying activity, production, and effect; it, at least as far as its finder is concerned, is an object that is other-than and hence more-than a mere object; it is an object that possesses a vitality or a reality of its own (TOTP, 233). The found object is hence an object that has already been, or at least partially been, subjectivised, and subjectivised by virtue of the fact that it has been found. While I will have to come back and treat this aspect in greater detail later, I would like to take a moment and stress how for Winnicott, and contra the Lacanian charge (∗), the found object is not an object that is available for consumption or assimilation and is therefore not an object that can be fully satisfying. Indeed, and no matter the erotism and pleasure it may yield, the found object is accompanied by “some abrogation of omnipotence” from the very start (TOTP, 233), an abrogation that is undoubtedly experienced as an injury and a humiliation. For Winnicott, the found object is ostensibly the ground for an experience that points to “the early stages of the use of illusion, without which there is no meaning for the human being in the idea of a relationship with an object that is perceived by others as external to that being” (TOTP, 239), an experience located at the boundary between primary creativity and objective perception, an experience that is as rife with frustration, release, and sometimes even rebuff as it is with satisfaction and creativity.

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(∗) By the early 1950’s, Lacan had dismissed Balint’s version of object-relations on the grounds of, presumably, its conceptual manoeuvre that “conjoins to a need an object which satisfies it” and its insistence that “an object is first and foremost an object of satisfaction” (Freud’s Papers on Technique, 209). Many Lacanians have hastily and, I believe, erroneously, endorsed the slide from Balint to Winnicott as target of the selfsame criticism.

other-than-me, more-than-me, other-than-mine

August 4, 2008

Displacement, Fetish, Found Object, Play, Possession, Productions, Speaking Desire, Subjects, Transitionals, Winnicott

Of the found object’s various Winnicottian features, three are crucial for it to qualify as found. First, it must possess a modicum of vitality evidenced through warmth, movement, or texture for instance. Second, it has to be resilient enough to survive the loving and/or aggressive manipulations of the individual that finds it, with the proviso that, and herein lies its third necessary feature, its fate is that it be allowed to be gradually “decathected.” Winnicott explains that the found object “does not ‘go inside’ nor does the feeling about it necessarily undergo repression. It is not forgotten and it is not mourned. It looses meaning, and this is because the transitional phenomena have become diffused, have become spread out over the whole intermediate territory between ‘inner psychic reality’ and ‘the external world as perceived by two persons in common’, that is to say, over the whole cultural field” (TOTP 233).

Manifestations of the found object are therefore hardly confined to the earliest experiences of the subject. On this score, Winnicott is careful to remind us that “the task of reality-acceptance is never completed, that no human being is free from the strain of relating inner and outer reality, and that relief from this strain is provided by an intermediate area of experience which is never challenged” (TOTP 240). An inanimate object, an animal, an event, a human being, an organisation, an idea, these are some of the categories of objects to be found, time and again, and are indeed found precisely because of their capacity to be, and because of the subject’s need for them to be, something other than mere objects. The experience of “experiencing” is a bridging and a weaving across inner and outer realities; it takes place in that “transitional” space in which the subject foregoes the certainties of, and, in the process, disencumbers itself from the ossifying demands of, both hallucination and concreteness.

As the experiencing is displaced and/or dispersed onto ever-newer objects and situations (“over the whole cultural field”), it is also opened up from the other-than-me toward the more-than-me, from the singular illusion (of play) to the plural collusion (of culture). Here, Winnicott is effectively privileging the experiencing over and above the found object itself, any found object. He is also hinting that, in principle at least, such an object is never truly a possession; it is not something that may be “had” and it is not something that may be “lost” either; it is, by definition, an object that can be, and most likely will be, relinquished. This is one reason why Winnicott will go out of his way to mark the found object as something other than a fetish (TOTP 234n1, 241-42).

However, while an adult subject may come to see that the found object that supports a cultural experience (an idea, a relationship, or a community) is never truly a property, a much younger subject will reject even the slightest suggestion that the toy or blanket it has found is not entirely its own; it will not look kindly upon the adult’s attempts to mend or clean or in any way alter said toy or blanket; it will tolerate even less the prospect of having to share anything it has found with those around it. As the first “other-than-me” possession, the found object is not automatically registered as “other-than-mine.” The implication here is that the passage from “other-than-me” to “other-than-mine” is one that the subject will have to undertake if it is to look both forward and backward in time on the objects it has found, and experienced, and eventually acknowledge them as such.

Taking this line one step further, it seems as if Winnicott may have inadvertently set the ground for an assessment of the experience of “private” property as inherently childish!

Found

July 29, 2008

Found Object, Play, Possession, Productions, Speaking Desire, Subjects, Transitionals, Winnicott

This post is the first in a series that finds its point of departure in the activity Winnicott terms play, the activity that unfolds between child and “found” object. My premise is that this activity is not an event that the detached and adult Winnicott has merely observed in his young charges; it is also the object the analyst has “found” and with which he himself has gone on to play—clinically, meta-psychologically. Central for me here is the notion that psychoanalysis is much more than a descriptive strategy that may fuel a therapeutic intervention in the service of health. Psychoanalysis is, among other things, a creative elaboration that surpasses the clinical observations it finds, precisely because it has “found” them. (Obviously, this is equally true of most other strategies, perspectives, and judgements—therapeutic or otherwise.) I would like to follow in Winnicott’s footsteps and, in turn, play with his formulations as he ostensibly did with the child’s. I would like to assess the extent to which this very idea of play may shed light on our findings regarding, and indeed “findings of,” desire, on, in other words, the playful but no less compelling ways in which we have come to experience, identify, understand, suffer, deploy, question, and/or normalize this desire.

It seems to me that the relationship between subjectivity and desire is one of (chorno)logical simultaneity. Desire is neither an innately differentiating marker of what it means to be a human subject, for instance, nor a process that is undergone by the subject in accordance with the demands of a pre-existing superordinate law. Rather, desire—individual and experiential, in other words, lived—is a product of the uses the subject makes of the broad spectrum of physiological, discursive, juridical, ideological, as well as psychological objects it finds; it is in such a finding that the productions of desire lie. As well, and with regard to the subject, it is much less the expression of an autonomous and atomistic “will,” even if it be unconscious, that manipulates and consumes the objects it previously desired and has since been fortunate enough to locate—to find. Rather, the finding, too, constitutes the subject, for the subject is not only that which finds but also that which is found and is available to be found, continually, by the object as well as by other subjects. It is the ambiguity that seems to be inherent to this bi-directional and at times, indeed, circular finding that I wish to pursue and elaborate.

To begin: a rough sketch of the idea of the found object. Winnicott tells us that such an object is part of the world of the real—and is hence not the product of a mere delusional effort—while also belonging to the subject’s inner reality. Here, Winnicott sets up the triad inner reality/experience/external life and locates the found (aka “transitional”) object and its corresponding phenomena in the inherently illusory but no less crucial event of “experiencing” (“Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena” 230-31). At first glance, the found object facilitates the passage from oral erotism to object-relationship; it bridges the otherwise insurmountable gap between omnipotence and solipsism on the one hand and encounter and interaction on the other, between limitless delusion and limited and/or limiting action. In this sense, the found object makes it possible for the subject to transition, in the words of Winnicott, “from (magical) omnipotent control to control by manipulation (involving muscle erotism and coordination pleasure)” (TOTP 236). Like any such pleasurable manoeuvre, the transition will exert a toll on the subject; indeed, “some abrogation of omnipotence is a feature [of the found object] from the start” (TOTP 233).

—THE PSYCHOANALYTIC FIELD

F a d i A b o u – R i h a n , P h D

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