darakoe

Going to metropolis

noreply@blogger.com (Murni) — Sat, 2 Jan 2021 23:51:00 -0800

On Saturday afternoon Jan 2 ,2021

We went to metro town looking for something ,

But when we arrived there , my habibi and I

Going to Best Buy ,(on my head what we are doing here) anyway I just looking around , then I saw accessories for phone , I checked And want to have it ☺️😁 , I got one ready until we found other one what I like before , after what happened I put back ( the first accessories ) then I got the second one , my habibi paid it , well then we are going to food court to get some foods, he bought coffee and I bought pad Thai and Tom yam soup 🍜

To bring home for my sons, then I line up on Starbucks for some snacks and drink for my self , I got matcha latte ,blueberry 🫐 scone and chocolate croissant 🥐 ,then we are going home.. that the story about us on this beginning of January 2021 .. thank you so very much for your attention guys hopefully you guys enjoy it love u from us

Senantiasa mengingat Allah SWT ( berzikir)

noreply@blogger.com (Murni) — Sat, 2 Jan 2021 22:20:00 -0800

Segala puji bagi Allah s.w.t.Semata dan Shalawat serta Salam Semoga Senantiasa Tercurahkan kepada Rasulullah Shalallahu ‘alaihi Wa Sallam Yang Tiada Nabi Setelahnya.

SENTIASA MENGINGATI ALLAH ( berzikir )

Zikir adalah satu amalan yang sangat mustahak untuk mendapat kejernihan hati. Zikir akan membentuk ketenangan kepada jiwa kita.

Zikir akan melindungi kita daripada godaan dan gangguan syaitan serta nafsu. Ketenangan dan ketenteraman jiwa boleh dirasai dengan berzikir kepada Allah S.W.T. Ketenangan tidak terdapat dengan melepak, menyanyi atau sebagainya.

Firman Allah S.W.T di dalam Al-Quran:

"Orang-orang yang beriman dan hati mereka menjadi tenteram dengan mengingati Allah. Ingatlah hanya dengan mengingati Allah, hati akan menjadi tenteram."

( AR-Rad : A : 28 S : 13 J : 13 M/S : 252 )

PERINGATAN

Bagi menghasilkan ketenangan di dalam berzikir, terlebih dahulu kita mesti memperbanyakkan selawat Nabi s.a.w. Maksud zikir ialah kita sentiasa mengingati kebesaran Allah di dalam setiap kerja kita. Sama ada kita ulama', orang awam ataupun buruh kasar.

Hafiz Ibnu Qaiyim r.a adalah seorang ulama' hadis yang termasyhur. Beliau mengarang sebuah risalah bernama Al-Wabil yang mengandungi berbagai-bagai penjelasan mengenai kelebihan berzikir.

Di dalam risalah itu, beliau berkata bahawa zikir mempunyai faedah kira-kira lebih daripada seratus faedah. Tujuh puluh sembilan faedah beliau menukilkan di dalam risalah tersebut.

Kami menyalin faedah-faedah itu satu persatunya serba ringkas.

1. Zikir adalah menjauhkan syaitan dan menghancurkan kekuatannya.

2. Zikir adalah menyebabkan Allah S.W.T redha.

3. Zikir adalah menjauhkan dukacita daripada hati manusia.

4. Zikir adalah menggembirakan hati.

5. Zikir adalah menguatkan badan dan menyeronokkan sanubari.

6. Zikir adalah sinaran hati dan muka.

7. Zikir adalah menyebabkan datangnya rezeki dengan mencurah-curah (yakni murah rezeki).

8. Zikir adalah membawa orang yang berzikir itu kepada kehebatan dan kegagahan yakni dengan memandang wajahnya, seseorang itu merasa gentar.

9. Zikir adalah melahirkan cinta sejati terhadap Allah S.W.T kerana cinta itulah merupakan roh Islam, jiwa agama dan sumber kejayaan dan kebahagiaan. Barangsiapa ingin mendapat cinta Ilahi itu, maka hendaklah ia berzikir sebanyak-banyaknya.

Sebagaimana mutala'ah dan muzakarah itu merupakan pintu kejayaan ilmu, demikianlah zikrullah itu merupakan pintu cinta Ilahi.

10. Zikir adalah mendatangkan hakikat muraqabah. Muraqabah itu membawa seseorang kepada martabat insan.

Dengan adanya martabat insan, maka manusia dapat beribadat kepada Allah dalam keadaan seolah-olah ia melihat-Nya (keadaan seperti inilah merupakan tujuan asasi daripada perjuangan para sufi).

11. Zikir adalah membawa seseorang kepada penyerahan diri dengan sebulat-bulatnya kepada Allah. Dengan ini, lama-kelamaan maka setiap urusan dan dalam setiap keadaan Allah S.W.T menjadi pelindung dan pembantu baginya.

12. Zikir adalah membawa seseorang kepada takarrub (mendekatkan diri) kepada Allah. Jika zikir itu bertambah banyak, maka dengan sendirinya ia bertambah dekat kepada Allah dan sebaliknya jika ia bertambah lalai daripada berzikir maka dengan sendirinya ia bertambah jauh dari Allah S.W.T.

13. Zikir adalah membukakan pintu makrifat kepada Allah S.W.T.

14. Zikir adalah melahirkan di dalam hati seseorang akan keagungan dan kebesaran Allah S.W.T dan melahirkan semangat buat merapatkan diri dengan-Nya.
15. Zikir adalah menyebabkan Allah S.W.T ingat kepada seseorang yang ingat kepada-Nya sepertimana disebutkan di dalam Al-Quran yang bermaksud:

"Kerana itu ingatlah kamu kepada Aku, nescaya Aku ingat pula kepadamu."
(Al-Baqarah : 152)

Dan diterangkan pula di dalam hadis yang bermaksud :

"Barangsiapa mengingati Aku di dalam hatinya, nescaya Aku mengingati
pula di dalam hati-Ku."
16. Zikir adalah menghidupkan hati. Perbandingan zikrullah dengan hati seseorang adalah ibarat ikan dengan air. Ingatlah apakah halnya ikan itu jika ia tidak berada di dalam air?

17. Zikir adalah santapan bagi roh dan hati. Andaikata keduanya tidak dapat menikmati santapannya maka adalah sama seperti badan yang tidak dapat makanannya.

18. Zikir adalah membersihkan hati daripada karatan (kekotoran) sepertimana diterangkan di dalam hadis bahawa tiap-tiap satu mempunyai daki dan kekotoran baginya. Daki dan kekotoran hati ialah keinginan dan kelalaian yang tidak dapat dibersihkan melainkan dengan berzikir.

19. Zikir adalah menghapuskan dosa dan maksiat.

20.Zikir adalah menghapuskan keraguan dari seseorang terhadap Allah S.W.T. Sebenarnya hati orang yang lalai itu diselubungi oleh rasa ragu dan gelisah terhadap Allah. Ianya hanya dapat dihapuskan hanya dengan zikir.

21. Zikir adalah menyebut Allah, orang yang berzikir itu dikelilingi oleh Arsy Ilahi.

22.Barangsiapa ingat kepada Allah dalam kesenangan, Allah ingat pula kepadanya apabila ia di dalam kesusahan.

23.Zikir adalah melepaskan orang yang berzikir itu daripada azab Allah S.W.T.

24.Zikir adalah menyebabkan turunnya sakinah dan para malaikat melingkungi orang-orang yang berzikir itu.

25.Zikir adalah menyebabkan selamatnya lidah seseorang yang berzikir itu daripada mengumpat, mencela, berdusta, maki-hamun dan cakap sia-sia.

Telah dibuktikan oleh kenyataan bahawa barangsiapa yang membiasakan lidahnya dengan berzikir, maka terselamat dari sifat keji.

Sebaliknya orang yang tidak biasa dengan zikir maka dengan sendirinya ia terlibat dalam keburukan dan sifat-sifat yang keji itu.

26.Zikir akan memasukkan orang yang berzikir itu ke dalam golongan orang yang berbahagia, demikian juga bagi orang yang mendampinginya.

Sebaliknya orang-orang yang lalai dan membuat kerja-kerja yang sia-sia adalah tercampak ke dalam kancah kecelakaan. Demikian juga bagi mereka yang menyertainya.

27.Zikir akan memelihara orang yang berzikir dari menyesal pada hari kiamat.

28.Jika orang yang berzikir sambil menangis-nangis dalam keadaan sunyi diri, maka pada hari kiamat ia akan didiamkan di bawah naungan Arasyh Ilahi. Pada hari kiamat di mana manusia akan berteriak dan menjerit-jerit kerana kepanasan hari yang sangat dahsyat itu.

29.Orang yang menyibukkan dirinya dengan berzikir, maka Allah S.W.T mengurniakan kepadanya lebih dari orang yang meminta kepada-Nya.

Di dalam hadis Qudsi, Allah S.W.T ada berfirman:

"Barangsiapa tertahan oleh zikir-Ku daripada berdoa, nescaya Aku berikan kepadanya lebih daripada yang Aku berikan kepada orang yang berdoa."

30.Zikir merupakan satu ibadat yang ringan dan mudah sekali, namun ia adalah amalan yang lebih afdal dan utama dari semua ibadat kerana menggerakkan lidah itu lebih mudah dari menggerakkan seluruh badan.

31. Zikir merupakan pohon di dalam syurga.

32.Nikmat dan kurniaan yang Allah berikan kepada orang yang berzikir, tidaklah diberikan kerana amalan yang lain.

Terdapat hadis yang menerangkan:

"Barangsiapa membaca kalimah ini sebanyak 100 kali pada tiap-tiap hari, maka Allah akan memberikan pahala kepadanya yang seimbang memerdekakan 10 orang hamba sahaya dan dicatitkan di dalam buku amalannya 100 kebajikan, dihapuskan daripadanya 100 dosa, dipelihara dari godaan syaitan dan tiada siapa pun yang lebih afdal daripadanya kecuali orang yang amalannya telah melebihi.

33.Seseorang yang berzikir berterusan dengan istiqamah, ia akan terselamat daripada melukakan dirinya yang menyebabkan kecelakaan dunia dan akhirat.

Melupakan diri sendiri dan muslihat-muslihatnya bererti melupakan Allah. Barangsiapa melupakan Allah, nescaya akan dicampakkan di dalam kancah kerugian.

Allah memperingatkan di dalam Al-Quran:

"Dan janganlah kamu seperti orang-orang yang lupa kepada Allah, lalu Allah menjadikan kamu seperti orang-orang yang melupakan dirinya sendiri. Mereka itulah orang-orang yang fasik."

(Al-Hasyar: A:19 S:59 J:28 M/S:548)

Maksudnya supaya kamu janganlah menjadi orang-orang yang tidak menghiraukan Allah S.W.T, lantas Allah menjadikan mereka tidak menghiraukan diri mereka sendiri yakni akal fikiran mereka dilemahkan sehingga mereka tidak dapat menjalani jalan yang menuju ke arah kejayaan yang hakiki.

Apabila manusia melupakan diri sendiri, maka dengan sendirinya ia akan melupakan muslihat-muslihatnya, akhirnya ia menjadi mangsa kebinasaan.

Sepertimana seorang petani yang melupakan sawah ladangnya, sudah tentulah sawah ladangnya tidak mendatangkan hasil apa-apa. Akhirnya akan bertukar menjadi belukar.

34.Seseorang akan merasakan keamanan dan ketenangan jiwa tatkala lidahnya basah menyebuti zikir sehingga ia cinta kepada zikir.

Sepertimana seseorang yang mencintai air ketika ia mengalami dahaga yang amat sangat atau cinta kepada makanan ketika ia sangat lapar ataupun ia cinta kepada pakaian dan rumah semasa ia berasa sangat sejuk atau sangat panas.

Bahkan zikrullah itu lebih mustahak lagi kerana jika segala-galanya itu tidak tersedia, maka tubuh kasar manusia itu sahaja yang akan binasa, sebaliknya jika tiada zikir, roh dan hati juga akan turut binasa.

35.Dengan zikir, manusia akan mencapai kemajuan dan kejayaan dengan secara terus-menerus ketika ia sedang beristirehat ataupun ia sedang sakit, ketika ia sedang sibuk dengan mengecap nikmat hidup ataupun berada di dalam serba kekurangan.

Jika hatinya sudah bersinar dengan sinaran zikir, maka dalam setiap keadaan ia akan meningkat ke peringkat yang setinggi-tingginya.

36.Nur zikir sentiasa bersama dengan orang yang berzikir sama ada di dalam dunia ini ataupun di dalam kubur.

Firman Allah S.W.T di dalam Al-Quran:

"Apakah orang yang sudah mati (sudah sesat) kemudian Kami hidupkan ia (menjadi ia agama Islam) dan Kami berikan kepadanya cahaya yang terang.

Dengan cahaya itu, dapat berjalan di tengah-tengah masyarakat manusia (nur itu sentiasa bersama dengannya) serupa dengan orang yang berada di dalam keadaan gelap-gelita yang tidak dapat keluar daripadanya."

(Al-An’am: A:122 S:6 J:7)

Hati orang yang berzikir akan bersinar gilang-gemilang dengan cahaya makrifat. Nur adalah sesuatu yang teragung sekali. Ianya membawa kepada kejayaan yang gilang-gemilang.

Lantaran itulah, Nabi Muhammad s.a.w sentiasa menuntut dan memohon dengan berulang-ulang kali dan meminta nur itu bagi setiap anggota tubuhnya sepertimana doa-doa yang didapati di dalam kitab-kitab hadis yang didoakan oleh baginda s.a.w seperti yang berikut di bawah ini:

"Ya Allah! Berikanlah nur kepada dagingku, nur pada tulang-tulangku, nur pada rambutku, nur pada kulitku, nur pada pendengaranku, nur pada penglihatanku, nur dari atasku, nur dari bawahku, nur dari kananku, nur dari kiriku, nur dari mukaku, nur dari belakangku dan jadikanlah nur itu di dalam diriku dan juga besarkanlah nur itu untukku."

Maka menerusi nur itulah, amalan perbuatan seseorang itu akan bercahaya terang benderang sehingga amal perbuatan yang baik dari seseorang itu dibawa ke langit yang didapati daripadanya cahaya seperti cahaya matahari dan nur yang serupa itulah akan kelihatan pada mukanya di hari kiamat nanti.

37.Zikir adalah intisari ilmu tasawuf yang diamalkan oleh setiap ahli tariqat. Jika telah terbuka pintu zikir bagi seseorang, bererti telah terbuka baginya jalan yang menuju ke jalan Allah.

Barangsiapa yang telah menuju ke jalan Allah, nescaya ia telah dapat segala-galanya yang dikehendaki kerana tidak berkurangan apa-apa pada khazanah Ilahi.

38.Pada hati manusia, ada satu bahagian yang tidak subur melainkan zikrullah. Apabila zikir menguasai hati maka bukan ia menyubur bagi hati itu sahaja bahkan ia menjadi orang yang berzikir itu hidup dengan makmur walaupun ia tiada harta benda.

Memuliakannya walaupun tidak berkeluarga dan menjadikannya pengusaha walaupun ia tidak mempunyai kerajaan. Sebaliknya orang yang lalai daripada berzikir pasti dia akan dihinakan walaupun ia mempunyai harta benda, kaum keluarga dan kerajaan yang besar.

39.Zikir adalah menghimpunkan kembali yang telah bercerai dan menceraikan yang telah berhimpun, mendekatkan yang jauh dan menjauhkan yang dekat.

Yakni hati manusia yang diselubungi oleh berbagai keraguan, dukacita dan kegelisahan itu semuanya dilenyapkan sama sekali dan dilahirkan ketenteraman dan ketenangan jiwa.

Hati dan jiwa manusia yang dikuasai oleh perbuatan yang keji-keji itu dibersihkan. Manusia yang sentiasa digodai dan dikuasai oleh tentera-tentera syaitan itu diceraikan daripadanya. Akhirat yang jauh itu didekatkan dan dunia yang dekat itu dijauhkan dari manusia.

40.Zikir adalah menggerakkan hati manusia daripada tidur dan menyedarkannya daripada lalai. Selagi hati dan jiwa manusia tidak sedar, maka selama itulah ia mengalami kerugian demi kerugian.

41. Zikir adalah merupakan satu pohon yang setiap masa mendatangkan buah makrifat. Menurut istilah ulama’-ulama’ tasawuf, pohon itu mendatangkan buah ahwal dan makamat.

Semakin zikir itu diperbanyakkan semakin akar pohon itu kukuh. Semakin akarnya kukuh, semakin itulah pohon itu mengeluarkan buahnya.

42.Zikir adalah mendekatkan hamba kepada Allah. Firman Allah S.W.T di dalam Al-Quran:

"Sesungguhya Allah S.W.T beserta dengan orang-orang yang bertaqwa (takut)."

Di dalam hadis Qudsi Allah S.W.T berfirman:

"Adalah Aku menyertai hamba-Ku selama ia mengingati Daku."

Di dalam hadis Qudsi yang lain, Allah telah berfirman:

"Orang-orang yang mengingati Aku itu ialah orang Aku.

Aku tidak menjauhkan dari rahmat-Ku. Jika mereka bertaubat dari dosa-dosa mereka, maka Aku menjadi kekasih bagi mereka, tetapi sebaliknya jika mereka tidak bertaubat, maka Aku menjadi jururawat bagi mereka.

Aku mencampakkan mereka ke dalam kancah penderitaan supaya Aku membersihkan mereka dari dosa-dosa."

Penyertaan Allah S.W.T yang dicapai menerusi zikir itu adalah penyertaan yang tidak ada tolok bandingnya. Hakikat penyertaan itu tidak mungkin dicatit dan tidak mungkin juga dibicarakan.

Kelazatannya dengan erti kata yang sebenar boleh dirasai oleh orang yang telah mencapainya.

43.Zikir adalah seimbang dengan memerdekakan hamba, membelanjakan harta dan berjuang di jalan Allah.

44.Zikir adalah sumber syukur. Barangsiapa yang tidak mengingati Allah, ia tidak dapat bersyukur kepada-Nya.

Di dalam sebuah hadis menceritakan bahawa Nabi Musa a.s pernah berkata kepada Allah, "Ya, Allah! Engkau telah menganugerahkan kepadaku nikmat-nikmat yang amat banyak, maka tunjukilah aku cara-cara bersyukur supaya aku sentiasa dapat bersyukur kepada-Mu."

Kemudian Allah S.W.T berfirman kepada Nabi Musa, "Sebanyak yang engkau berzikir, sebanyak itulah engkau bersyukur."

Allah berfirman:
"Hendaklah lidahmu sentiasa dibasahi dengan berzikir."

45.Yang mulia di antara orang-orang yang bertaqwa pada sisi Allah ialah yang sentiasa sibuk dengan berzikir kerana natijah taqwa ialah syurga sedangkan natijah zikir ialah penyertaan Allah S.W.T.

46.Pada hati manusia ada semacam kekerasan yang tiada berubah menjadi lembut melainkan dengan berzikir.

47.Zikir adalah rawatan bagi penyakit-penyakit hati.

48.Zikir adalah sumber persahabatan dengan Allah. Lalai adalah sumber permusuhan dengan-Nya.

49.Tiada satu apa pun yang menambahkan nikmat-nikmat Allah dan menyelamatkan daripada azab-Nya lebih daripada zikrullah.

50.Allah S.W.T menurunkan rahmat-Nya kepada orang-orang yang berzikir dan para malaikat berdoa untuk mereka.

51. Barangsiapa yang ingin menikmati syurga sedangkan ia masih berada di dalam dunia ini maka hendaklah ia menyertai majlis-majlis zikir kerana zikir itu adalah umpama taman-taman syurga.

52.Majlis zikir adalah majlis para malaikat.

53.Allah S.W.T membanggakan orang yang berzikir di hadapan para malaikat.

54. Barangsiapa sentiasa berzikir, ia akan masuk ke dalam syurga tersenyum-senyum.

55.Segala amalan diwajibkan semata-mata kerana zikrullah.

56. Amalan yang paling afdal ialah amalan yang disertakan zikir sebanyak-banyaknya. Puasa yang paling afdal ialah puasa yang disertakan zikir sebanyak-banyaknya. Haji yang paling afdal ialah haji yang disertakan dengan zikir sebanyak-banyaknya. Demikian juga jihad dan amalan yang lain-lain.

57. Zikir ialah pengganti bagi ibadat-ibadat nafilah (ibadat-ibadat sunat). Pada satu ketika, satu golongan orang yang miskin telah datang berjumpa dengan Rasulullah s.a.w merayu hal mereka kepada Rasulullah s.a.w:

“Ya, Rasulullah s.aw! Saudara kami yang berharta-benda telah meningkat darjat yang setinggi-tingginya disebabkan harta kekayaan mereka. Mereka bersembahyang seperti kami bersembahyang, mereka berpuasa seperti kami berpuasa, tetapi kerana harta kekayaan, mereka telah mendahului kami dengan mengerjakan haji, umrah, jihad dan lain-lain."

Sebagai menjawab Rasulullah s.aw bersabda:

"Mahukah kamu sekelian aku ajarkan sesuatu untuk mendahului sesama kamu sehingga tiadalah lagi seorang pun yang lebih afdal daripada kamu kecuali orang yang berbuat seperti yang kamu perbuat?"

Selanjutnya Baginda Rasulullah s.a.w bersabda:

"Bacalah kamu sekelian selepas tiap-tiap sembahyang." (berzikir)
Ini menunjukkan bahawa Baginda Rasulullah s.a.w menganggap zikir ini sebagai pengganti haji, urnrah, jihad dan lain-lain (bagi orang yang tidak berada).

58. Zikir adalah pendorong bagi ibadat-ibadat lain. Dengan berzikir sebanyak-banyaknya, maka ibadat yang lain itu menjadi lebih mudah dan senang malah kelazatan ibadat-ibadat itu pun dirasai benar.

Oleh itu, semua ibadat itu dapat dikerjakan tanpa keberatan dan kesukaran apa-apa.

59.Dengan berzikir, semua keberatan akan menjadi ringan. Setiap kesukaran akan menjadi ringan dan semua bala bencana akan lenyap.

60.Lantaran zikirlah, segala rupa ketakutan dan kebimbangan akan terhindar. Zikrullah adalah mempunyai satu kuasa yang khas untuk melahirkan ketenteraman dan akan melenyapkan ketakutan.

Ianya mempunyai kesan yang istimewa di mana semakin berzikir sebanyak-banyaknya, semakin itulah akan mencapai ketenteraman dan akan lenyap ketakutan.

61.Zikir adalah melahirkan kekuatan dan tenaga yang terkhas kepada manusia. Dengan kekuatan itu, ia dapat menyelenggarakan urusan-urusan yang agak sukar.

62.Pemberesan urusan-urusan akhirat adalah dahulu-mendahului di antara satu sama lain. Di dalam mendahului antara satu sama lain ini, yang kelihatan di hadapan sekali ialah orang-orang yang berzikir.

Diriwayatkan dari Omar Khadam Gufarah r.a katanya:

"Apabila amal perbuatan manusia diganjari pada hari kiamat maka sebahagian besar dari manusia akan menyesal sambil berkata:

"Alangkah bagusnya jika dahulunya kita memperbanyakkan amalan yang ringan dan mudah sekali iaitu zikir."

Di dalam sebuah hadis ada dilaporkan bahawa Baginda Rasulullah s.a.w telah bersabda:

"Telah mendahului mereka yang mufarrid."

Para sahabat bertanya:

"Siapakah yang mufarrid itu, ya Rasulullah?"

Baginda menjawab: "Mereka yang mengingati Allah sebanyak-banyaknya kerana zikir adalah meringankan bebanan mereka."

63.Allah S.W.T sendiri membenarkan dan memuji orang-orang yang berzikir. Orang-orang yang dibenarkan oleh Allah S.W.T tidaklah akan dibangkitkan bersama-sama orang yang berdusta.

64. Zikir adalah menyebabkan terbinanya rumah di dalam syurga. Apabila seseorang hamba berhenti daripada berzikir maka para malaikat berhenti daripada membina rumah itu.

Apabila mereka ditanya, "Mengapakah kamu berhenti membina rumah itu?"

Maka mereka menjawab, "Bahawa perbelanjaannya belum tiba lagi."

Di dalam sebuah hadis lagi ada disebutkan barangsiapa yang mengucapkan (berzikir) sebanyak 7 kali, nescaya dibinakan satu menara untuknya di dalam syurga.

65. Zikir adalah perisai atau pendinding bagi Neraka Jahannam. Barangsiapa yang dimasukkan ke dalamnya kerana amal perbuatannya yang tidak baik, maka zikirnya itu menjadi pendinding di antaranya dengan Neraka Jahannam tersebut. Semakin banyak berzikir dibuat maka semakin kuatlah pendinding itu.

66. Para malaikat beristighfar (memohon keampunan) bagi orang yang berzikir. Diberitakan kepada Amar bin Aas r.a yang beliau meriwayatkan bahawa apabila seseorang hamba mengucapkan (berzikir) maka para malaikat berkata, "Ya, Allah! Ampunilah dia." (Dan termaklum bahawa doa para malaikat itu tidak ditolak malahan terus dikabulkan).

67.Jika seseorang berzikir di atas gunung atau di tanah datar, maka tempat tersebut akan merasa bangga.

Di dalam sebuah hadis ada diberitakan bahawa gunung-gunung bertanya¬tanyakan di antara satu sama lain bahawa hari ini adakah seseorang yang berzikir itu melalui di atas engkau.

Jika diberitahukan, "Ya, ada yang melaluinya maka ia akan berasa gembira lagi bangga."

68.Memperbanyakkan zikir adalah merupakan sijil bagi kelepasan bagi kemunafikan.

Allah S.WT telah berfirman:

"Mereka tidak mengingati Allah melainkan sedikit."

(An-Nisa A:142 S:4 J:5 M/S:101)

Ka'ab Akhbar r.a berkata:

"Barangsiapa berzikir sebanyak-banyaknya terpelihara ia daripada kemunafikan."

69.Berbanding dengan amalan-amalan yang baik maka zikir mempunyai satu kelazatan yang tidak didapati pada amalan¬amalan yang lain.

Jika zikir tidak mempunyai satu fadilat pun selain daripada kelazatan tadi maka memadailah dia.

Malik bin Dinar r.a berkata, "Bahawa seseorang tidak akan berasa lazat dari suatu apa pun seperti kelazatan berzikir."

70.Pada wajah orang berzikir itu didapati kegembiraan di dunia ini dan akan kelihatan nur padanya di hari kiamat.

71. Barangsiapa yang mengingati Allah sebanyak-banyaknya di tengah-tengah jalan, di rumah, di dalam safar dan ketika berada di dalam kampung, maka ia akan mempunyai pembela-pembela yang ramai sekali di hari hisab kelak.

Di dalam menerangkan keadaan hari kiamat, Allah S.W.T berfirman:

“Pada hari itu (yakni hari kiamat) bumi menceritakan berita-beritanya."

Baginda Rasulullah s.a.w bertanya kepada para sahabat:

"Tahukah kamu berita-berita bumi itu?"

Mereka menjawab:

"Tidak. Kami tidak tahu, ya Rasulullah s.a.w."

Baginda Rasulullah s.a.w bersabda:

"Pekerjaan-pekerjaan yang dibuat oleh lelaki dan wanita (sama ada pekerjaan yang baik ataupun yang buruk) di permukaan bumi ini, maka bumi akan menceritakan bahawa si fulan pernah melakukan sekian perbuatan di sekian tempat di permukaannya pada sekian masa.

Oleh itu, orang-orang yang berzikir sebanyak-banyaknya di tempat-tempat yang berlainan maka dia akan mempunyai saksi yang banyak di hari hisab nanti."

72. Selama lidah sibuk dengan berzikir maka selama itulah ia terpelihara daripada perbicaraan yang sia-sia, berdusta, mengumpat dan sebagainya. Kerana lidah itu sememangnya tidak bisa diam, ia akan sibuk berzikir kalau tidak sudah tentu dengan kesia-siaan.

Demikian juga halnya hati jika ia tidak sibuk dengan mencintai Khalik, maka sudah tentu ia sibuk dengan mencintai makhluk.

73.Syaitan adalah musuh manusia yang nyata. Ia mencampakkan manusia di dalam kancah kerunsingan dan kegelisahan dengan berbagai cara. Ia juga mengerumuni mereka dari tiap penjuru.

Orang yang halnya sedemikian rupa, ia sentiasa berada di tengah-tengah lingkungan para musuh yang mana tiap-tiap seorang daripadanya ingin menimpa ke atasnya penderitaan demi penderitaan.
Tiada cara untuk mematahkan serangan musuh itu melainkan dengan zikrullah.

Ada banyak hadis yang mengandungi doa-doa yang mana dengan membacanya sebelum tidur maka terpeliharalah dari musuh-musuh itu selama¬lamanya.

Kelebihan-kelebihan di atas memadailah mereka yag mendapat taufik untuk mengamalkannya.

Bagi mereka yang tiada mendapat taufik, maka beribu-ribu fadilat pun tidak berguna sama sekali.

Sedih

noreply@blogger.com (Murni) — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 08:39:00 -0800

Itu ungkapan hati curahan perasaan. Takkan ada sesuatupun yg dapat menghalanginya untuk terungkap.
Dia akan mengalir lewat derai2 naluri yg sangat kuat.
Mengalahkan smua yg ada
Membakar luluh smangat sekalipun itu gembira...
Ikat dan rangkai suasana menjadi satu...
Sedih....

Kau lontarpun, dia kembali
Campakkan jauh justru sakit
kaulupakan, menyesakkan...

Sedih,
Percayalah kembali
pada tonggak akar keyakinan
kesucian hati Murni yg abadi
Dan kebaikan hati sanubari sejati
Adalah bukti....
Murni org yg sangat pantas disayangi
Dikasihi dan......
Untuk dicintai....
Aminnnnn.
Thanks semoga Abadi selamanya.....

wassalam.

Ai no Korrida:the Cutting Edge of

noreply@blogger.com (Murni) — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 19:44:00 -0800

Ai no korrida is the Japanese title of the movie, In the Realm of the Senses, by Oshima Nagisa. Even though Oshima preferred the French title L'Empire des sens, for its closeness to the title of Roland Barthes' book L'Empire des signes, we think that the Japanese title deserves more attention. Ai no korrida, whose translation is Corrida of love, contains the idea of kill; the kill of what? the kill of the hero, of course; yet why not the kill of love?
In the Realm of the Senses became famous for its last scene — a scene of castration —, but I regard the turning point as the killing of the hero, Kichiso, leading the heroine to what Lacan calls the feminine jouissance.
This article intends to show how Lacan's teaching can elucidate the movie's framework and conversely, perhaps above all, but also, how the movie illustrates some of Lacan's ideas about jouissance, especially those developed in the Seminar XX — Encore (1972-73). So far no other films have achieved this lacanian uniqueness.

[...]

At the movie's end, Kichi, after all their feats, lies completely exhausted; Sada, with her same appetite, is on the watch.
The strangulation that occurred during their sexual intercourses has brought them close to death. Then, Kichi gives Sada this specific order regarding strangulation: "If you start, don't stop in the middle, it hurts too much afterwards." One can recognize the expression of the super-ego, "jouis!" addressed to Sada, where exactly it is only implied. There are three times in Kichi's imperative: the beginning, the middle, and "afterwards," which is in fact the final cause a contrario (the reason why she should not stop). Death and jouissance are indisputably present in this sentence. At the same time, their temporality, the very end of the act, is missing. In the following scene of Kichi's death, Sada is initiated to a new kind of jouissance. This is the only instance when Sada obtains jouissance detached from any sexual act; whereas previously, Sada strangulates Kichi during their love making, she now shows a complete disinterest in his penis. Initially the next scene appears enigmatic: Sada lies naked amid the benches of an open-air theater; a little girl running after an old man, playing hide-and-seek keeps asking: "Are you ready?" The old man answers: "Not yet," until he suddenly disappears. This scene may be understood as Sada's fantasy — the death, the killing of her father.
These scenes correlate with what Lacan taught about fantasy as the last defense against jouissance. Sada's fundamental fantasy arises at the same time it is passed over (one may refer to the Aufhebung here), leading her to a jouissance one should no longer call sexual, but rather "a glance at feminine jouissance." In the following scene Sada castrates Kichi's corpse. As Lacan points out, this scene conveys a certain strangeness and questions the psychoanalytic concept of castration: "Here we see clearly that castration is not a fantasy. Castration cannot be placed so easily in the function that it has in psychoanalysis, since it may be fantasized."1
She cuts his penis first, then his testicles. No question, her knife follows the anatomic section; she cuts the anatomic male organ. What value does it acquire then, far away from its sexual use? The emasculated corpse of Kichi, in its connection with the Other, the father of the fantasy, represents the barred Other () and the useless genital organ she now possesses is the signifier of this : S(). Sada reaches the other jouissance, the feminine jouissance, specified by its relation with S(). The difference between the two jouissances is also evoked by the terminology of the script, when a voice-over states that Sada, holding his sex in her hand, roamed the streets of Tokyo for four days with a resplendent face: it is no longer question of happiness (ureshii) but of resplendence (hareyakana): which in Japanese first refers to a clear, cloudless sky. In that way, Sada approaches certain mystics .
In connection to what has gone before, I would like to make a few comments on Lacan's schema:2

schema

The left side concerns the male inscription, and the right, the female inscription. For Kichi, sexual jouissance is associated with the fantasy that he responds to Sada's demande by giving himself over to Sada's sexual games.
His fantasy supports his jouissance, at the same time his jouissance builds up his fantasy. What Kichi grasps of the Other, incorporated in Sada, is his objet a: "It ( in the masculine position) can never reach its sexual partner, which is the Other, except by way of mediation, as the cause of its desire."3 On the other hand, Sada shows this duality: she has a rapport to the sexual jouissance, —> , and, as she is inscribed on the side of the "pas-toute," she has rapport to the feminine jouissance, demonstrated by the end of the movie, —> S(). From this, three points can be raised: 1 — The position of fantasy is very specific in the case of Sada: it plays the role of a defense against feminine jouissance. It would be the bar separating the phallic jouissance (for women) from the feminine jouissance:

schema

2 — The place of castration can be revised. For men, castration is a prerequisite: man can approach woman, because he is castrated; "...short of castration, that is, short of something which says no to the phallic function, man has no chance of enjoying the body of the woman, in other words, of making love."4 Castration is, for man, the ratio of the paternal function, , with the phallic function, . For Sada, castration comes last, as part of the real that constitutes S (A); and, in that sense, we can consider castration as part of the real that constitutes S(), and in that sense one can say that castration is her "anti-fantasy." Castration allows Sada to rid herself of her fundamental fantasy, —> a. Thus she reaches the feminine jouissance, —> S() In that way, castration can be conceived of as the passing from the "semblant d'être" to S():

schema

3 — why does S() lie below the female inscription in Lacan's schema? Should it not be exterior to the male and female inscriptions? One can say that it is the logical consequence of three lacanian propositions:
a — woman is basically the Other in the sexual act
b — the Other is the treasure of signifiers
c — there is no Other of the Other.
The S() occupies a specific position in woman: a position of "extimity."5 One encounters a further difficulty: woman considered as a subject cannot be called the Other, A, nor can she not be a divided subject, . But with respect to jouissance, Lacan seems to say that one cannot disregard conceiving of woman as A, nor simply conceive of her as . For this reason, Lacan writes: "," which is neither A, nor . From this, one can understand that the question of the relation between woman and A leads Lacan towards the concept of God; and, the question of the relation between woman and leads Lacan towards the question of the unconscious in women. Moreover, the fact that —> S() stays within the female inscription indicates that feminine jouissance is "jouissance de l'un."
I could finish this article by congratulating the actress, Eiko Matsuda, for her exceptional performance, and Oshima Nagisa for his masterpiece. But discrediting the male role, as I have earlier, for example by simply labelling Kichi as obsessional, may be a pitfall of the film. His apparent passivity should not mask that it is Kichi who introduces strangling into their love games, and the one who asks Sada to kill him. One could say without a Kichi, no Sada (also, without a Sada, no Kichi). Kichi loses everything: his strength, his life, and even beyond death, his genitals. In fact, as the action progresses, one comes to understand his position as the same as Sada's: their refusal of the "semblant" associated with the sexual jouissance. He gradually erects it to an ethical position. He becomes conscious that there is no escape from sexual jouissance within the realm of love, conscious that he will not become what she is about to reach, or in other words, he becomes conscious of the inexistence of sexual relation. Therefore, he is the order addressed to Sada; "Jouis!," as the only chance to escape their jouissance.

Reading Asante's Myth of Afrocentricity: An Ideological Critique

noreply@blogger.com (Murni) — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 19:41:00 -0800

Recently, Aftrocentricity has emerged as a key element of multicultural curricula for the schools.[1] The "subject matter of the Afrocentric paradigm is its placement of Africa at the center of any analysis of African history and culture, including the African-American experience."[2] Proponents describe Afrocentricity as "a humanistic philosophy, a scholarly methodology, and a model of practical action"[3]

In this paper I shall examine the Molefi, Kete Asante text Afrocentricity, as a curriculum model that powerfully captures the notion of education as political, social, and self-formation. Specifically, Afrocentricity is read at three levels as an ideological discourse meant to construct the reader's subjectivity. At level one, I appeal to Levi-Strauss and read the text as a cultural myth. The elements that structure the myth are seen as parts of a sign system. These elements are identified revealing the myth's structure. Level two briefly examines Lacan's psychoanalytic construct The Imaginary. The Imaginary previews the child's entrance into the symbolic field of language, culture, and the representation of self. The educational relevance of the Imaginary, and the critical core of my analysis follows Althusser's model of ideology. Level three connects both the Imaginary and Althusser's constructs to critique the myth of Afrocentricity. What is revealed is that Asante's view of Aftrocentricity erects a representation of self that is politically imaginary, that is, an image that hides the real alienated conditions of most of Afro-America's material existence.

LEVEL ONE, AFROCENTRICITY AS MYTH

I shall begin reading the text of Afrocentricity as Levi-Strauss reads a cultural artifact. As I have indicated, Asante's text shall be read as a cultural myth. The implications are twofold. The first implication is methodological, the second is definitional. Methodologically, to read the text as a cultural myth means that what is written shall not be taken at face-value. Instead my reading tries to discover the undiscovered, by recovering what is latent in the text"[4] The discovery of these latent meanings, exposes Asante's problematic or conceptual framework. Such an exposure tells us what counts as relevant data. Further, it spells out the forms and conditions within which problems can be posed for Asante. Following Levi-Strauss, I take cultural myth to mean the following:

A) The myth is the culturally sanctioned ground for understanding the world. The mythic ground functions to provide the individual with answers for cultural contradictions and dilemmas.

B) The myth has a narrative with a didactic, moral, and therapeutic message.

The conditions for the reception of the Afrocentric myth are obvious: Afrocentricity speaks directly to black America because it appears as the fulfillment of truths long hidden. The reasons? Afrocentricity reveals the story of an oppressed people whose history has been fabricated, whose language has been devalued, whose names have derived from an alien culture and who are today suffering the severe economic exploitation of a capitalist/racist society. Indeed, in these conditions of alienation, the young underschooled, underemployed, black youth must see the mythic ideology of the American Dream as the Great Lie; in its place Afrocentricity creates an ideology of hope, telling the reader who s/he is, what s/he can know what s/he must do, and what true history is from an African perspective.

Once again, my critique of Asante's Afrocentric ideology is fundamentally political. The intent is to find answers to the questions: a) How does the Afrocentric myth work educationally as a mechanism of social and self formation? and b) How does the practice of this ideology affect the Afrocentrist politically in the production relationships of work?

Answers to these questions begin by looking at the Afrocentric myth as an ideology or a story that one lives. Such a story is like a religion; that is, it answers the Kantian questions "What can I know?" "What must I do?" and "What can I hope for?" And like a religion, the myth joins one to fellow believers. This group membership is a connection that works to reenforce one's assent to the didactic, moral and therapeutic messages about the world and one's place in it, which the myth delivers. To call Afrocentricity a religion is not hyperbole. Asante himself says: "Afrocentricity can stand its ground among any ideology or religion: Marxism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, or Judaism. Your Afrocentricity will emerge in the presence of these other ideologies because it is from you. It is a truth even though it may not be their truth"[5] With these introductory remarks I shall begin to excavate the structure of the Afrocentric religious ideology.

READING AFROCENTRICITY AS RELIGIOUS MYTH

The foreword to the Afrocentricity text begins with this moral injunction:

the need for an Afrocentric philosophy is so great that it is impossible for me not to insist on every black person reading this book. (Why?)...Afrocentricity resembles the black man, speaks to him, wants for him, what he wants for himself. Dr. Asante's book on Afrocentricity is the next step in a victorious consciousness. It is an answer to the intellectual black who wants to know why and analyze, it is the answer to the pragmatic black who wants to know where is the ritual and the support system and whose god will I be worshipping. It gives the answer to the man and woman...that we must quickly return to our centers for peace in our families.[6]

Later, I will show that the religion-mythic structure of Afrocentricity employs a pantheon of prophets, and a revisionist of historiography, a metaphysics and an ethical system. At this point I want only to preview the ways Asante confers upon Afrocentricity the status of religion by introducing the political function of sacred text.

He says, Afrocentricity is the one true religion of Africans world wide, and Nija-The Way is its sacred text. Asante's arguments for these claims take this line: "[All] religions represent the deification of someone's nationalism." Language is the vehicle of national cohesion and identity. The language of Afro-Americans is Ebonics (Black English), for Yoruba, the language is Yoruba, for Asante the language would be Twi.[7] But Christianity speaks to believers in the European tongues and Muslim believers must speak an Arabic tongue. Both religions are contradictions of the lived experience of the Afrocentrist. Asante argues that Nija, the sacred text of Afrocentricity and that text alone, speaks to the diaspora of African peoples because it "recounts the collective expression of the world view grounded in the experience of African people. [Nija] represents the collective memory of the continent." Nija represents a religious commitment to the Afrocentric world view.[8] This religious structure in Afrocentricity gives believers not only a sense of community, it also appears to give them some political control over their lives. I shall argue that this is really an imaginary, ideological definition of the world. To introduce the notion of the Imaginary, I turn now to Lacan.

LEVEL TWO, LACAN ON THE IMAGINARY

Lacan is a Freudian revisionist whose work reinterprets the psyche using structuralist methods. My use of Lacan is limited to his construct the Imaginary and is introduced because it is central to Althusser's critique of ideology. Of necessity what follows is a schematized version of the Imaginary; and my point is to outline the form of Althusser's argument on the relationship between ideology and the formation of the subject. For Lacan, the formation of the subject has been movements: the pre-Oedipal or Imaginary phase, the Oedipal or Symbolic phase, and the resolution of both movements in the discourse of the unconscious.[9] Lacan begins by paying special attention to what he calls "the Mirror phase" of the Imaginary. The "Mirror phase" describes the earliest stage of Ego formation; that is, of the eight-month-old infant enthralled by the image of his own body which he sees reflected in the mirror. Lacan plays upon the radical unity and opposition contained within the constructs of image and imaginary, showing how both are the common path of conduct in which the Imaginary is substituted for the real. What happens is the systematic misrepresentation of the child to himself, this is an alienation rooted in the child's false belief in his own autonomy. In this illusion, the child sees a gestalt; the image of his body standing erect and moving this way or that, in a play of reflections which he controls with purpose and without hesitation. This gestalt is a lie that the child tells himself; his erect posture and his movements depend upon the adult holding him before the mirror. But this illusion of his autonomous body image is so absolute that the child's consciousness pushes aside even the physical presence of the adult. Essentially this play of the body image turns reality upside down: the child is caught up by the illusion of an autonomous double; this is the Imaginary self. To call this construction Imaginary is to recognize that self understanding is mediated by the image presented to others. Ironically, it is the others who mirror, define and shape that image. But the point is that for the child the Imaginary and the real become equivalents. Now, obviously this child is his own body and not his image. But the crucial point is that because his body is visible to others, a shift in conduct occurs from "the lived body to the visible body." From the perspective of the child's consciousness a "new content and new narcissistic function makes possible a sort of alienation. [Thus, the child believes] I am no longer what I felt myself immediately to be; I am the image of myself offered by the mirror, an ideal, fictitious, imaginary me which the specular image is outline."[10] Later, I will show the form of this psychological process is repeated with a new content as Althusser adapts the Imaginary to decipher the politics of the subject constructed in and by ideological practices. With this preliminary data regarding myth, religion and the Imaginary in place, I want to turn now to Althusser's analysis of ideology and its application in the critique of the Afrocentrist model.

ALTHUSSER ON IDEOLOGY

Althusser is a neo-Marxist who uncovers the material role of ideology in the exploitative structures of capitalist economy. And, in the largest sense he uses the term ideology to mean a material, political, psychological apperceptive ground which is internalized by the oppressed and delivers to them a distorted picture of the real conditions of their existence. Ideology is effective whenever those who are exploited believe either nothing can be done to change their lives or worse, that they actually have control over their lives and their existence is not one of alienation.

To locate the ideological apparatus of the capitalist economy, Althusser begins by asking "how does the capitalist economy sustain itself? More specifically, what conditions allow capitalism to continue? And, how does the State legitimize, generate, and continuously replace an alienated labor force?" He finds answers located in the specific relations between "the infrastructure, or economic base (the 'unity' of the productive forces and the relations of production) and the superstructure, which itself contains two 'levels'...the politico-legal (Law and the State) and ideology (the different ideologies, religious, ethical Legal, political, etc.)."[11] My analysis focuses on the superstructure for reasons that will become apparent. The work of the superstructure or those institutions which Althusser identifies as the Ideological State Apparatus (ISA) is not one of physical repression. The ISA is not itself the economic base. The ISA instead is a cultural mechanism of social formation: ie., institutions within the ISA mediate, define and legitimize the class system. Following this definition of the ISA, the school then is a strategic institution in the superstructure; that is, an institution whose main task is to prepare future workers by inculcating the capitalist ethos in the young.

My analysis will offer an ironic variation on this theme. I shall argue that the Afrocentric myth when used in the classroom as the core of the curriculum takes on the function of the superstructure as readily as the traditional classroom alluded to above. Put differently, the child who introjects the Afrocentric myth creates a self with a politically false and distorted view of the world. Adopting Lacan's work, Althusser calls this ideological deception the Imaginary. He means that the exploited classes live out an Imaginary relationship with the real conditions of their existence. In both the Afrocentric and the traditional school, the mechanism of the Imaginary is a belief system that works like a religion complete with practices and rituals that form the child-subject. The linchpin in this system is what Althusser calls interpellation. More on the Imaginary and interpellation will follow later.

However, before exposing how the school operates as an ISA, a prior question must be resolved. Namely, "how does the state immediately produce the labor power needed to reproduce itself?" Althusser's answer and the key to understanding alienated labor is wages. Further, he inserts the wage/labor, power/value equation into historical context. Wages constitute:

[The] wherewithal [sufficient] to pay for housing, food and clothing...is doubly historical in that it is not defined by the historical needs of the working class "recognized" by the capitalist class, but by the historical needs imposed by the proletarian class struggle (a double class struggle: against the lengthening of the working day and against the reduction of wages).[12]

Obviously, the discussion of wages and labor power are central to the marxist critique of the capitalism and the class division between the haves and the havenots. I highlight it for two reasons. First, this crucial insight is the foundation upon which Althusser builds his critique. And second, it similarly is crucial for my uses: As he embraces the wage-labor capitalist equation so also Asante explicitly rejects the Marxist analysis. But as Asante presents the wage as an end both to be hoped for and to worked for, his political critique of American culture is defanged. Asante at best can instill only black pride. The world stays as it is.

In Asante's words "one of the most important economic rights in the coming decades will be the right to a salary. [And] We shall have to fight the contest for salaries. It is increasingly true with whites also that the security of salary is more important than the right to real estate."[13] As must be obvious, Asante rejects Marx. Indeed, Asante explicitly characterizes Marx as a Eurocentric materialist[14] whose analyses spoke about class conflict while neglecting white racism[15] and ignoring the unique history of the African peoples. Moreover, in Asante's view Marx reduced the meaning of labor to manual labor and offered an eschatology which promised the victory of the working class.[16] Asante says, Afrocentricity rejects these views; and instead it values the labor of thinkers, culture, and spirituality. [Sic] indeed, from Asante's perspective, "Marxism explains European history from a Eurocentric view; it does not explain African culture." (Moreover, the Afrocentric eschatology is non material) a "history of harmony, stemming from a strong sense of God-consciousness in nature and each other."[17]

These remarks are crucial for a number of reasons: Not only is Marx's critique of culture (that is, the Superstructure) misunderstood; the centrality of wages as the engine in the reproduction of labor power is turned upside down; and we have previewed the Alpha and the Omega of Afrocentricity in the spiritualism of what Asante calls Afro-collective consciousness. With this connection of the economic base to the superstructure in mind, I shall now turn to Althusser's description of the school's functions within the ISA, then making connections between the Afrocentric model and the ISA.

THE SCHOOL AS ISA

To put things in order, the first question to be answered is, "What are the school's prime ideological functions?" Remembering that the dominant ideology is usually not recognized (that is, ideology defines the world "naturally" as the normal state of affairs or the taken for granted), Althusser speaks about the school on two levels.

On the surface, the school functions to teach subject matter and to prepare students for careers. But Althusser says, the school's deep functions within the ISA are of transmitting subject-matter wrapped in the ruling ideology and to operate as a social sorting mechanism. Specifically, What is learned are the basic subjects, (language, arithmetic, natural history, the sciences, literature) or simply the ruling ideology in its pure state.[18] The ruling ideology is a hidden agenda secreted within the following disciplines: ethics, civics, and philosophy. Having inculcated these foundational studies as the core of the child's social formation, the school's most powerful intervention next occurs when the child reaches age sixteen (in the USA this social milestone is usually highschool graduation). At this time, the school's sorting function is most explicit. Here, the child's history of "scholastic adaptation" determines life chances. Althusser's description is that of a socio-economic Matterhorn with increasingly more selective and prestigious positions nearer the summit. Winners and losers alike are provided with a specialized ideology "which suits the role it has to fulfill in class society."[19]

Proportionally "a huge mass of children are ejected into production...another portion carries on...until it falls by the wayside [these are] petty bourgeois of all kinds." The portion that survives and reaches the summit are "the agents of exploitation (capitalists, managers), the agents of repression (soldiers, policemen, politicians, administrators, etc.) and the professional ideologist (priests of all sorts, most of whom are convinced 'laymen')."[20] The school then, reproduces the relations of the exploited to exploiters repeating the capitalist relations of production, and inculcating within the child the ideology of the ruling class wrapped up in an apprenticeship with a variety of know-how knowledge.

Each class has an ideology specific role: the exploited have... a highly developed professional, ethical, civic, national, and a political consciousness; the role of the agent of exploitation (ability to give workers orders and to speak to them...that of the professional ideologist [has the] (ability to treat consciousness with the respect, that is with the contempt, blackmail demagogy they deserve, adapted to the accents of Morality, of Virtue, of Transcendence, of the Nation).[21]

Of course, for most students and teachers, none of this is obvious because the school is presented as ideology free. That is, the school is to place where teachers respect the "conscience" and freedom of those entrusted to them. Repeating the traditional school's work as an ISA, the Afrocentric model depicts power in society according to a three term hierarchical division of intelligence. Asante says "three types of intelligence exist in the world: Creative intelligence, Recreative intelligence, and Consumer intelligence."[22] These distinctions essentially specify the roles of those whose work is either to create, promulgate or receive, the Afrocentric ideology. Creative intelligence (the most valuable type of intelligence) is that which communicates with the whole earth by remaining open to associations, ideas, spaces, possibilities. [Creative intellects are] "disciplined [by] attitudes rooted in Afrocentric images and symbols."[23] Examples include Elijah Muhammad, Karenga, and King. Recreative intellectuals: poets, scholars, teachers, artists have the task of propagating the vision of creative intellectuals. Examples include: Malcolm X, Halisi, Baraka, Abernathy, and Jackson. But, the majority (by nature) are most suited as Consumer intelligence types, [people] who neither create nor re-create but rather consume and utilize ideas.[24]

Curiously, no mention of the socio-economic divisions implied in this structure are mentioned. Rather, these separations are leveled out in a unified, organic culture of Afrocentrism. Indeed, Afrocentrism is all embracing and sanctified for "all intelligence is accepted as containing the God-force."[25]

To summarize the argument thus far, reconsider the question "How does the Afrocentric myth/curriculum work as a part of the ISA? The answers: First, Afrocentrism tacitly accepts the material and political conditions of capitalism by setting down wages as the central economic reward. Second, Afrocentrism tacitly accepts the class structure of capitalism by promoting the divisions in society as simply manifestations of differing kinds of intelligence. Third, Afrocentrism is a quasi-religion. That is, Afrocentrism is a belief system whose practitioners are sanctified by the Afrocentric God-force. But Afrocentricity as a religion works towards a spiritual end that does not change the believer's socio-material conditions. Indeed, the change that appears, in the believer's material existence, I will show is an Imaginary change.

AFROCENTRICITY: THE RELIGION

To this point I have asserted that Afrocentricity is a myth with a message delivered as a religion. The most important evidence cited described the Nija as Afrocentrism's sacred text. But as I earlier suggested, my use of the term religion also includes a pantheon of prophets and "saints," a revision of history, a metaphysics and an ethical system. Evidence for these claims begins with a consideration of Afrocentricity's holy figures.

The sainted in the Afrocentric Pantheon range from Afro-American religious and political personages to Egyptian and Nubian figures. Notable Afro-Americans here include: Martin Luther King, W.E.B. DuBois, Elijah Muhammad, and Malcolm X. But Asante counts as most visionary, Marcus Garvey, a man whose political program articulated cultural and national liberation for Afro-Americans. Spiritual models of Afrocentricity are found in the lives of Piankhy, Nzingha, Tutankhamun, and Tinubu," as well as "ancient African priests in Egypt, Yoruba priests in Nigeria, and the Macumba priestesses of Brazil.[26] The prophets of Afrocentricity are Karenga and Asante himself. Speaking about the deliverance of the word, to himself, Asante quotes from the Nija. "This is the Way that came to Molefi in America; The Way that came to me is how it is and how it must be for the Abibi man."[27]

Asante locates the tainted history of the diasporan black people in the politicization of the concept of race and white historiography. Race is an ideological construct, a weapon with neither biological nor anthropological validity used to legitimize the white man's oppression of the black. Indeed, white historiography has incorporated a European ethnocentrism that has distorted the truth of human history and robbed the black African of a true identity. Asante's responses to this racism appeals to Diopian historiography; his intent is to revise the story of the black African in such a way that a new sense of subjectivity will be constructed within the individual that comes through a collective Afrocentric consciousness shared by all members of the African diaspora worldwide.[28]

He claims this "universal African consciousness is an awareness of our collective history and future";[29] that is, a consciousness of a "group of people thinking in the same general direction" that resurrects the origins of civilization in the ancient Egyptians - a black people. Asante says: "Irrespective of present locations the roots of all African people go back to East Africa, the cradle of human history. We do not find the Hebrews or those related to them until thousands of years after the ancient Egyptians (Africans) and Nubians (Africans) had appeared."[30] Indeed, "Eurocentric history defines the origin of human Western civilizations Africans gave the world Ethiopia, Nubia, Egypt, Cush...(And it is from these civilizations that) medicine, science, the concept of monarchies and divine-kingships, (as well as)...an Almighty God" have their source.[31]

Bound up with the sacred test of the Nija, the stories of the prophets and the revisionist of historiography, Afrocentricity is a metaphysical principle or Spirit which is unfolding. The elements of Afrocentric Spirit are a fusion of nature in the bicameral mind or God force, historical Africa and the present technicultural, African American.[32] Asante claims, the God-force speaks to all Africans directly in their own language,[33] and is everywhere present[34] as the continuum of the spirit and matter. In this view, natural things such as trees have essences, there is no absolute distinction between mind and matter and all things ultimately are a part of a spiritual core.[35] But, the fullness of the Spirit is yet to come with the rise (of the collective Afro-consciousness).[36] This collective consciousness of the Spirit grows toward a liberation of the African diaspora which finds itself at the center of post-modern history.[37]

As I have already shown, Afrocentricity combines a world view, a political program, and an eschatology aimed at producing a new Afro-centric subjectivity. The mechanism of this identity construction is a religio-ethical system that defines correct behavior. Discussion of the Afrocentric religio-ethical system is crucial because it reveals the construction of the Afrocentric subject at two levels: the totality or collective consciousness that is Spirit, and the life of the individual Afrocentric believer. Spirit is the totality because it embraces things: the Nija text, and revisionist history, behaviors: Nija rituals, political actions, ethical imperatives, and most especially, people who collectively identify themselves as Afrocentrists.[38] To make sense of the relationship of collective consciousness and the ethical system of Afrocentricity, things have to be put into political context. To that end, I shall return to Althusser's descriptions of ideology paying special attention to the dynamics of the religious formation of the individual subject.

ALTHUSSER ON SOCIAL/SELF FORMATION

Althusser specifies one institutional facet of the work of ideology in the functions of the Church. Specifically the behaviors of the believer are traced to an ultimate source in ideology. The key to all of this is the connection between the believer's ideas, his practices, church rituals, and the common source of each of these elements in ideology. To flesh out the argument I will begin with the question:

What are the relationships between the believer's ideas about self and religion? Put differently, what follows from the believer's belief? Althusser says that the individual thinks his religious belief has a spiritual source. Further, this is a belief that s/he (apparently) freely forms. But, true belief entails specific consequences. The individual in question, "behaves in such and such a way, adopts such and such a practical attitude...participates in certain regular practices which are those of the ideological apparatus on which depend the ideas which he has...freely chosen."[39]

Althusser's examples cite behaviors predicated upon belief; that is the individual goes to Church, "prays, confesses, does penance."[40] Thus, the believer's belief in his/her ideas (which s/he thinks s/he freely accepts) demands that s/he act accordingly. If what s/he believes and what s/he does are not one and the same, then s/he appears to act upon other ideas s/he has in his/her head. In religious terms such actions are morally culpable as: "inconsistent, or cynical or perverse." On the other hand, the fact that the individual's living faith is embodied in precise material actions is taken seriously, means we can see a concrete expression of the Imaginary.

Althusser argues that the Imaginary here derives from the believer's false belief that his/her ideas are spiritual and that s/he is their source. In fact: 1) these ideas stem from a material source, the institution of the church; 2) the believer's belief is both verified and reflected in certain practices that are inserted in church rituals: and the believer acts in so far as he is acted upon by the institution, 3) these actions/practices rebound to the individual publicly naming him as a believer. The believer in Lacan's terms becomes a specular self reflecting the institution. This act of public verification in which the individual becomes the public specular subject of ideology Althusser calls interpellation.

ALTHUSSER ON INTERPELLATION

Interpellation records the transformation of the individual into the new subjectivity of the system. The process is dialectical: the system (church/school or other ideological institution) recognizes the individual, who now gains identity as a concrete subject. Althusser compares the experience to that of hailing someone in the street. In his example someone "calls to another: "Hey, you there!" The individual hailed, turns around and with this physical conversion becomes a subject. Why? Because he has recognized that the hail was really addressed to him, and that it was really him who was hailed."[41]

The function of this interpellation is to provide the individual with a personal identity that derives from his/her relationship to the institution. The interpellated individual now is a subject; one, who occupies a certain place in the world; one, who obtains recognition through his practices; and one who gains subjectivity as s/he mirrors an Absolute Subject larger than himself.

For purposes of clarity this can be set down as an equation; individual subject = lower case s. Absolute subject = uppercase S. The individual interpellated becomes a subject s out of his material relationship to an absolute other subject S, (God is Althusser's religion example). The new identity of the interpellated, specular subject is s=S=s.

My last concern is to develop the implications of this analysis for the Afrocentric model.

AFROCENTRISM AND THE SUBJECT

Throughout the text Asante has defined the totality of Afrocentrism as God, as the collective consciousness, the bicameral mind or the Spirit unfolding in time. The subject who embraces Afrocentricity is at once: accepting the Spirit, understanding the world through a certain apperceptive ground, obeying certain moral imperatives and creating a new self. Following Althusser, this ideological mechanism can be treated as a relationship between the Spirit/Subject (S) and the subject/interpellated individual or true Afrocentrist believer (s).

On the other hand, the true believer whose behaviors are guided by the Afrocentrist ideology not only is creating a personal subjectivity s, s/he is also recreating the proper Afrocentrist collective consciousness S. But the test of Afrocentrism is correct behavior founded upon correct understanding.

Now, earlier I argued that the Afrocentric ethical system concretizes answers to the questions: "What must I do?" "What can I hope for?" Since, the Afrocentric ethical system is also a political reality as well, it appears easier to sort it out, if it is treated as a mechanism with an apperceptive ground and a set of ethical imperatives. The apperceptive ground of Afrocentricity embraces everything that is good and true; and everything that can be known about the self s, and world through the medium of African culture and toward the realization of collective consciousness, S. Asante says,

All political, artistic, economic and aesthetic issues are connected to the context of Afrocentric knowledge. [This includes] everything you do, all that you are [or] will become. [Anyone who is beyond the pale]...a non-Afrocentric person [is one who] operates in a manner that is negatively predictable. The person's images, symbols, lifestyles, and manners are contradictory and thereby destructive to personal and collective growth and development....[Again and again, the point to be remembered is]...there can be no effective discussion of a united front...until we come to terms with the collective consciousness (S). For the believer the imperative is clear....you are its ultimate test. You test its authenticity by incorporating it into your behavior...it becomes your life because everything you do, it is.[42]

If the test of faith is in the willingness to obey a moral imperative, then a crucial Afrocentric reality test is whether the individual is willing to dedicate his/her life to the fulfillment of Afrocentricism. This means that the true believer must constantly be on guard, examining his/her own actions and the actions of others. Asante says: "Deviations [from Afrocentrism] are intentional or unintentional misapplications of symbols and images which subvert the collective consciousness of our people."[43] All that anyone can do, know, or hope for must be found in Afrocentrism. This apperceptive ground puts an ideological glaze on the most mundane experiences from watching television to flying in an airplane. Even temporal experience is affected. That is, if someone were to ask "what time is it?" The complete answer must be placed in Afrocentric context: Is the question about the ordinary time of day? That is, "it's 8 o'clock?" Or is the question about the fulfillment of Afrocentric Spirit on earth, that is, "nation time?"

Indeed, this is a demanding leap of faith, with an epistemology whose logic Asante says, "is based upon the ever present reality of ourselves...deviations (from this faith) lead to the fog which surrounds those who wander form their centers."[44] Such a logic is, Asante claims, immutable, non-contradictory, and consolidating. I have argued it is all of these qualities because it is a logic founded upon the egocentric predicament of the Imaginary. Put differently, Afrocentrism attempts to set down the limits and conditions of what the true believer can know about the world with Afrocentrism at its center.

Thus, the Afrocentrist who truly believes, creates a new individual subjectivity, s. This new S comes into being subjected to and circumscribed by the Afrocentric collective consciousness S. At the same time, s sustains S through this change of identity. In sum, this acceptance of Afrocentricity reflects a political commitment, a moral direction and a statement about psychological health. Each of the above cohere in the identity of the new Afrocentric subject = S + s. But with all of these changes, the material-political existence of Afro-Americans who are without privilege remains unchanged.

CONCLUSION

My analysis of the Afrocentric curricular model has attempted to show that Afrocentricity reenforces the Afro-American's alienation. Evidence adduced coupled the Afrocentric curricular model to the Ideological State Apparatus. The medium of this ideology was Afrocentricity as a religious myth. Appealing first to the Imaginary construct found in Lacan, the work of the Imaginary was found in the infant's false belief in his own autonomy. The latter was reinforced by a specular image which was a lie the child accepted. Although the content changed, the Imaginary was seen again in the Afrocentric myth. The myth provided the believer a new but false sense of autonomy. The Afrocentric myth was then treated as a religion having a sacred text, a history, prophets, saints, rituals, an ethical system, and a metaphysics. Each of these elements was seen as operative in creating the Afrocentric subject. Afrocentrism appears to improve the lot of the true believer, that is a new identity is forged, pride in oneself is restored and a better understanding of the world is developed. But once again my conclusion is that these conditions are politically Imaginary. Afrocentrism is an economic system that embraces wage-value and of consequence class divisions. Afrocentrism is an acritical ideology which describes the socioeconomic relationships in new ways. The fact is that the world remains unchanged, and for most Afro-Americans without privilege, conditions of alienation are reinforced.

But none of this should be taken to mean that I reject muticultural studies written from an African perspective. The need is for such a curriculum to be developed from a politically realistic view.

***For a response to this essay, see Hytten.

[1] From the various models of Afrocentricity, Molefi K. Asante's pardigm was chosen for several reasons: his work is comprehensive, widely disseminated, and easily read by a lay public.

[2] Bayo Oyebade, "African Studies and the Afrocentric Paradigm: A Critique, Journal of Black Studies 21, no. 2 (1990): 233

[3] Abu Shardow Abarry, "Afrocentricity Introduction," Journal of Black Studies 21, no. 2 (1990): 200.

[4] Miriam Glucksman, Structuralist Analysis in Contemporary Social Thought (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974), 4.

[5] Molefi Kete Asante, Afrocentricity (Trenton: Africa World Press, 1988).

[6] Ibid., viii.

[7] Ibid., 4.

[8] Ibid., 53.

[9] See Jacques Lacan, ECRITS (New York: W.W. Norton, 1977).

[10] Jacques Lacan, "Le Stade due miroir comme formateur dufonction due je," Revue Francaise de Psychanalyse 13, no. 4 (October-December 1949): 449-55.

[11] Louis Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, trans. Ben Brewster (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971), 134.

[12] Ibid., 131.

[13] Asante, Afrocentricity, 98.

[14] Ibid., 16.

[15] Ibid., 33.

[16] Ibid., 80.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy, 135.

[19] Ibid., 155.

[20] Ibid.

[21] Ibid., 162.

[22] Asante, Afrocentricity, 37.

[23] Ibid.

[24] Ibid., 38.

[25] Ibid.

[26] Ibid., 53.

[27] Ibid., 100.

[28] Ibid., 19, 48, 51, 106.

[29] Ibid., 25.

[30] Ibid., 7.

[31] Ibid., 39.

[32] Ibid., viii.

[33] Ibid., 4.

[34] Ibid., 5.

[35] Ibid., 81.

[36] Ibid., 29.

[37] Ibid., 6.

[38] Ibid., 31.

[39] Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy, 167.

[40] Ibid.

[41] Ibid., 178.

[42] Asante, Afrocentricity, 66.

[43] Ibid., 86.

[44] Ibid., 87.

MYTHOS & LOGOS

noreply@blogger.com (Murni) — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 19:36:00 -0800

The Paranoid-Schizoid and Depressive Positions in the Psychogenesis of the Self:
A Phenomenological Investigation into the Ontological Foundations of Object Relations Theory
It is a basic assumption of this paper that Object Relations Theory -- as represented by scholar-practitioners such as Klein, Bion, and others -- can both inform and be informed by phenomenology. Object Relations Theory offers an articulation of psychoanalytic theory, as inherited from the legacy of Freud, which has become increasingly 'experience near,' descriptive, and even poetic, while, further, it has contributed to a radical reconceptualization of the nature of intersubjectivity. On the other hand, Object Relations Theory remains predominately rooted in metaphysical assumptions which force theorists to engage in convoluted theoretical acrobatics in order to account for phenomena, such as splitting and projective identification, which are described as if they are unaccountable, quasi-mystical phenomena. Phenomenological psychology can offer Object Relations Theory the rich legacy of its research into articulating the foundations of a human anthropology, grounded in the path laid by phenomenological philosophers such as Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty. By retrieving this heritage of phenomenological research, Object Relations Theory can be grounded in the human life-world, and, thus, shed its naive ontological assumptions, largely rooted in the natural sciences and traditional medicine. In return for such a gift, phenomenology may be enriched by the clinical brilliance offered by the community of scholar-practitioners who comprise the past, present and future of the Kleinian legacy, Object Relations Theory.

While this paper opens such a dialogue between phenomenology and Object Relations Theory, it can only be considered a preliminary investigation as such. More specifically, we endeavor to shed light on two fundamental aspects of Objects Relations Theory, the emergence of various psychological positions in development (e.g., the paranoid-schizoid position and the depressive position) and the psychological defenses which arise from these psychological positions (e.g., splitting, projective identification). Drawing from the research on human development by phenomenologists such as Merleau-Ponty (1964), Dillon (1978), Simms (1993, 1994, 1998), and Robbins (1998), it becomes possible to ground the emergence of the depressive position (from the paranoid-schizoid position) in the life-world of the infant. Also, with the assistance of Boss' (1979) Daseinsanalysis as influenced by Heidegger (1926/1962), the nature of psychological defenses, such as splitting and projective identification, can be shown to be only possible because the human being exists in a fundamentally different way than posited by the theoretical and ontological framework of Kleinian psychoanalysis. Further, taking Ogden's (1989, 1992) work into consideration, it will be shown that the emergence of the depression position is fundamentally a human project which is never fully complete. Thus, the two extreme poles of experience, the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions, co-exist in a dialectical relationship. Finally, it will be argued that the tension between the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions is, in part, constituted by the Western conception of the self as an 'encapsulated' individual rather than as interdependent on others.

Klein's conception of the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions

Klein (1955/1994) writes:

The observations that in the infant's mind the mother primarily appears as good and
bad breast split off from each other, and that within a few months, with growing
ego integration the contrasting aspects are beginning to be synthesized, helped me
to understand the importance of the process of splitting and keeping apart good and
bad figures (Klein, 1929), as well as the effect of such processes on ego development.
(p. 128)

Klein arrived at this theory through her work with children in play therapy, wherein she attempted both to understand the mind of the child and interpret what is going on there for the child, while, at the same time, avoiding the pull to educate or give moral influence. Klein became particularly attuned to the child's changes from a disposition of "happiness and satisfaction on one hand [to] persecutory anxiety and depression on the other" (Klein, 1955/1994, p. 118). Thus, Klein's predominate focus in all of her work with children was a focus on the child's fluctuations between love and hate, particularly for the mother. Grounded in Freudian meta-psychology, Klein understood the child's love and hate as derived, respectively, from the life instinct (eros) and death instinct (thanatos). Klein's clinical focus, eventually, would lead her to argue that the 'superego,' which Freud saw as forming with the Oedipal complex, arises at a much earlier stage in development than Freud had originally presumed (Klein, 1955/1994, p. 122).

Essentially, Klein traced the origins of the Oedipal complex back to pregenital stages, where she describes children as experiencing destructive impulses and phantasies which are oral-sadistic in nature (Klein, 1955/1994, p. 123). The child, in Klein's argument, engages in omnipotent phantasies wherein the mother's 'good' breast is idealized and loved, while the mother's 'bad' breast is attacked and devoured (Klein, 1945/1975). Yet, for the child, the good and bad breasts are not seen as belonging to a whole mother. Instead, in the fragmented world of the infant, they are experienced as separate objects. Klein accounts for this by her understanding that the child relates to part-objects rather than whole objects (Klein, 1955/1994). Thus, for Klein, the origins of the super-ego hearken back to the child's introjection of the 'bad' breast, which the infant fears will retaliate against her/him, creating for the child an 'internal,' 'persecutory object.' (Klein, 1928/1975, 1930/1975). In summary, the split between the satisfactory or 'good' breast and the frustrating or 'bad breast' is the child's first rudimentary object relationship, and, through a cyclical process of projection and introjection, "participate in the building up of the ego and the superego and prepare the ground for the onset of the Oedipal complex in the second half of the first year." (Klein, 1946/1994, p. 138)

These early, primitive experiences of the infant are characteristic of what Klein (1946) originally termed the "paranoid position," though she later changed the term to the "paranoid-schizoid position" in honor of Fairbairn's (1941, 1944, 1946) contributions to the role of primitive experience in schizoid and schizophrenic disorders. The paranoid schizoid position, for Klein, is characterized by splitting, projective identification, idealization, and omnipotence. Klein argues that the young infant possesses a rudimentary ego which "largely lacks cohesion" and "has a tendency towards integration alternating with a tendency towards disintegration, a falling into bits" (Klein, 1946/1994, p. 140). This early ego's primary function, like the later, more fully developed ego, is to manage anxiety. However, in this primitive mode of experience, Klein imagines the infant as suffering severe destructive impulses which are directed at the breast, as mentioned earlier, which fragments the breast into "bits." This hated breast is split-off from the loved breast, which Klein associated with wholeness (Klein, 1946, p. 142). In this sense, Klein's notion of "splitting" is largely understood as a spatial phenomenon, in which the breast is spatially fragmented. However, she later acknowledged that this phenomenon may also involve breaks in temporal continuity (Klein, 1946, p. 142, footnote). This defense of "splitting" enables the infant to ward off anxiety by experiencing the loving breast as wholly other than the hated, persecutory breast. Further, Klein argues that such a split in the external object is impossible without a subsequent split in the infant's ego, which also becomes defensively severed into "good" and "bad" aspects. While the "bad" breasts give rise to persecutory fear, the "good" breasts are idealized and introjected to protect the infant from persecution.

Eventually, says Klein, the infant's oral-sadistic attacks on the mother's breast become generalized to other part-objects of the mother's body, before the mother comes to be perceived as a whole person. Further, these attacks take on both an oral and anal/urethral character. The oral impulse attacks the mother in phantasies of sucking dry, biting up, scooping out, and robbing the mother's body of its good content, while the anal and urethral impulses aim to expel "dangerous substances (excrements) out of the self and into the mother." (Klein, 1946/1994, p. 144) It is from out of this conception of anal and urethral impulses that Klein first developed the concept of "projective identification":

Together with these harmful excrements, expelled in hatred, split-off parts of the ego
are also projected on to the mother or, as I would rather call it, into the mother.
These excrements and bad parts of the self are meant not only to injure but also to
control and to take possession of the object. Insofar as the mother comes to contain
the bad parts of the self, she is not felt to be a separate individual but is felt to be
the bad self. (Klein, 1946/1994, p. 144)

In a footnote, Klein (1946/1994) apologizes for her use of the words "into the mother" by arguing that it is "the only way of conveying the unconscious process (she) is trying to describe." The infant, she says, "has not yet begun to think in words," yet she endeavors nonetheless to describe what is essentially the unspeakable. (p. 144) This is one of many instances in which one can find Klein struggling to grasp the phenomenon before her, but yet cannot since she is trapped within metaphysical assumptions which handicap her ability to give it appropriate language. In this same paper, Klein will go on to argue that "it is in phantasy that the infant splits the object and the self, but the effect is a very real one..." (p. 142) In the end, Klein opts for accounting for these descriptions of primitive experience by given them the character of "phantasy," which exists purely in the mind of the infant and has no effect on the mother herself. Here, of course, Klein implies that the infant has some experience of a real, whole breast (which she would likely call the "good" breast/self) separate from the fragmented, "bad" breast/self, yet this contradicts her theory of the movement into the depressive position, as we shall see. It is this very quandary, as we will soon explore, that continues to give rise to intense debate among object relations theorists -- and which, we hope to show, phenomenology can be particularly helpful in articulating how such a phenomenon is possible.

Of the movement into the depressive position, Klein (1946/1994) writes:

With the introjection of the complete object in about the second quarter of the first
year marked steps in integration are made. This implies important changes in the
relation to objects. The loved and hated aspects of the mother are no longer felt to be
so widely separated, and the result is an increased fear of loss, states akin to
mourning and a feeling of guilt, because the aggressive impulses are felt to be
directed against the loved object. (Klein, 1946/1994, p. 149)

Here is one of Klein's most beautifully descriptive and powerful concepts, clearly one of her greatest contributions to psychoanalytic research. Within the first year of life, the infant comes to see her/his mother as a whole object, and, with this perceptual ability, s/he comes to the horrifying recognition that the "good" and "bad" breast co-exist with the whole mother. The infant is grief-stricken by the recognition that, all along, s/he had been attacking the "good" breast along with the "bad" breast.

Ironically, it is with melancholy that the child is given psychological birth. As the child integrates the whole mother, s/he simultaneously "introjects" this whole in order to become a more wholly, synthesized self. And, like Oedipus with his terrible recognition of bedding his mother and murdering his father, the infant suffers extreme feelings of grief, guilt and fear of loss, and, as a result, seeks to make reparation for her/his damages to what once was the idealized, good breast. In exchange for this bitter realization, the infant's "anxieties lose in strength; objects become both less idealized and less terrifying, and the ego becomes more unified. All this is interconnected with the growing perception of reality and adaptation to it." (Klein, 1946/1994, p. 150) And the reference to Oedipus is no accident, for the implication is that the depressive position is what makes the Oedipal complex possible. With the emergence of a dyadic relationship between self and mother as whole objects, it only then becomes possible for the Oedipal triad -- of infant, mother, and father -- to give rise to the Oedipal conflict in the genital stage. Thus, as theorists such as Britton (1992) and Caper (1997) have emphasized, the Oedipal situation depends on the infant's emergence into the depressive position.

With her theory of the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions, Klein offers a creative, innovative, and compelling understanding of the psychological birth of the infant, which is based on sound clinical observations and given life by her valiant efforts to speak the unspeakable, thus giving language to preverbal experience. Like Freud before her, Klein's innovations have opened a path to exploring what, before her, had remained unexplored and seemingly unreachable by any stretch of the imagination. She bears with her a penchant for the phenomenological, a talent for describing the experience of the infant on her/his own terms. Yet, as we've seen, she remains held down by naive ontological assumptions which do not allow her to do justice to the phenomenon before her, despite all her efforts. It can be our gift to her to help her give language to what she could not, and, in this sense, a phenomenological critique of her work is in the spirit of honoring her legacy rather than merely criticizing it, which would simply damage her "good" breast.

Rooted in a natural science paradigm, Klein's subject remains largely solopsistic. The world of the Kleinian subject is a world of projections and introjections in which there is no contact with a genuine other, but, rather, the other becomes a mere vehicle for intrapsychic projections and introjections. Despite laying the foundation for a radical reconceptualization of intersubjectivity in subsequent Object Relations Theory, her subject is strangely cut off from the influence of the other. The source of the infant's relation to the mother in Kleinian theory are primarily the life and death instincts, such that the mother/other herself is left with no substance and with little influence. However, this first constructive criticism of Kleinian theory has largely been addressed by the likes of Bion and Winnicott, who, following in Klein's footsteps, have increasingly demonstrated how the role of the (m)other is fundamental to the psychological development of the child.

Following from this first criticism, Klein's pre-depressive position infant lives primarily in a world of "phantasy," both good and bad, which are eventually integrated with the depressive position with the introjection of the whole (m)other. This notion of psychic "phantasy" gives Klein the license to describe the world of the infant so that she can give language to the strange psychotic processes that seem alien to adult consciousness. While Klein implies that the process of the emerging depressive position is a never ending project, she also gives primacy to the depressive position as the 'real.' It follows that the 'psychotic' fantasies of the infant are 'unreal.' Ogden's (1989, 1992) reconsideration of the paranoid-schizoid and depressive position, however, suggests that these psychological poles of experience are dialectically related, and, thus, does not give primacy to either position as having access to the 'real.' Taking up Ogden's perspective from a phenomenological perspective, it will become possible to understand how the so-called 'primitive' experience of the infant is, in many ways, just as 'real' as the experience of whole-objects with the onset of the depressive position.

It can be demonstrated that Klein's struggle with a way to understand the experience of the infant is partly due to her 20th century, Western conception of the self as an 'encapsulated' individual. While already implying that the construction of the infant's self is dependent on the (m)other's presence, she relies on the life and death instincts to provide the impetus for this movement out into the world. Yet, from an existential-phenomenological perspective, we can understand the human being, including the infant, as always already being-in-the-world with others and alongside things (Heidegger, 1926, 1962; Boss, 1979). As always already being-in-the-world, the infant is already a "being there" (Dasein), and, thus, does not have to break through to the world from an encapsulated, solopsistic self. And, further, as always already being-with, the human being is a social being from the very beginning. It is in this respect, in particular, that phenomenology and object relations theory can both inform one another in powerfully constructive ways, as we will explore.

A phenomenological perspective can be especially informative regarding an understanding of psychological defenses such as projective identification and splitting. Klein, as we've seen, can see no other way to talk about projective identification, for example, other than as a putting of one's emotions and/or thoughts into the (m)other. Klein's naive ontological assumptions here include a misrepresentation of emotions and thoughts as 'things' which can be 'put into' another person. This naive meta-psychology depends on the notion of a self-contained, 'encapsulated' individual who, in turn, can take 'thoughts' and 'emotions' which are 'in' her/him and place them 'into' the (m)other who is 'over there' as a similar self-contained, encapsulated individual. When Klein's theory is examined from a phenomenological perspective, it can be seen that these types of theoretical acrobatics are unnecessarily confusing and do an injustice to the lived experience she is describing. Yet, phenomenology can also gain from Klein's theory (and those who have followed in her footsteps) by utilizing her brilliant observations of infant experience in order to further phenomenology's understanding of the psychogenesis of the self. Before elaborating on how phenomenology can inform Klein's theory, however, it is necessary to further explore recent developments in Object Relations Theory, especially the contributions of Bion and Ogden.

Bion's contribution toward an understanding of projective identification

One of Bion's greatest contributions to Object Relations Theory is his extension of Klein's concept of projective identification, by which he describes the (m)other as a potential 'container' for the anxiety-aroused projections of the infant. Bion's (1952, 1962a, 1963) conception of projective identification and 'containment' have profoundly impacted the method of psychoanalytic practice, particularly since he implies that the therapist is in the role of the (m)other who must 'contain' the 'primitive' anxieties of the patient. With this interpersonal move, Bion manages to give the (m)other a genuine presence which appears to be lacking in Klein's original theory.

Hinshelwood (1991) has laid out the many possible motivations for the infant's use of projective identification as a defense, which include 1) "evacuation of intolerable experiences"; 2) "disposal of unwanted, intolerable functions of the mind, especially those presenting reality"; 3) "a defence against separation from an object -- or against acknowledging a difference from it -- so that the object is invaded and occupied instead"; 4) "retaining the experience of omnipotence through sustaining the control over others' minds"; 5) "the projection of good parts of the self into an object where they may be kept safer," and 6) " a form of projective identification as communication which gives the experience of being 'contained.'" (p. 120)

It is the fifth possible motivation which can be exclusively attributed to Bion. Projective identification can become a form of communication to the (m)other that the infant is experiencing the intense anxiety over the possibility annihilation, and, thus, it is in the mother's capacity, in a sense, to respond or not to respond to this communication which can shape the infant's experience of her/his world. Like with Klein's theory of a continuous feedback loop of projection and introjection between mother and infant, Bion's infant-subject is shaped by the intersubjective play of emotion between self and other. However, in Bion's conception, the mother is not simply a 'phantom' of the infant's projections, but rather a genuine mother who holds the possibility of making the infant's anxiety more tolerable. If the mother has secure ego boundaries, she will be able to 'contain' the emotions which the infant gives to her, and, consequently, she can give these emotions back to the infant in a more tolerable form. The mother's ability to make the infant's feelings tolerable by 'containment' leads the infant to the experience of "reverie" (Bion, 1962a). However, the failure of the (m)other to properly 'contain' the intolerable feelings of the infant leads to "a destruction of the link between infant and breast" (Bion, 1959, p. 314). The infant, unable to build a 'containor' of her/himself through the introjection of the mother's containing function, is terrorized by a "nameless dread," a formless, nameless anxiety which lacks the symbolic shape otherwise provided by the (m)other. (Bion, 1962b) For Bion (1959), the destruction of this vital link between the infant and breast leads "to a severe disorder of the impulse to be curious on which all learning depends." (p. 314)

Bion's conception of the mother's function as 'container' is a move toward breaking with the metaphysical assumption of a self-contained, 'encapsulated' individual, such as in Klein's theory. Neither the infant/projector nor the (m)other/recipient is a discrete individual. (Ogden, 1992) Both the infant and mother are intersubjectively constituted in relation to one another. Nevertheless, Bion's word choice of 'containor' as a metaphor of this experience can be taken up from a perspective in which the (m)other is understood as self-contained. This is evident, for example, in subsequent theory in object relations which continues to view patient and therapist as separate individuals, such that emotions and thoughts must bridge the intersubjective gap between self and other in order for projective identification to take place (e.g., Caper, 1997; Finell, 1986; Whipple, 1986).

The implication of Bion's theory for therapy is that the therapist can serve as a 'containor' for the anxiety of the patient. For Bion, projective identification involves the patient's unconscious pressure on the therapist to take up a role in the client's 'phantasy.' "The analyst feels he is being manipulated," writes Bion (1952, p. 149), "so as to be playing a part, no matter how difficult to recognize, in somebody else's phantasy." By the therapist's 'containing' and tolerating of this uncomfortable experience without acting out, Bion's theory implies that the genuine 'subjectivity' of the client can emerge from the dialectic of self and other -- or, as Ogden (1992, p. 619) writes, "the subject of psychoanalysis takes shape in the interpretive space between analyst and analysand." It is this radical reconceptualization of intersubjectivity in Bion's work -- and its impact on the conception of the therapeutic relationship, especially on the use of the transference -- which has given rise to many controversies surrounding, as well as innovative attempts to rectify, theoretical inconsistencies in the conception of projective identification.

Further research into the phenomenon of projective identification

Finell (1986) writes:

The concept [of projective identification] describes the mysterious interplay of
two psyches around projection and introjection, merger, and telepathy, and
has quasimagical overtones. It describes an enactment in which split-off self and
object parts and related affects are induced in the other. It operates as both a defense
and a type of communication. (p. 104)

Finell's description of the phenomenon of projective identification paints a picture which is not likely to convince skeptics of the merits of Object Relations Theory. Beginning with the assumption of a human being whose 'subjectivity' ends at the skin -- that is, a representation of the psyche which is contained 'in' the person against an 'objective' world which is mere extension in space -- leads to quite an epistemological mess. The only way Finell is able to grasp the concept of projective identification is to explain it away as a telepathic, "quasimagical" phenomenon. Though Finell sees the benefits of the concept of projective identification for clinical practice, she can find no concrete explanation for its occurrence. This leaves her position open for criticism by, for example, Whipple (1986) who correctly states that:

Projective identification is a metaphor. Psychic contents are abstractions and
cannot literally be put into someone else. We are also not literally 'containors' for
this evacuated product....[N]one of the writers on projective identification
satisfactorily explain how psychic contents are put into another person" (p. 123).

Thus, Whipple can claim that the concept of projective identification is merely a rationalization on the part of the analyst to "avoid the real issue of counter-transference" (p. 121). From our position, Whipple fails to grasp that Finell and other theorists are not to be criticized for failing to effectively use the concept of projective identification in therapy for the benefit of the client. Rather, their inability to explain how projective identification is possible is due to faulty metaphysical assumptions.

What is at stake? At stake is the contribution of Object Relations Theory, since Bion, that it is possible for the therapist to use projective identification and other transferential phenomena as a means to empathize and understand the client, as well as to assist the client in developing a more fully differentiated self. If those such as Whipple succeed in damaging the credibility of Object Relations Theory by claiming that they resort to theories which cannot be accounted for from a natural science perspective, this makes it all the more difficult to argue for the therapist's use of her/his own feelings as a vital part of the therapeutic process.

According to Spillius (1992), there are at least three, general clinical 'models' of projective identification: 1) Klein's conception, which is exclusively based on the patient's use of projective identification as wish-fulfillment, 2) Bion's formulation, according to the concept of 'containment,' and 3) Joseph's more recent usage, "in which the analyst will constantly bring pressure to bear on the analyst, sometimes very subtly, sometimes with great force, to get the analyst to act out in a manner consistent with the patient's projection" (p. 63). This latter concept -- that the patient's projective identifications provoke the therapist to act out a particular role according to the client's object-relations -- has been widely discussed in the literature (e.g., Rosenfeld, 1971; Segal, 1973; Sandler, 1976a, 1976b, 1987b; Sandler & Sandler, 1978; Joseph, 1989; Spillius (ed.) 1988, 1992). The implication is that the therapist can use her/his own feelings as a source of information in order to understand the patient's dynamics (Spillius, 1992).

The idea that the therapist can be drawn into a role in relation to the client was anticipated by Deutsch's (1926) and Racker's (1957) concept of "complementary identification." That is, the therapist unconsciously takes on a role which is complementary to the client's conscious, thus feeling and/or enacting the client's unconscious. Incidently, van den Berg (1971) addresses a similar phenomena when he argues that "the therapist and the unconscious of the patient are one and the same thing. The therapist is the patient's unconscious" (p. 339). However, van den Berg, from his existential-phenomenological perspective, views the patient's unconscious as the therapist's awareness of the patient's possibilities which are not yet realized. However, "complementary identification" implies that the therapist is, at least at first, unaware that s/he has been provoked by the patient to play a role in her/his own personal drama. As Sandler and Sandler (1976, 1978) describe, such "role actualizations" in the therapist can be used as a defense by the client against remembering and for repeating early relationships and fantasies (Finell, 1986, p. 105).

In general, the literature in support of projective identification tends to agree that, in one way or another, the therapist takes on an unconscious role in relation to the client. The most successful way for the analyst to deal with this situation, however, is less clear and still heatedly debated. The failure to contain such countertransference has been termed "projective counteridentification" (Grinberg, 1962; Grotsein, 1981; Malin & Grotstein, 1966). Object relations theorists have not yet reached an agreement as to whether such a phenomenon as "projective counteridentification" can ever be truly distinguished from projective identification (e.g., Finell, 1986). A similar controversy revolves around whether projection and projective identification are the same or different processes (e.g., Grotstein, 1981; Malin & Grotstein, 1966; Meissner, 1980; Ogden, 1979, 1982; Finell, 1986). Further, these theorists tend to agree that, as Finell (1986) states, there is a potential danger with the concept of projective identification of taking on an "omnipotent quality...if the analyst is portrayed in one-to-one correspondence with patient feelings" (p. 105). It is generally agreed that the therapist must be highly self-reflective in order to assure that s/he does not unwittingly act out in the therapy, either failing to contain the projective identification or in using projective identification as a defense against coming to terms with how her/his own countertransferential dynamics are being triggered by the patient. And, finally, some clinicians argue that it is preferable to hold back from interpreting projective identification (e.g., Caper, 1997), whereas others go so far to insist that the therapist's acting out, when followed by an interpretation, is the best approach to handling projective identification (e.g., Maroda, 1995). For example, Maroda (1995) argues that it is only when the patient witnesses his/her own split-off feelings in the analyst that s/he truly feels understood. (For in depth literature reviews tracking these controversies, see Feldman, 1997; Finell, 1986; Gabbard, 1995; and Hamilton, 1990).

It is unlikely that a phenomenological approach, at first, will assist in fully answering any of these important clinical questions related to projective identification. However, it seems that a phenomenological investigation of the basic, ontological assumptions of object relations theory can at least provide clarification regarding these issues. This is especially the case when these controversies revolve around the possibility of therapist neutrality, and when distinguishing processes such as projection, projective identification, and projective counteridentification. The phenomenological interpretation of the paranoid-schizoid and depressive position, as well as their complementary defenses, will comprise the rest of this investigation. However, before embarking on this path, a brief exploration of Ogden's conception of the Kleinian psychological positions will greatly assist further exploration into a phenomenological conception of the psychogenesis of the self -- and, consequently, prepare for an opening into a more ontologically sophisticated ground upon which to return to an examination of projective identification in the countertransference.

Ogden's contribution toward a dialectical understanding of a Klein's psychological positions

Ogden (1992) writes that Klein's three most important theoretical contributions:

to the development of an analytic formulation of subjectivity are (1) the
dialectical conception of psychic structure and psychological development underlying
her concept of 'positions', (2) the dialectical decentering of the subject in psychic
space, and (3) the notion of the dialectic of intersubjectivity that is implicit in the
concept of projective identification. (p. 613)

According to Ogden, Klein's use of the term 'position' to describe the paranoid-schizoid and depressive experiences suggests that these 'positions' are not merely development stages which occur in the infant's first year of life. Rather, even in non-psychotic adults, there is a constant dialectical tension between these two experiential poles. Thus, one must not make the mistake of assuming that the infant leaves behind the primitive, psychotic level of experience of the first few months of life. For Ogden, each pole "creates, negates and preserves the other" (Ogden, 1992, p. 613). With this dialectical conception of these psychological positions, Ogden takes up each pole as two extreme organizations of experience which can be plotted along a continuum.

Following Klein, Ogden (1992) characterizes the paranoid-schizoid position as:

...ahistorical, relatively devoid of the experience of an interpreting subject
mediating between the sense of I-ness and one's lived sensory experience,
part-object related, and heavily reliant on splitting, idealization, denial,
projective identification and omnipotent thinking as modes of defence and
ways of organizing experience. This paranoid-schizoid mode contributes to
the sense of immediacy and intensity of experience. (p. 614)

In compliance with Freud's (1911, 1915) conception of the timelessness of the unconscious, the primitive layer of experience of the paranoid-schizoid position is lived as temporally discontinuous. Such a temporal discontinuity makes possible the experience of a fragmented world without continuity, where the same breast, for example, can be experienced as two separate objects, "good" and "bad." Since the world of the schizoid-position is temporally fragmented, it follows that others and things are also experienced as fragmented part-objects, and, further, this creates a collapse between a self and other, such that they two are no longer differentiated. Since things and others are not experienced as continuous, autonomous beings, they are, instead, organized according to the quality of experience -- that is, according to the feeling states associated with these phenomena (e.g., "good" or "bad"). The world of the paranoid-schizoid is therefore "split" according to feeling states such that others and things become extensions of one's self and, vice versa, the feeling-states of others are taken as one's own. There is a decided lack of ego-boundaries or "I"-ness.

While Ogden (1992), like Klein, does not provide a solution to the puzzle of exactly how the depressive position emerges developmentally, he quite emphatically argues that the emergence of the depressive position is a project which is never fully completed, nor should it be completed. In contrast to the paranoid-schizoid pole, Ogden (1992) describes the depressive pole of experience as:

characterized by (1) an experience of interpreting 'I-ness' mediating between oneself
and one's lived sensory experiences, (2) the presence of an historically rooted sense
of self that is consistent over time and over shifts in affective states, (3) relatedness
to other people who are experienced as whole and separate objects with an internal
life similar to one's own; moreover, one is able to feel concern for the Other, guilt,
and the wish to make non-magical reparation for the real and imagined damage that
one has done to others, and (4) forms of defense (e.g., repression and mature
identification) that allow the individual to sustain psychological strain over time...
In sum, the depressive mode generates a quality of experience endowed with a
richness of layered symbolic meanings. (p. 614)

With the depressive pole, the "split" of the paranoid-schizoid pole is mended, and the fragmented self and other are mended into whole objects. This is made possible through the emergence of temporal continuity, which provides for the spatial continuity of a self and other which are no longer organized along feeling-states. Instead, both "good" and "bad" feeling-states regarding self and other are ambivalently held together by a bounded "ego" or 'I-ness.' Thus, others are no longer experienced simply as "loved, hated, or feared forces or things that impinge on oneself," but, rather, separate beings for which one can have concern -- which, in turn, creates the possibility for empathy (Ogden, 1989, p. 23). All of this is made possible, Ogden already implies, by the symbolic function, which, in children, gives rise to the possibility of the child's use of the word "I " and engagement in imaginative play (see, e.g., Goodson, 1998).

Ogden (1992) argues that the paranoid-schizoid and depressive position are always in a dialectical relationship, and, thus, not merely developmental phases. Yet, he also recognizes that "it would be absurd to adopt an exclusively synchronic perspective that fails to recognize the progression of states of maturity that take place in the course of the life of the individual" (p. 614). On the other hand, when exploring these poles of experience in terms of their emergence in development, one always runs the risk of ignoring the primitive layer of experience of all experience, "including those forms of experience considered to be the most mature and fully evolved" (p. 614). Ogden wishes to preserve the notion that the depressive position is, in fact, needful of the paranoid-schizoid position. Influenced by Bion (1959, 1967), Ogden (1992) realizes that, without the "de-integrative pressure of the paranoid-schizoid pole," the depressive pole of experience "would reach closure, stagnation and 'arrogance'." Thus, the continuous tension between the de-integrative tendencies of the paranoid-schizoid pole and the integrative tendencies of the depressive pole allow for the creative emergence of new psychological possibilities without total fragmentation, on the one hand, or severe psychological rigidity, on the other. (p. 616)

Ogden's conception of these dialectical poles of experience is interesting in light of Roland's (1981) observations that therapists with an artistic orientation tend to be much more comfortable working with patients who are involved with very primitive and regressed modes of experience. This implies that more creative therapists tend to feel more comfortable with the ebb and flow of merging and fusing while maintaining ego control, which allows them to work with deeply regressed experiences of projective identification. On the other hand, analysts with more rigid ego boundaries, such as an obsessive-compulsive characters, might find these experiences to be too disturbing. Observations such as this support Ogden's (1989) argument that traditional Object Relations Theory has too often "villainized" the paranoid-schizoid position. Even diagnostically, it is not the presence of paranoid-schizoid defenses which indicate psychosis, but rather the absence of higher-level defenses, such as repression and intellectualization (McWilliams, 1994).

Ogden's conception of the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions is both theoretically and ontologically sophisticated, and, most importantly, he brings to the foreground Klein's contribution, particularly with her description of projective identification, to a radical reconceptualization of intersubjectivity. In Ogden's hands, Klein's subject is no longer an 'encapsulated,' solopsistic individual, but, instead, is dialectically constituted in the 'between' of self and other. With Ogden's sophisticated theoretical sensibilities, the road is well-paved for a generous and mutually-beneficial dialogue between Object Relations Theory and phenomenology.

Phenomenological contributions toward understanding the psychogenesis of the self

While Ogden (1992) cautions against over-valuing a developmental orientation toward understanding the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions, we believe a phenomenological approach to human development, which attempts to understand the world of the infant on her/his own terms, is essential for understanding the phenomenology of these two poles of experience. Moreover, we feel that phenomenological investigation into the psychogenesis of the self actually supports Ogden's claims. Drawing on the phenomenological research of, for example, Merleau-Ponty (1964), Dillon (1978), and Simms (1993, 1994, 1998), it can be argued that what has been termed the paranoid-schizoid position is synonymous with the "synergetic sociability" of the infant prior to the emergence of the "specular I" with the symbolic function (i.e., the emergence into language). In other words, the paranoid-schizoid position can be understood as belonging to the lived perspective of the child -- the bed rock of all adult experience -- which "grasps and represents the meaning of a situation rather than the content" (Simms, 1993, p. 35). This research can give Ogden's sophisticated conception of Klein's psychological positions a clarity which, with all its precision, it still lacks.

Traditionally, the 'mind' of the child has been understood primarily as being a lack of adult consciousness. With Klein's conception of the emergence of the depressive position, she already implies that the child of the paranoid-schizoid position is a lack which requires differentiation from self and other in order to achieve the capacity for empathy with the experience of whole-objects. Yet, as Simms (1993) points out, Merleau-Ponty (1964) would agree "that perceived unity (the felt and seen breast) precedes intellectual constancy in the development of the child's consciousness" (p. 34). This radical perspective is made possible by Merleau-Ponty's (1964) conception of the psyche as a "consciousness" which is "turned primarily toward the world, turned toward things; it is above all a relation to the world" (p. 116-117). As Simms (1993) explains:

He [Merleau-Ponty] implies that the child's perception of the world is primarily
an experience of meaning, rather than a perception of dissolute stimuli, and that
the perception of form (Gestalt) and significance precedes the perception of content.
The shift in perspective which Merleau-Ponty introduces is a radical challenge to
our habitual way of conceptualizing the self as intra-psychic and subjective. He opens
up the possibility for a self that is rooted in the interpersonal and social experience of
the infant. (p. 35)

Merleau-Ponty's conception of the world of the child anticipates Ogden's reconceptualization of the Kleinian subject as predominately intersubjective and, thus, always already being-with. Like Ogden's subject, Merleau-Ponty's understanding of the infant-self is understood as dialectically constituted between "a flowing exchange of meaningful gestures and situations" between a self-pole and other-pole (Simms, 1993, p. 37). And, further, like Ogden's description of the pre-symbolic paranoid-schizoid position, Merleau-Ponty's infant-subject is a precommunicative subject which is primarily a 'communal self.' As Merleau-Ponty writes (1964):

Thus the development has somewhat the following character: there is a first phase,
which we call precommunication, in which there is not one individual against another
but rather an anonymous collectivity, an undifferentiated group life (vie a plusiers).
Next, on the basis of this initial community, both by the objectification of one's own
body and the constitution of the other in his difference, there occurs a segregation,
a distinction of individuals -- a process which, moreoever, as we shall see, is
never completely finished (p. 119)

If these two phases seem curiously familiar, it is due to the remarkable similarity between Merleau-Ponty's description of the developmental phases of the child and Klein's description of the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions. Yet, while Klein gives preference to the depressive position as a developmental milestone, Merleau-Ponty also "sees the emergence of the symbolic capacity of the self...as a rift that alienated the lived experience from the symbolic experience" (Simms, 1993, p. 39). This implies that Ogden's description of the dialectic between the paranoid-schizoid and depressive poles is, in actuality, the dialectic between lived and symbolic experience.

Merleau-Ponty (1964) draws many of his insights from Guillaume, Wallon, and Lacan. From Guillaume, he draws the idea that, in the first phase of life, the child's me is 'virtual or latent.' Therefore, the term "egocentrism," which characterizes the child's apparent self-preoccupation in this phase, is misleading. The child's apparent preoccupation with her/himself does not stem from an 'encapsulated ego,' but, rather, from the child's undifferentiation from the other. From this notion, Merleau-Ponty introduces Wallon's concept of "synergetic sociability." He shows how the phenomenon of "syncretism," as an indistinction between self and other, better characterizes this first phase of life. Later, Merleau-Ponty demonstrates how Lacan's "mirror phase" marks the period in which, through the emergence of the "specular I," the child begins to draw a distinction between self and other -- which, even into adulthood, is never fully complete.

During the first six months of life, similar to Klein's description, the child's experience of her/his body is "fragmentary." The child's experience of self is a bleeding together of bodily experience and other in the world. For example, if a child cries when her/his caregiver leaves the room, the child is not crying for the loss of an other separate from her/himself. She is crying because she has an "impression of incompleteness" -- that is, a loss of the other as a part of her/his undifferentiated self. At the heart of this "synergetic sociability" is the phenomenon of "transitivism." The child, who experiences her body as fragmented, has no visual awareness of her body. In turn, as Merleau-Ponty (1964) writes, "he cannot separate what he lives from what others live as well as what he sees them living" (p. 135). Thus, Merleau-Ponty has already shown how, in the world of the child, a phenomenon such as projective identification is possible. The child does not put her/his feeling 'into' the (m)other, but, rather, the (m)other already is the self for the child, as Klein already implies.

Between the fourth and sixth months of life, the child gradually begins to develop a more integrated "corporeal schema." For example, s/he begins to explore and attend to parts of her/his body. In turn, her impressions of others becomes more unified. This is the inauguration of the period which Wallon understood as "incontinent sociability." Yet, the (m)other continues to remain a part of a system of 'me-and-other.' The child, as Merleau-Ponty states, "is apt to recognize himself in everything" (p. 150). Merleau-Ponty sees in this the foundation for jealousy, cruelty and sympathy, which will continue into adulthood as a "regression" to this "synergetic sociability." Here, we most clearly see how Merleau-Ponty would understand the persecutory quality of the paranoid-schizoid position in Klein's theory. The child, not yet differentiated enough from the (m)other, lives a "split" world such that the "bad" breast/mother can be separated off from the "good" breast/mother. The "bad" breast is, thus, felt as potentially destructive to the child while the "good" breast is idealized.

Merleau-Ponty, again drawing on Wallon and Lacan's theories, sees the emergence of the "specular I," during the "mirror stage," as the transition of the child from "synergetic sociality" into a more fully differentiated self and other. He points out that the child's experience of a distinction between another person's specular image and body precedes the child's ability to distinguish her body from her own specular image. The other's body in the mirror, explains Merleau-Ponty, is experienced as a 'double or phantom' which has a secondary existence from the other's 'real' body. Yet, the child confronts her/his own image in the mirror with surprise. How is this so? Essentially, the latter is a much more complex process than the former.

The child is able to see both the other and the specular image of the other as two, separate visual experiences. The child's own experience of her/his body, on the other hand, does not include a full visual representation of her whole body, as others would see her/his body, except as the specular image. The child feels her/his body 'here' and sees her/his body in the mirror 'there.' Therefore, the child's task involves the problem of recognizing that the image in the mirror 'there' is not, in fact, the 'here' where s/he feels herself. Moreover, the child must also recognize that the image 'there' is the very same image that others see of her/him when they look at her/him "at the very same place he feels himself to be" (p. 129). Prior to the age of six months, therefore, the child begins with the impression that the image 'there' in the mirror is "a sort of double of the real body" (p. 129).

Between the ages of six months and one year, the child passes through the "mirror stage" in which the child realizes that the image in the mirror is not the "real" body. Interestingly, however, this process is never fully completed and the "phantom" body in the mirror as a "quasi-presence" remains, on some level, throughout adulthood. This speaks to the fact that this process is not a mere "all-or-nothing" cognitive process. Rather, it is a process which "bears not only on our relations of understanding but also our relations of being with the world and with others" (p. 137). It is here where Lacan's conception of the "mirror stage" sheds light on Wallon's theory.

At first, the child identifies with the image of her/himself in the mirror. The image of the specular image creates the opportunity for the child to be a spectator of her/himself. This is the birth of the "specular I" -- which involves an entire personality shift for the child. The child shifts from a lived body or "me," merged syncretically with the environment and others, to a visual 'I.' In psychoanalytic terms, the "me" can be understood as the "ego," "the collection of confusedly felt impulses," whereas the "specular I' brings forth the "super-ego," an ideal representation of oneself. Further, with the birth of the "super-ego"/"specular I," there also emerges "the narcissistic function" (p. 136). The child becomes alienated from her lived body by identifying with the image as an ideal "me above the me" (p. 137). Further, this alienation from one's lived "me" serves as a preparation for the alienation one will subsequently experience from others.

Obviously, this conflicts with Klein's observations that the 'persecutory' breast is the earlier origin of the super-ego. In fact, the emergence of the ideal "me above the me" in Merleau-Ponty's theory coincides much more closely with Freud's origin conception that the 'super-ego' emerges with the genital stage due to the Oedipal complex. Yet, if one takes Merleau-Ponty seriously, there can be no "me above the me" unless there is, of course, a 'me' to be 'above.' While no apparent solution to this problem is thematized by Merleau-Ponty, Dillon's (1978) research, influenced by Merleau-Ponty, may offer a potential solution. Before Dillon's theory can be explored, however, it is necessarily to complete our discussion of Merleau-Ponty's perspective.

The phase in development in which the child becomes alienated both from her lived "me" and others is called by Merleau-Ponty "the crisis at age three." At this age, the period of "incontinent sociality," in which the child experiences a "synergetic" mergence with others, comes to an abrupt end. The child begins to prefer performing activities alone and finds the look of another person to be somewhat aversive. For, it is at this phase that the 'specular image' becomes generalized to others. That is, one now becomes the 'here' which is a spectacle for others. Consequently, the child begins to behave in different ways. S/he feels a sense of ambivalence. S/he both wants attention (even misbehaving in order to get it) and fears the gaze of others. The child also begins to develop a capacity for selfishness. Self and other "cease to be a unity," which brings on the accession for the child to, for example, covet toys as possessions. Further, one begins to hear the child use the pronoun "I" when speaking as opposed to omitting pronouns or saying "me." Of course, this does not entirely bring to end the child's lived "me" with its "synergetic sociability." Throughout adulthood, in limited situations, one continues to experience moments of "syncretism," such as with the experience of love in which one feels immersed in the other.

Merleau-Ponty, in light of Lacan, demonstrates that the "mirror phase," inaugurated by the phenomenon of the "specular image," is no mere cognitive or intellectual process. Rather, it involves "all the individual's relations with others" (p. 138). Merleau-Ponty, therefore, emphasizes "the affective significance of the phenomenon" (p. 137).

With the onset of the "mirror phase" at the "crisis at age three," the child first becomes separated from her lived body and, therefore, from herself as a sentient being. Next, the child becomes alienated through her separating from the other. She becomes an object to be looked at. As a consequence, there arises an "inevitable...conflict between the me as I feel myself and the me as I see myself or as others see me" (p. 137). Through these two forms of alienation, the child is essentially torn from her "immediate reality." Yet, this process, for Merleau-Ponty, is "essential" for childhood. It is part of what makes the human being different from animals.

The human child experiences all this before s/he even has the physiological capacity to live up to the "ideals" which her "specular image" creates. The human child is born into the world as vulnerable and incredibly dependent on others. Yet, this experience of alienation from self and other also forms a "super-ego" by which the child may begin to assimilate into the communicative world of the adult. Therefore, the child, in a sense, experiences a "pre-maturation." S/he is not yet able to assimilate into the communicative adult world, nor live up to the expectations of her/his ideals as a "specular I.' Thus, she experiences an incredible sense of insecurity. The child, almost as if before her time, is "turned away from what he effectively is, in order to orient him toward what he sees and imagines himself to be" (p. 137). The conflict between the "me" which is, the imagined "I", and the gaze of the other creates the possibility for aggression toward others. For, out of frustration, the child may lash out at those who appear to "confiscate" her/him through their gaze. The child lives "beyond his means," aware of what s/he can be as an adult, yet unable to live this out. The other's gaze, in a sense, can seem to mock the child's sensitivity to this dilemma. Yet, at the same time, it is the child's ability to "live beyond his means" which creates the vision of what s/he will one day be as an adult. In her triumphs, through the effort to attain this ideal, she will experience jubilation. In her defeats, she will suffer. Like Klein's description of the infant's emergence into the depressive position, the child's psychological birth into selfhood is tragically bittersweet.

Merleau-Ponty's conception of the psychogenesis of the self also implies a radical reconception of bodihood. Nietzsche's (1954) writes:

"I," you say, and are proud of the word. But greater is that in
which you do not wish to have faith - your body and its great reason:
that does not say "I," but does "I."
What the sense feels, what the spirit knows, never has its end in
itself. But sense and spirit would persuade you that they are the end
of all things: that is how vain they are. Instruments and toys are sense
and spirit: behind them still lies the self. The self also seeks with eyes
of the senses; it also listens with the ears of the spirit. Always the self
listens and seeks: it compares, overpowers, conquers, destroys. It
controls, and it is in control of the ego too.

Behind your thoughts and feelings, my brother, there stands a mighty
ruler, an unknown sage - whose name is self. In your body he dwells;
he is your body. (p. 34).

So, thus spoke Zarathustra. If we were to translate Nietzsche's words "body" to "lived body," which would be entirely appropriate, I think we could say that this quotation truly speaks to Merleau-Ponty's conception of the body. Cognitively, the child is unable to achieve conservation, yet the body knows! How could this be?

Certainly, one needs to be careful here. The "body" which knows is not the anatomical body which ends with the epidermis. It is the lived body, the "me" which becomes alienated from the "I" and others with the "mirror stage." This is the body which feels the 'here,' yet also lives 'there.' It is the sentient self which merges with the world. At this level, there is no separation between self, other, and world. This is the undifferentiated self we were as "pre-communicative" infants. This is the self which emerges from the world and merges with the world because it is the world. Nietzsche knew about this "self" long before Merleau-Ponty. This is the body that knows. It is the "great reason which does not say 'I,' but does 'I'!"

So, what is the relationship between body and language? From Merleau-Ponty's article, it is clear that the alienation from self and other occur in preparation for the child's entry into the communicative world of the adult; that is, into language. In order for the child to communicate verbally with the other, the other must become separate. In order for the child to view the other as separate, s/he must first identify with the "specular I." As Lacan writes: The specular image is the "symbolic matrix..where the I springs up in primordial form before objectifying itself in the dialectic of identification with the other" (cited in Merleau-Ponty, p. 137). It is from out of this "symbolic matrix" that language springs forth for the child. Therefore, language belongs, not to the lived body of the "existential self," but, instead, belongs to the "categorical self" which is the observed self.

This strongly implies that the depressive position most fully emerges when the child enters the "symbolic matrix' of language. As Ogden (1992) explains, in the paranoid-schizoid mode, "there is virtually no space between symbol and symbolized; the two are emotionally equivalent." There is no mediating subject, no 'specular I,' no "categorical self." Returning to Klein, when the infant 'introjects' the 'whole (m)other," s/he is not 'introjecting' the 'real' (m)other, but, rather, a symbolic (m)other. Further, the infant's 'whole' self, from Merleau-Ponty's perspective, is not the 'real' self, but, rather, a "categorical" or 'specular I' or self which covers over the 'existential self' of the lived body. The child gains historicity and a relatedness to the other at the expense of the 'wisdom' of the communal, lived body, which remain the well-spring from which the 'specular I' may arise.

Stern (1985) writes: "the advent of language is a very mixed blessing for the child...The infant gains entrance into a wider cultural membership, but at the risk of losing the force and wholeness of original experience" (p. 177). With language, the child learns the meaning of existence from her cultural-historical world. Yet, the child pays a great cost in losing a large portion of the wisdom of the "lived body" -- the "great reason" which Nietzsche pays homage to. The child identifies with the "specular I" and begins to forget the wisdom of the body, and, instead, takes up the world of the "cogito" with which she understands herself as everybody does. Those experiences which are unspeakable, that language cannot speak for, become lost or 'unconscious' to the child. Yet, the body continues to 'know.' It "does," even while the "cogito" thinks it is the "might ruler" like the emperor with no clothes.

With the emergence of language, the child develops many abilities. The child enters a symbolic world in which she can imagine, fantasize, remember, and develop expectations for the future on a cognitive level. Further, these experiences can be reported to her/himself or to others. Yet, the cost of acquiring these abilities is that the child loses access to the experiential knowledge she had acquired about the world, others and her body before the advent of language. Drawing on Klein, we can also say that the child gains a capacity for empathy and concern for the (m)other. With the emergence into the depressive position, the child 'mourns' for the damage done to the "good" breast. Yet, is this all the child 'mourns'? Merleau-Ponty's conception of the child suggests the child also mourns the loss of the lived body.

People often assume that language has a direct correlation to 'reality.' Yet, language's great benefit, as well as cost, is that it permits one to "transcend lived experience and be generative" (Stern, p. 169). The meaning of words does not have a direct correlation to things in the world, but, instead, arises from "interpersonal negotiations involving what can be agreed upon as shared" (Stern, p. 170). That is, the meanings of words do not merely belong to the person her/himself or simply to the culture in which s/he lives. Instead, meaning emerges from the dialogue between self and other in which words develop "mutually negotiated we meanings" (Stern, p. 170). Therefore, as the child reaches the phase in which she develops the capacity to speak, this also marks the period in which important others will direct the child toward a social order and, in turn, push her away from the spontaneous, although unorganized, order of the "pre-communicative" phase.

As the child continues to grow into the mutually negotiated "we meanings" of her language world, a rift develops between these "we meanings" and the direct, lived experience of the "pre-communicative" phase of infancy. In some cases, the language will match lived experiences wonderfully. In other cases, the global experience will be poorly represented by the language, and, as a result, the experience will become "misnamed and poorly understood" (Stern, p. 175). Finally, there will be those lived experiences which are "unspeakable." Language will not have access to these experiences, and, in turn, these experiences, as unnamed, will continue to exist 'unconsciously.' Recalling Bion, we can understand that the "nameless dread" is all the more terrifying for being un-named, and, thus, not 'contained' by the symbolic order.

The problem of the super-ego and Dillon's "Merleau-Ponty and the Psychogenesis of the Self"

Dillon's (1978) critique of Merleau-Ponty's conception of the psychogenesis of the self can shed light on the apparent conflict between Klein's position that the emergence of the 'super-ego' occurs within the first year of life and Merleau-Ponty's argument that it emerges with the 'specular I.'

Dillon argues that the "mirror phase" is concurrent, not prior "to recognition of oneself in the look of the other" (p. 90). One problem with the dependence on the "mirror phase" for the emergence of a differentiated other is that it relies too heavily on the visual sense, whereas the 'whole' body involves all the senses. More consistent with Kleinian theory, Dillon instead argues that the differentiation of self and other is more primordially dependent on "traumata, or disturbances of an affective kind" (p. 91). Dillon (1978) writes:

Synergetic sociability breaks down -- not because the infant has developed a capacity
for visual recognition -- but because a significant other, by some set of behavioral
cues (e.g., punishment, failure to respond approvingly to the creation of feces,
etc.), forces the infant to recognize an alien perspective as such" (p. 91)

Dillon's argument becomes a way to reconcile Kleinian theory with Merleau-Ponty's conception of the psychogenesis of the self when Britton's (1992) argument is taken into consideration. For Britton, the depressive position does not precede the Oedipal situation, but rather, they are co-constituted. The Oedipal complex is resolved, according to Britton, "by working through the depressive position and the depressive position by working though the Oedipal complex" (p. 35). The existence of the 'super-ego' predisposes that the infant must be able to experience 'guilt.' While the Kleinian infant-self is "persecuted" by the "breast" 'into' which s/he has projected his death instinct, this cannot be properly called a 'super-ego' until the child enters the depressive position with the recognition that the attacked, persecutory breast is also the "good" breast. As Britton has argued, the capacity for 'guilt' emerges with the depressive position, which is dependent on the Oedipal drama in order to become possible.

Influenced by Britton's perspective, Caper (1997) views the depressive position and Oedipal complex as dialectically co-constituted. More specifically, Caper defines the "depressive awareness" of the depressive position as "the awareness that an object is separate from oneself," and, further, he defines the Oedipal situation as "the awareness that the object has relationships with other objects in which one does not partake" (p. 265). As far as we are concerned, Caper's perspective is essentially equivalent to Dillon's argument that synergetic sociability collapses with the recognition that the (m)other has an "alien perspective." With the recognition that the (m)other has concerns of her own, the child must inevitably be exiled from the garden of Eden, her/his idealized perspective of the (m)other's "good" breast. This concern may, in fact, be the father or it could be other concerns outside the dyadic relationship of the mother and infant. As Severns (1998) writes, "A psychologically healthy woman always has interests of her own that call her away from her child, thus allowing the child to separate" (p. 123).

From Klein's brilliant observations, we can understand that the Oedipal situation pre-dates the genital stage. Taking the work of Dillon, Britton, and Caper into consideration, we can understand the Oedipal situation as first emerging with the depressive position with the recognition that the (m)other is her own person with concerns of her own outside of their dyadic relationship. This is not inconsistent with Klein's claim that the super-ego emerges in the first year of life. Instead, we can understand that the Oedipal triad of infant, mother, and father is only possible because of the infant's realization of the mother's separate existence. And, further, it is impossible for the child to come to this realization unless the (m)other has a 'father function' with which to carry her away from the symbiotic union with her child.

As Dillon (1978) suggests, the differentiation from the (m)other with the depressive position and the Oedipal situation gives rise to a thematization of the body as an object of experience. "In other words, his corporeal schema (the body as lived) must become visibly identified with his body image (the body as thematized)" (p. 95). The "mirror phase" as described by Merleau-Ponty does not so much play a part in this process as much as making this process "apparent to the observor" (p. 95). This process of separating the "body-object" and "body-subject" through symbolization makes "reflective transcendence" a possibility. It is this "reflective transcendence" which provides the possibility of imagining an 'ideal' self, and, thus, constitutes the possibility for a 'super-ego' as the ideal "me above the me."

Re-visiting Ogden in light of the phenomenological reflections on the psychogenesis of the self

As we discussed earlier, Ogden (1989) conceives of the depressive position as the emergence of "symbol formation proper," such that "the symbol re-presents the symbolized and is experienced as different from it" (p. 11). In light of our phenomenological reflection on the dialectical co-constitution of the depressive position and Oedipal situation, we can understand Ogden's 'interpreting subject' as emerging with Merleau-Ponty's "categorical self." As Ogden recognizes, the experience of 'I-ness' emerges with the capacity to mediate between symbol and symbolized. And, with the assistance of Dillon, we can now understand this process as occurring with the emergence of a thematic body in relation to a (m)other with concerns of her own. It appears that this very thematization makes possible the entry into the symbolic language of the adult world which, as Merleau-Ponty and Stern have shown, leads to a covering over of lived experience. Finally, Ogden's conception of the never-ending dialectic between the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions can be understood as the continuing tension between the symbolic world of language and the lived experience which it has covered over. As Dillon (1978) writes:

...the crisis of alienation does not constitute a complete eradication of synergetic
sociability...it establishes a tension between alienated isolation and aloneness, on
one side, and group identification and communal solidarity, on the other. Subsequent
to this crisis, the child will dwell within this tension and his experience will
oscillate between the poles of solipsism and being-with for the rest of his life. (p. 94)

Thus, when Ogden defends against the 'villainization' of the paranoid-schizoid position, he can be said to be defending the integrity of the pre-thematic, lived body, without which the symbolic order would not be possible. The lived experience of the "existential self," in a sense, lies beneath and continues to sustain the abstract, symbolic world into which we emerge. Occasionally, in moments of de-integration, we catch glimpses of it, becoming "accessible only under special conditions, such as moments of contemplation, emotional states and certain experiences of works of art that try to evoke the global, preconceptual, lived experience" (Simms, 1993, p. 39).

Further, at least in 20th century, Western culture, we become doubly alienated, for as we enter the symbolic world of our culture, our language creates for us a mistaken belief in a 'self' bounded at the skin, the Cartesian "cogito," within which, too often, we find ourselves rigidly encased, and, thus, cut off from our vital life-source, the lived body. In this light, it is a supreme irony that Western culture celebrates the 'freedom' of the 'individual,' when it is this very conception of the 'encapsulated' individual which most imprisons us. It is, thus, no surprise that Klein, herself a member of this culture, would break the ground for a radical reconceptualize our conception of intersubjectivity while simultaneously mistaking lived experience as 'phantasy' and the symbolic order as the 'real.'

Contributions of Boss' Daseinsanalysis toward a phenomenology of projective identification

Through a phenomenological reflection on the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions in light of the psychogenesis of the self, it becomes possible to re-examine the nature of 'projective identification' with the assistance of Boss'(1979) Daseinsanalysis. Consistent with Merleau-Ponty's conception of the human being as primarily directed toward the world, Boss' phenomenological psychology is influenced by Heidegger's (1926/1962) ontology of the human being as Dasein or "being there." With Boss, it can be shown that the phenomenon of projective identification is only possible because the human being exists in a fundamentally different way than posited by the theoretical and ontological framework of Kleinian psycholanalysis. That is, with Boss, we can address the question: How is it possible for an analyst to be provoked by an analysand in such a way that s/he 'unconsciously' takes on the role of the analysand's split-off self? As we've already discovered, a theory that began by compartmentalizing the psyche into discrete parts cannot fully speak to the possibility of what Klein and others have described as projective identification.

An existential-phenomenological approach to human existence understands that the human being exists in a fundamentally different way than inanimate objects (Boss, 1979). This difference lies in the human being's structural relatedness to spatiality, temporality, one's own body, and other human beings. The lived experience of a fragmented self, as described by Klein, is only made possible because the human being exists as Dasein, a clearing in which Being as beings can presence. Further, the lived experience of projective identification is made possible only because Dasein is Mit-sein, always already existing with others in a shared world. As we've seen with Merleau-Ponty, the human being emerges into a symbolic matrix from a radically intersubjective and interdependent lived experience. The human being does not exist in a "hollow container" or move along a grid of equidistant points (Boss, 1979, p. 87). The human being is not located merely where he stands. Her/his space does not end where her/his skin does. The human being lives space. "Human existence is itself spatial. It is spatial in the sense that the basic characteristic of its existence is openness and receptivity" (p. 89). The human being is a clearing that is receptive to things and people, not in a way that "furniture is put into an empty room," but in a responsive and engaged way (p. 90). The dialectics of space for a human being concern how things matter. Those things and feelings which appear, come close and recede -- and the ways in which they do so -- depend on their significance. The way a person lives spatially, bodily, and temporally, is expressive of what matters to her/him.

With regard to projective identification, the process does not involve one container emptying part of itself into another. The patient does not come to the session as an encapsulated psyche and 'put into' another encapsulated psyche internal parts of her/himself that s/he wants to split-off and externalize. Likewise, the therapist does not sit like a passive container into which the contents of the patient's psyche will be poured. Furthermore, projective identification is not just a matter of the patient actively doing something and the therapist passively receiving something. Rather, it is the interaction and engagement of two human beings bringing together two worlds to form a uniquely structured experience. Both the patient and the therapist pervade the open space of the therapy room with their own existential, perceptive openness.

According to psychoanalytic theory, the patient comes to the therapy as a self that is not cohesively lived, yet which experiences self, world and other as fragmented and split. The patient is protecting the good breast from the bad breast, "the delicate flowers" from the "shit people" (Mitchell & Black, 1995, p. 89). This fragmentation often manifests itself in profound disturbances in the boundaries between self and other. From an existential-phenomenological perspective, how might one understand such a split, such a disturbance in boundaries? The split is of the world the patient brings to the room, a world into which the therapist can emerge as "bad." Furthermore, in that the patient may not only be aiming to separate her/his good self from her/his bad self, but also aims to communicate with or vicariously experience her/his bad self, the therapist emerges for the patient as her/his bad self. This emergence of the therapist as an aspect of the patient may indeed signify a disturbance in the boundary between self and other, but this disturbance does not take place in the mind or at the skin, but in the clearing of human existence. Furthermore, the patient's oscillation between experiencing the therapist as persecutory (bad self) and as idealized (good self) suggests that the patient's split is not simply lived spatially, but also temporally. As we've seen, Ogden (1992) conceives of the paranoid-schizoid position as both lived ahistorically and lived as spatially fragmented. This already suggests what Klein herself was unable to articulate, even with her understanding of the paranoid-schizoid experience as a 'position': that the profound significance of the paranoid-schizoid way of being is as a structural position with the world and others.

The world the patient brings to therapy can also be explored with a reading of Dreyfus and Wakefield's (1986) phenomenological approach to psychopathology. They suggest that pathology occurs when "some aspect of the epistemological relation of a subject to the other persons and objects, which should take place in the clearing, becomes a dimension of the clearing itself" (p. 276). It is when this dimension of the clearing is not recognized by the person to be his dimension, his/her organization of experience, but is taken to be the reality, that a person becomes pathological. This understanding of psychopathology seems to accurately address the phenomenon of the paranoid-schizoid position, for the bad and good breasts are no longer merely objects that emerge within the clearing; they are the very organization and structure of the clearing itself. Things, people and situations emerge as meaningful with regard to their goodness or malevolence. The good and the bad breast, once two objects that emerged within the clearing, have become the two poles around which all experiences are organized. To the degree that the therapist emerges only insofar as s/he reflects an aspect of the patient her/himself, spatial existence for the patient involves a dialectic of fusion and absence.

The therapist, who is also a clearing for the patient, syncretically merges with the patient's organization of experience. The possibilities which the patient splits off are taken up by the therapist, who unwittingly enacts the role of the patient's not-yet-lived-because-split-off possibilities. These split-off, un-named possibilities of the patient's existence, when symbolically taken up by the therapist, can be symbolically 'contained' and returned to the client in the form of language. What had been pre-thematically lived -- and thus split-off from the 'conscious' experience of the patient -- is thematized by the therapist. The therapist, by tolerating the patient's projective identification and giving a name to the "nameless dread," mends the 'link' between the patient and the 'breast.' In time, the therapist will inevitably fail the patient, being enable to live up to the patient's idealization. The patient will likely lash out at the therapist, who will become, for a time, the 'persecutory' breast. By holding to the boundaries of therapy, the therapist re-creates the Oedipal drama. By not giving into the omnipotent demands of the patient, the therapist demonstrates that he does not exclusively belong to the patient, but, rather, is also 'married' to the rules of psychoanalysis, to which s/he holds allegiance and which serves, in this capacity, as the 'father function.' With the emergence of the Oedipal situation, the patient is simultaneously already engaged in the movement toward the depressive position. Slowly but surely, the patient comes to recognize the therapist as (m)other rather than as an extension of her/himself, and, consequently, is enabled to begin the process of "reflective transcendence" in which s/he alone can thematize her/his own experience, no longer requiring the assistance of the therapist. In the final hours of therapy, as termination looms large, the patient can begin to mourn the damage done to the analyst's 'good breast,' and, hopefully, will leave with an 'ego' flexible enough to draw from the well of the lived experience left behind with the emergence into the symbolic.

Conclusion

It is hoped that this preliminary phenomenological exploration of Object Relations Theory can open a threshold toward a dwelling place where psychoanalytic theory and phenomenology can continue to inform one another, and, in turn, share the gifts which each has to offer from their rich legacies.

Along with Ogden's epistemologically sophisticated reinterpretation of Kleinian theory, it has become possible to disclose how a phenomenological human anthropology can rescue Object Relations Theory from its entrapment in the culturally-based misconception of the human being as an 'encapsulated' individual. In turn, Object Relations Theory, with its brilliant clinical insights, has provided phenomenology with a rich collection of data to further the Kleinian heritage of radically reconceptualizing our understanding of intersubjectivity, which, in turn, can make us both better theoreticians as well as clinicians. Most importantly, we have endeavored to show how Klein's observations of the paranoid-schizoid position can be understood as the pre-thematic, lived ground of human experience which has been covered over by the symbolic order with the emergence into the depressive position. And, as Ogden has graciously assisted us in articulating, it is the dialectic between lived experience and the symbolic order which makes possible our existence as the creative, dynamic, and ever-changing beings that we are.

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Jacques Lacan, Seminar on The Purloined Letter

noreply@blogger.com (Murni) — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 19:34:00 -0800

Our inquiry has led us to the point of recognizing that the repetition automatism (Wiederholangszwang ) finds its basis in what we have called the insistence of the signifying chain. We have elaborated that notion itself as a correlate of the ex-sistence (or: eccentric place) in which we must necessarily locate the subject of the unconscious if we are to take Freud's discovery seriously. As is known, it is in the realm of experience inaugurated by psychoanalysis that we may grasp along what imaginary lines the human organism, in the most intimate recesses of its being, manifests its capture in a symbolic dimension.
The lesson of this seminar is intended to maintain that these imaginary incidences, far from representing the essence of our experience, reveal only what in it remains inconsistent unless they are related to the symbolic chain which binds and orients them.
We realize, of course, the importance of these imaginary impregnations (Prägung ) in those partializations of the symbolic alternative which give the symbolic chain its appearance. But we maintain that it is the specific law of that chain which governs those psychoanalytic effects thar are decisive for the subject: such as foreclosure (Verwerfung), repression (Verdrängung ), denial (Verneinung ) itself–specifying with appropriate emphasis that these effects follow so faithfully the displacement (Entstellang ) of the signifier that imaginary factors, despite their inertia, figure only as shadows and reflections in the process.
But this emphasis would be lavished in vain, if it served, in your opinion, only to abstract a general type from phenomena whose particularity in our work would remain the essential thing for you, and whose original arrangement could be broken up only artificially.
Which is why we have decided to illustrate for you today the truth which may be drawn from that moment in Freud's thought under study–namely, that it is the symbolic order which is constitutive for the subject–by demonstrating in a story the decisive orientation which the subject receives from the itinerary of a signifier.
It is that truth, let us note, which makes the very existence of fiction possible. And in that case, a fable is as appropriate as any other narrative for bringing it to light–at the risk of having the fable's coherence put to the test in the process. Aside from that reservation, a fictive tale even has the advantage of manifesting symbolic necessity more purely to the extent that we may believe its conception arbitrary.
Which is why, without seeking any further, we have chosen our example from the very story in which the dialectic of the game of even or odd–from whose study we have but recently profited–occurs. It is, no doubt, no accident that this tale revealed itself propitious to pursuing a course of inquiry which had already found support in it.
As you know, we are talking about the tale which Baudelaire translated under the title "La lettre volée." At first reading, we may distinguish a drama, its narration, and the conditions of that narration.
We see quickly enough, moreover, that these components are necessary and that they could not have escaped the intentions of whoever composed them.
The narration, in fact, doubles the drama with a commentary without which no mise en scene would be possible. Let us say that the action would remain, properly speaking, invisible from the pit–aside from the fact that the dialogue would be expressly and by dramatic necessity devoid of whatever meaning it might have for an audience: in other words, nothing of the drama could be grasped, neither seen nor heard, without, dare we say, the twilighting which the narration, in each scene, casts on the point of view that one of the actors had while performing it.
There are two scenes, the first of which we shall straightway designate the primal scene, and by no means inadvertently, since the second may be considered its repetition in the very sense we are considering today.
The primal scene is thus performed, we are told, in the royal boudoir, so that we suspect that the person of the highest rank, called the "exalted personage," who is alone there when she receives a letter, is the Queen. This feeling is confirmed by the embarrassment into which she is plunged by the entry of the other exalted personage, of whom we have already been told prior to this account that the knowledge he might have of the letter in question would jeopardize for the lady nothing less than her honor and safety. Any doubt that he is in fact the King is promptly dissipated in the course of the scene which begins with the entry of the Minister D–. At that moment, in fact, the Queen can do no better than to play on the King's inattentiveness by leaving the letter on the table "face down, address uppermost." It does not, however, escape the Minister's Iynx eye, nor does he fail to notice the Queen's distress and thus to fathom her secret. From then on everything transpires like clockwork. After dealing in his customary manner with the business of the day, the Minister draws from his pocket a letter similar in appearance to the one in his view, and, having pretended to read it, he places it next to the other. A bit more conversation to amuse the royal company, whereupon, without flinching once, he seizes the embarrassing letter, making off with it, as the Queen, on whom none of his maneuver has been lost, remains unable to intervene for fear of attracting the attention of her royal spouse, close at her side at that very moment.
Everything might then have transpired unseen by a hypothetical spectator of an operation in which nobody falters, and whose quotient is that the Minister has filched from the Queen her letter and that–an even more important result than the first–the Queen knows that he now has it, and by no means innocently.
A remainder that no analyst will neglect, trained as he is to retain whatever is significant, without always knowing what to do with it: the letter, abandoned by the Minister, and which the Queen's hand is now free to roll into a ball.
Second scene: in the Minister's office. It is in his hotel, and we know–from the account the Prefect of Police has given Dupin, whose specific genius for solving enigmas Poe introduces here for the second time–that the police, returning there as soon as the Minister's habitual, nightly absences allow them to, have searched the hotel and its surroundings from top to bottom for the last eighteen months. In vain–although everyone can deduce from the situation that the Minister keeps the letter within reach.
Dupin calls on the Minister. The latter receives him with studied nonchalance, affecting in his conversation romantic ennui. Meanwhile Dupin, whom this pretense does not deceive, his eyes protected by green glasses, proceeds to inspect the premises. When his glance catches a rather crumpled piece of paper–apparently thrust carelessly into a division of an ugly pasteboard card rack, hanging gaudily from the middle of the mantelpiece–he already knows that he's found what he's looking for. His conviction is reinforced by the very details which seem to contradict the description he has of the stolen letter, with the exception of the format, which remains the same.
Whereupon he has but to withdraw, after "forgetting" his snuffbox on the table, in order to return the following day to reclaim it–armed with a facsimile of the letter in its present state. As an incident in the street, prepared for the proper moment, draws the Minister to the window, Dupin in turn seizes the opportunity to snatch the letter while substituting the imitation and has only to maintain the appearances of a normal exit.
Here as well all has transpired, if not without noise, at least without any commotion. The quotient of the operation is that the Minister no longer has the letter, but far from suspecting that Dupin is the culprit who has ravished it from him, knows nothing of it. Moreover, what he is left with is far from insignificant for what follows. We shall return to what brought Dupin to inscribe a message on his counterfeit letter. Whatever the case, the Minister, when he tries to make use of it, will be able to read these words, written so that he may recognize Dupin's hand: ". . . Un dessein si funeste / S'il n'est digne d'Atrée est digne de Thyeste, " whose source, Dupin tells us, is Crebillon's Atrée.
Need we emphasize the similarity of these two sequences? Yes, for the resemblance we have in mind is not a simple collection of traits chosen only in order to delete their difference. And it would not be enough to retain those common traits at the expense of the others for the slightest truth to result. It is rather the intersubjectivity in which the two actions are motivated that we wish to bring into relief, as well as the three terms through which it structures them.
The special status of these terms results from their corresponding simultaneously to the three logical moments through which the decision is precipitated and the three places it assigns to the subjects among whom it constitutes a choice.
That decision is reached in a glance's time.1 For the maneuvers which follow, however stealthily they prolong it, add nothing to that glance, nor does the deferring of the deed in the second scene break the unity of that moment.
This glance presupposes two others, which it embraces in its vision of the breach left in their fallacious complementarity, anticipating in it the occasion for larceny afforded by that exposure. Thus three moments, structuring three glances, borne by three subjects, incarnated each time by different characters.
The first is a glance that sees nothing: the King and the police.
The second, a glance which sees that the first sees nothing and deludes itself as to the secrecy of what it hides: the Queen, then the Minister.
The third sees that the first two glances leave what should be hidden exposed to whoever would seize it: the Minister, and finally Dupin.
In order to grasp in its unity the intersubjective complex thus described, we would willingly seek a model in the technique legendarily attributed to the oserich attempting to shield itself from danger; for that technique might ultimately be qualified as political, divided as it here is among three partners: the second believing itself invisible because the first has its head stuck in the ground, and all the while letting the third calmly pluck its rear; we need only enrich its proverbial denomination by a letter, producing la politique de l'autruiche, for the ostrich itself to take on forever a new meaning.
Given the intersubjective modulus of the repetitive action, it remains to recognize in it a repetition automatism in the sense that interests us in Freud's text.
The plurality of subjects, of course, can be no objection for those who are long accustomed to the perspectives summarized by our formula: the unconscious is the discourse of the Other. And we will not recall now what the notion of the immixture of subjects, recently introduced in our reanalysis of the dream of Irma's injection, adds to the discussion.
What interests us today is the manner in which the subjects relay each other in their displacement during the intersubjective repetition.
We shall see that their displacement is determined by the place which a pure signifier–the purloined letter–comes to occupy in their trio. And that is what will confirm for us its status as repetition automatism.
It does not, however, seem excessive, before pursuing this line of inquiry, to ask whether the thrust of the tale and the interest we bring to it–to the extent that they coincide–do not lie elsewhere.
May we view as simply a rationalization (in our gruff jargon) the fact that the story is told to us as a police mystery?
In truth, we should be right in judging that fact highly dubious as soon as we note that everything which warrants such mystery concerning a crime or offense–its nature and motives, instruments and execution, the procedure used to discover the author, and the means employed to convict him–is carefully eliminated here at the start of each episode.
The act of deceit is, in fact, from the beginning as clearly known as the intrigues of the culprit and their effects on his victim. The problem, as exposed to us, is limited to the search for and restitution of the object of that deceit, and it seems rather intentional that the solution is already obtained when it is explained to us. Is that how we are kept in suspense? Whatever credit we may accord the conventions of a genre for provoking a specific interest in the reader, we should not forget that "the Dupin tale"–this the second to appear–is a prototype, and that even if the genre were established in the first, it is still a little early for the author to play on a convention.
It would, however, be equally excessive to reduce the whole thing to a fable whose moral would be that in order to shield from inquisitive eyes one of those correspondences whose secrecy is sometimes necessary to conjugal peace, it suffices to leave the crucial letters Iying about on one's table, even though the meaningful side be turned face down. For that would be a hoax which, for our part, we would never recommend anyone try, lest he be gravely disappointed in his hopes.
Might there then be no mystery other than, concerning the Prefect, an incompetence issuing in failure–were it not perhaps, concerning Dupin, a certain dissonance we hesitate to acknowledge between, on the one hand, the admittedly penetrating though, in their generality, not always quite relevant remarks with which he introduces us to his method and, on the other, the manner in which he in fact intervenes.
Were we to pursue this sense of mystification a bit further we might soon begin to wonder whether, from that initial scene which only the rank of the protagonists saves from vaudeville, to the fall into ridicule which seems to await the Minister at the end, it is not this impression that everyone is being duped which makes for our pleasure.
And we would be all the more inclined to think so in that we would recognize in that surmise, along with those of you who read us, the definition we once gave in passing of the modern hero, "whom ludicrous exploits exalt in circumstances of utter confusion."2
But are we ourselves not taken in by the imposing presence of the amateur detective, prototype of a latter-day swashbuckler, as yet safe from the insipidity of our contemporary superman?
A trick . . . sufficient for us to discern in this tale, on the contrary, so perfect a verisimilitude that it may be said that truth here reveals its fictive arrangement.
For such indeed is the direction in which the principles of that verisimilitude lead us. Entering into its strategy, we indeed perceive a new drama we may call complementary to the first, insofar as the latter was what is termed a play without words whereas the interest of the second plays on the properties of speech. 3
If it is indeed clear that each of the two scenes of the real drama is narrated in the course of a different dialogue, it is only through access to those notions set forth in our teaching that one may recognize that it is not thus simply to augment the charm of the exposition, but that the dialogues themselves, in the opposite use they make of the powers of speech, take on a tension which makes of them a different drama, one which our vocabulary will distinguish from the first as persisting in the symbolic order.
The first dialogue–between the Prefect of Police and Dupin–is played as between a deaf man and one who hears. That is, it presents the real complexity of what is ordinarily simplified, with the most confused results, in the notion of communication.
This example demonstrates indeed how an act of communication may give the impression at which theorists too often stop: of allowing in its transmission but a single meaning, as though the highly significant commentary into which he who understands integrates it, could, because unperceived by him who does not understand, be considered null.
It remains that if only the dialogue's meaning as a report is retained, its verisimilitude may appear to depend on a guarantee of exactitude. But here dialogue may be more fertile than it seems, if we demonstrate its tactics: as shall be seen by focusing on the recounting of our first scene.
For the double and even triple subjective filter through which that scene comes to us: a narration by Dupin's friend and associate (henceforth to be called the general narrator of the story) of the account by which the Prefect reveals to Dupin the report the Queen gave him of it, is not merely the consequence of a fortuitous arrangement.
If indeed the extremity to which the original narrator is reduced precludes her altering any of the events, it would be wrong to believe that the Prefect is empowered to lend her his voice in this case only by that lack of imagination on which he has, dare we say, the patent.
The fact that the message is thus retransmitted assures us of what may by no means be taken for granted: that it belongs to the dimension of language.
Those who are here know our remarks on the subject, specifically those illustrated by the countercase of the so-called language of bees: in which a linguist 4 can see only a simple signaling of the location of objects, in other words: only an imaginary function more differentiated than others.
We emphasize that such a form of communication is not absent in man, however evanescent a naturally given object may be for him, split as it is in its submission to symbols.
Something equivalent may no doubt be grasped in the communion established between two persons in their hatred of a common object: except that the meeting is possible only over a single object, defined by those traits in the individual each of the two resists.
But such communication is not transmissible in symbolic form. It may be maintained only in the relation with the object. In such a manner it may bring together an indefinite number of subjects in a common "ideal": the communication of one subject with another within the crowd thus constituted will nonetheless remain irreducibly mediated by an ineffable relation.
This digression is not only a recollection of principles distantly addressed to those who impute to us a neglect of nonverbal communication: in determining the scope of what speech repeats, it prepares the question of what symptoms repeat.
Thus the indirect telling sifts out the linguistic dimension, and the general narrator, by duplicating it, "hypothetically" adds nothing to it. But its role in the second dialogue is entirely different.
For the latter will be opposed to the first like those poles we have distinguished elsewhere in language and which are opposed like word to speech.
Which is to say that a transition is made here from the domain of exactitude to the register of truth. Now that register–we dare think we needn't come back to this–is situated entirely elsewhere, strictly speaking at the very foundation of intersubjectivity. It is located there where the subject can grasp nothing but the very subjectivity which constitutes an Other as absolute. We shall be satisfied here to indicate its place by evoking the dialogue which seems to us to merit its attribution as a Jewish joke by that state of privation through which the relation of signifier to speech appears in the entreaty which brings the dialogue to a close: "Why are you Iying to me?" one character shouts breathlessly. "Yes, why do you lie to me saying you're going to Cracow so I should believe you're going to Lemberg, when in reality you are going to Cracow?"
We might be prompted to ask a similar question by the torrent of logical impasses, eristic enigmas, paradoxes, and even jests presented to us as an introduction to Dupin's method if the fact that they were confided to us by a would-be disciple did not endow them with a new dimension through that act of delegation. Such is the unmistakable magic of legacies: the witness's fidelity is the cowl which blinds and lays to rest all criticism of his testimony.
What could be more convincing, moreover, than the gesture of laying one's cards face up on the table? So much so that we are momentarily persuaded that the magician has in fact demonstrated, as he promised, how his trick was performed, whereas he has only renewed it in still purer form: at which point we fathom the measure of the supremacy of the signifier in the subject.
Such is Dupin's maneuver when he starts with the story of the child prodigy who takes in all his friends at the game of even and odd with his trick of identifying with the opponent, concerning which we have nevertheless shown that it cannot reach the first level of theoretical elaboration; namely, intersubjective alternation, without immediately stumbling on the buttress of its recurrence.5
We are all the same treated–so much smoke in our eyes–to the names of La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyère, Machiavelli, and Campanella, whose renown, by this time, would seem but futile when confronted with the child's prowess.
Followed by Chamfort, whose maxim that "it is a safe wager that every public idea, every accepted convention is foolish, since it suits the greatest number" will no doubt satisfy all who think they escape its law, thatis, precisely, the greatest number. That Dupin accuses the French ofdeception for applying the word analylis to algebra will hardly threatenour pride since, moreover, the freeing of that term for other uses ought byno means to provoke a psychoanalyst to intervene and claim his rights.And there he goes making philological remarks which should positively delight any lovers of Latin: when he recalls without deigning to say anymore that "ambitus doesn't mean ambition, religio, religion, homines honesti, honest men," who among you would not take pleasure in remember ing . . . what those words mean to anyone familiar with Cicero and Lucretius. No doubt Poe is having a good time....
But a suspicion occurs to us: Might not this parade of erudition be destined to reveal to us the key words of our drama? Is not the magician repeating his trick before our eyes, without deceiving us this time about divulging his secret, but pressing his wager to the point of really explaining it to us without us seeing a thing? That would be the summit of the illusionist's art: through one of his fictive creations to truly delude us.
And is it not such effects which justify our referring, without malice, to a number of imaginary heroes as real characters?
As well, when we are open to hearing the way in which Martin Heidegger discloses to us in the word aletheia the play of truth, we rediscover a secret to which truth has always initiated her lovers, and through which they learn that it is in hiding that she offers herself to them most truly.
Thus even if Dupin's comments did not defy us so blatantly to believe in them, we should still have to make that attempt against the opposite temptation.
Let us track down [dépistons ] his footprints there where they elude [dépiste ] us.6 And first of all in the criticism by which he explains the Prefect's lack of success. We already saw it surface in those furtive gibes the Prefect, in the first conversation, failed to heed, seeing in them only a pretext for hilarity. That it is, as Dupin insinuates, because a problem is too simple, indeed too evident, that it may appear obscure, will never have any more bearing for him than a vigorous rub of the ribcage.
Everything is arranged to induce in us a sense of the character's imbecility. Which is powerfully articulated by the fact that he and his confederates never conceive of anything beyond what an ordinary rogue might imagine for hiding an object–that is, precisely the all too well known series of extraordinary hiding places: which are promptly cataloged for us, from hidden desk drawers to removable tabletops, from the detachable cushions of chairs to their hollowed-out legs, from the reverse side of mirrors to the "thickness" of book bindings.
After which, a moment of derision at the Prefect's error in deducing that because the Minister is a poet, he is not far from being mad, an error, it is argued, which would consist, but this is hardly negligible, simply in a false distribution of the middle term, since it is far from following from the fact that all madmen are poets.
Yes indeed. But we ourselves are left in the dark as to the poet's superiority in the art of concealment–even if he be a mathematician to boot–since our pursuit is suddenly thwarted, dragged as we are into a thicket of bad arguments directed against the reasoning of mathematicians, who never, so far as I know, showed such devotion to their formulae as to identify them with reason itself. At least, let us testify that unlike what seems to be Poe's experience, it occasionally befalls us–with our friend Riguet, whose presence here is a guarantee that our incursions into combinatory analysis are not leading us astray–to hazard such serious deviations (virtual blasphemies, according to Poe) as to cast into doubt that x2 + px is perhaps not absolutely equal to q," without ever–here we give the lie to Poe–having had to fend off any unexpected attack.
Is not so much intelligence being exercised then simply to divert our own from what had been indicated earlier as given, namely, that the police have looked everywhere: which we were to understand–vis-à-vis the area in which the police, not without reason, assumed the letter might be found–in terms of a (no doubt theoretical) exhaustion of space, but concerning which the tale's piquancy depends on our accepting it literally? The division of the entire volume into numbered "compartments," which was the principle governing the operation, being presented to us as so precise that "the fiftieth part of a line," it is said, could not escape the probing of the investigators. Have we not then the right to ask how it happened that the letter was not found anywhere, or rather to observe that all we have been told of a more far-ranging conception of concealment does not explain, in all rigor, that the letter escaped detection, since the area combed did in fact contain it, as Dupin's discovery eventually proves?
Must a letter then, of all objects, be endowed with the property of nullibiety: to use a term which the thesaurus known as Roget picks up from the semiotic utopia of Bishop Wilkins?7
It is evident ("a little too self-evident")8 that between letter and place exist relations for which no French word has quite the extension of the English adjective odd. Bizarre, by which Baudelaire regularly translates it, is only approximate. Let us say that these relations are . . . singuliers, for they are the very ones maintained with place by the signifer.You realize, of course, that our intention is not to turn them into "subtle" relations, nor is our aim to confuse letter with spirit, even if we receive the former by pneumatic dispatch, and that we readily admit that one kills whereas the other quickens, insofar as the signifier–you perhaps begin to understand–materializes the agency of death. But if it is first of all on the materiality of the signifier that we have insisted, that materiality is odd [singulière] in many ways, the first of which is not to admit partition. Cut a letter in small pieces, and it remains the letter it is–and this in a completely different sense than Gestalttheorie would account for with the dormant vitalism informing its notion of the whole.9
Language delivers its judgment to whoever knows how to hear it: through the usage of the article as parritive particle. It is there that spirit–if spirit be living meaning–appears, no less oddly, as more available for quantification than its letter. To begin with meaning itself, which bears our saying: a speech rich with meaning ["plein de signification"], just as we recognize a measure of intention ["de l'intention"] in an act, or deplore that there is no more love {"plus d'amour"]; or store up hatred {"de la haine"] and expend devotion ["du devouement"], and so much infatuation ["tant d'infatuation"] is easily reconciled to the fact that there will always be ass ["de la cuisse"] for sale and brawling ["du rififi"] among men.
But as for the letter–be it taken as typographical character, epistle, or what makes a man of letters–we will say that what is said is to be understood to the letter [è la lettre], that a letter [une lettre] awaits you at the post office, or even that you are acquainted with letters [que vous avez des lettres]–never that there is letter [de la lettre] anywhere, whatever the context, even to designate overdue mail.
For the signifier is a unit in its very uniqueness, being by nature symbol only of an absence. Which is why we cannot say of the purloined letter that, like other objects, it must be or not be in a particular place but that unlike them it will be and not be where it is, wherever it goes.
Let us, in fact, look more closely at what happens to the police. We are spared nothing concerning the procedures used in searching the area submitted to their investigation: from the division of that space into compartments from which the slightest bulk could not escape detection, to needles probing upholstery, and, in the impossibility of sounding wood with a tap, to a microscope exposing the waste of any drilling at the surface of its hollow, indeed the infinitesimal gaping of the slightest abyss. As the network tightens to the point that, not satisfied with shaking the pages of books, the police take to counting them, do we not see space itself shed its leaves like a letter?
But the detectives have so immutable a notion of the real that they fail to notice that their search tends to transform it into its object. A trait by which they would be able to distinguish that object from all others.
This would no doubt be too much to ask them, not because of their lack of insight but rather because of ours. For their imbecility is neither of the individual nor the corporative variety; its source is subjective. It is the realist's imbecility, which does not pause to observe that nothing, however deep in the bowels of the earth a hand may seek to ensconce it, will ever be hidden there, since another hand can always retrieve it, and that what is hidden is never but what is missing from its place, as the call slip puts it when speaking of a volume lose in a library. And even if the book be on an adjacent shelf or in the next slot, it would be hidden there, however visibly it may appear. For it can literally be said that something is missing from its place only of what can change it: the symbolic. For the real, whatever upheaval we subject it to, is always in its place; it carries it glued to its heel, ignorant of what might exile it from it.
And to return to our cops, who took the letter from the place where it was hidden, how could they have seized the letter? In what they turned between their fingers what did they hold but what did not answer to their description. "A letter, a litter": in Joyce's circle, they played on the homophony of the two words in English.10 Nor does the seeming bit of refuse the police are now handling reveal its other nature for being but half torn. A different seal on a scamp of another color, the mark of a different handwriting in the superscription are here the most inviolable modes of concealment. And if they stop at the reverse side of the letter, on which, as is known, the recipient's address was written in that period, it is because the letter has for them no other side but its reverse.
What indeed might they find on its obverse? Its message, as is often said to our cybernetic joy? . . . But does it not occur to us that this message has already reached its recipient and has even been left with her, since the insignificant scrap of paper now represents it no less well than the original note.
If we could admit that a letter has completed its destiny after fulfilling its function, the ceremony of returning letters would be a less common close to the extinction of the fires of love's feasts. The signifier is not functional. And the mobilization of the elegant society whose frolics we are following would as well have no meaning if the letter itself were content with having one. For it would hardly be an adequate means of keeping it secret to inform a squad of cops of its existence.
We might even admit that the letter has an entirely different (if no more urgent) meaning for the Queen from the one understood by the Minister. The sequence of events would not be noticeably affected, not even if it were strictly incomprehensible to an uninformed reader.
For it is certainly not so for everybody, since, as the Prefect pompously assures us, to everyone's derision, "the disclosure of the document to a third person, who shall be nameless" (that name which leaps to the eye like the pig's tail twixt the teeth of old Ubu) "would bring in question the honor of a personage of most exalted station, indeed that the honor and peace of the illustrious personage are so jeopardized."
In that case, it is not only the meaning but the text of the message which it would be dangerous to place in circulation, and all the more so to the extent that it might appear harmless, since the risks of an indiscretion unintentionally committed by one of the letter's holders would thus be increased.
Nothing then can redeem the police's position, and nothing would be changed by improving their "culture." Scripta manent: in vain would they learn from a deluxe-edition humanism the proverbial lesson which verba volant concludes. May it but please heaven that writings remain, as is rather the case with spoken words: for the indelible debt of the latter impregnates our acts with its transferences.
Writings scatter to the winds blank checks in an insane charge. And were they not such flying leaves, there would be no purloined letters.
But what of it? For a purloined letter to exist, we may ask, to whom does a letter belong? We stressed a moment ago the oddity implicit in returning a letter to him who had but recently given wing to its burning pledge. And we generally deem unbecoming such premature publications as the one by which the Chevalier d'Eon put several of his correspondents in a rather pitiful position.
Might a letter on which the sender retains certain rights then not quite belong to the person to whom it is addressed? Or might it be that the latter was never the real receiver?
Let's take a look: we shall find illumination in what at first seems to obscure matters: the fact that the tale leaves us in virtually total ignorance of the sender, no less than of the contents, of the letter. We are told only that the Minister immediately recognized the handwriting of the address and only incidentally, in a discussion of the Minister's camouflage, is it said that the original seal bore the ducal arms of the S family. As for the letter's bearing, we know only the dangers it entails should it come into the hands of a specific third party, and that its possession has allowed the Minister to "wield, to a very dangerous extent, for political purposes," the power it assures him over the interested party. But all this tells us nothing of the message it conveys.
Love letter or conspiratorial letter, letter of betrayal or letter of mission, letter of summons or letter of distress, we are assured of but one thing: the Queen muse not bring it to the knowledge of her lord and master.
Now these terms, far from bearing the nuance of discredit they have in bourgeois comedy, take on a certain prominence through allusion to her sovereign, to whom she is bound by pledge of faith, and doubly so, since her role as spouse does not relieve her of her duties as subject, but rather elevates her to the guardianship of what royalty according to law incarnates of power: and which is called legitimacy.
From then on, to whatever vicissitudes the Queen may choose to subject the letter, it remains that the letter is the symbol of a pact and that, even should the recipient not assume the pact, the existence of the letter situates her in a symbolic chain foreign to the one which constitutes her faith. This incompatibility is proven by the fact that the possession of the letter is impossible to bring forward publicly as legitimate, and that in order to have that possession respected, the Queen can invoke but her right to privacy, whose privilege is based on the honor that possession violates.
For she who incarnates the figure of grace and sovereignty cannot welcome even a private communication without power being concerned, and she cannot avail herself of secrecy in relation to the sovereign without becoming clandestine.
From then on, the responsibility of the author of the letter takes second place to that of its holder: for the offense to majesty is compounded by high treason.
We say the holder and not the possessor. For it becomes clear that the addressee's proprietorship of the letter may be no less debatable than that of anyone else into whose hands it comes, for nothing concerning the existence of the letter can return to good order without the person whose prerogatives it infringes upon having to pronounce judgment on it.
All of this, however, does not imply that because the letter's secrecy is indefensible, the betrayal of that secret would in any sense be honorable. The honesti homines, decent people, will not get off easily. There is more than one religio, and it is not slated for tomorrow that sacred ties shall cease to rend us in two. As for ambitus: a detour, we see, is not always inspired by ambition. For if we are taking one here, by no means is it stolen (the word is apt), since, to lay our cards on the table, we have borrowed Baudelaire's title in order to stress not, as is incorrectly claimed, the conventional nature of the signifier, but rather its priority in relation to the signified. It remains, nevertheless, that Baudelaire, de spite his devotion, betrayed Poe by translating as "la lettre volee" (the stolen letter) his title: the purloined letter, a title containing a word rare enough for us to find it easier to define its etymology than its usage.
To purloin, says the Oxford dictionary, is an Anglo-French word, that is: composed of the prefix pur-, found in purpose, purchase, purport, and of the Old French word: loing, loigner, longé. We recognize in the first element the Latin pro-, as opposed to ante, insofar as it presupposes a rear in front of which it is borne, possibly as its warrant, indeed even as its pledge (whereas ante goes forth to confront what it encounters). As for the second, an Old French word: loigner, a verb attributing place au loing (or, still in use, longé), it does not mean au loin (far off), but au long de (alongside); it is a question then of putting aside, or, to invoke a familiar expression which plays on the two meanings: mettre à gauche (to put to the left; to put amiss).
Thus we are confirmed in our detour by the very object which draws us on into it: for we are quite simply dealing with a letter which has been diverted from its path; one whose course has been prolonged (etymologically, the word of the title), or, to revert to the language of the post office, a letter in sufferance.
Here then, simple and odd, as we are told on the very first page, reduced to its simplest expression, is the singularity of the letter, which as the title indicates, is the true subject of the tale: since it can be diverted, it must have a course which is proper to it. the trait by which its incidence as signifier is affirmed. For we have learned to conceive of the signifier as sustaining itself only in a displacement comparable to that found in electric news strips or in the rotating memories of our machines-that-think-like-men, this because of the alternating operation which is its principle, requiring it to leave its place, even though it returns to it by a circular path.11
This is indeed what happens in the repetition automatism. What Freud teaches us in the text we are commenting on is that the subject must pass through the channels of the symbolic, but what is illustrated here is more gripping still: it is not only the subject, but the subjects, grasped in their intersubjectivity, who line up, in other words our ostriches, to whom we here return, and who, more docile than sheep, model their very being on the moment of the signifying chain which traverses them.
If what Freud discovered and rediscovers with a perpetually increasing sense of shock has a meaning, it is that the displacement of the signifier determines the subjects in their acts, in their destiny, in their refusals, in their blindness, in their end and in their fate, their innate gifts and social acquisitions notwithstanding, without regard for character or sex, and that, willingly or not, everything that might be considered the stuff of psychology, kit and caboodle, will follow the path of the signifier.
Here we are, in fact, yet again at the crossroads at which we had left our drama and its round with the question of the way in which the subjects replace each other in it. Our fable is so constructed as to show that it is the letter and its diversion which governs their entries and roles. If it be "in sufferance," they shall endure the pain. Should they pass beneath its shadow, they become its reflection. Falling in possession of the letter–admirable ambiguity of language–its meaning possesses them.
So we are shown by the hero of the drama in the repetition of the very situation which his daring brought to a head, a first time, to his triumph. If he now succumbs to it, it is because he has shifted to the second position in the triad in which he was initially third, as well as the thief– and this by virtue of the object of his theft.
For if it is, now as before, a question of protecting the letter from inquisitive eyes, he can do nothing but employ the same technique he himself has already foiled: Leave it in the open? And we may properly doubt that he knows what he is thus doing, when we see him immediately captivated by a dual relationship in which we find all the traits of a mimetic lure or of an animal feigning death, and, trapped in the typically imaginary situation of seeing that he is not seen, misconstrue the real situation in which he is seen not seeing.
And what does he fail to see? Precisely the symbolic situation which he himself was so well able to see, and in which he is now seen seeing himself not being seen.
The Minister acts as a man who realizes that the police's search is his own defense, since we are told he allows them total access by his absences: he nonetheless fails to recognize that outside of that search he is no longer defended.
This is the very autruicherie whose artisan he was, if we may allow our monster to proliferate, but it cannot be by sheer stupidity that he now comes to be its dupe.
For in playing the part of the one who hides, he is obliged to don the role of the Queen, and even the attributes of femininity and shadow, so propitious to the act of concealing.
Not that we are reducing the hoary couple of Yin and Yang to the elementary opposition of dark and light. For its precise use involves what is blinding in a flash of light, no less than the shimmering shadows exploit in order not to lose their prey.
Here sign and being, marvelously asunder, reveal which is victorious when they come into conflict. A man man enough to defy to the point of scorn a lady's fearsome ire undergoes to the point of metamorphosis the curse of the sign he has dispossessed her of.
For this sign is indeed that of woman, insofar as she invests her very being therein, founding it outside the law, which subsumes her nevertheless, originarily, in a position of signifier, nay, of fetish. In order to be worthy of the power of that sign she has but to remain immobile in its shadow, thus finding, moreover, like the Queen, that simulation of mastery in inactivity that the Minister's "Iynx eye" alone was able to penetrate.
This stolen sign–here then is man in its possession: sinister in that such possession may be sustained only through the honor it defies, cursed in calling him who sustains it to punishment or crime, each of which shatters his vassalage to the Law.
There must be in this sign a singular noli me tangere for its possession, like the Socratic sting ray, to benumb its man to the point of making him fall into what appears clearly in his case to be a state of idleness.
For in noting, as the narrator does as early as the first dialogue, that with the letter's use its power disappears, we perceive that this remark, strictly speaking, concerns precisely its use for ends of power–and at the same time that such a use is obligatory for the Minister.
To be unable to rid himself of it, the Minister indeed must not know what else to do with the letter. For that use places him in so total a dependence on the letter as such, that in the long run it no longer involves the letter at all.
We mean that for that use truly to involve the letter, the Minister, who, after all, would be so authorized by his service to his master the King, might present to the Queen respectful admonitions, even were he to assure their sequel by appropriate precautions–or initiate an action against the author of the letter, concerning whom, the fact that he remains outside the story's focus reveals the extent to which it is not guilt and blame which are in question here, but rather that sign of contradiction and scandal constituted by the letter, in the sense in which the Gospel says that it must come regardless of the anguish of whoever serves as its bearer,–or even submit the letter as document in a dossier to a 'third person' qualified to know whether it will issue in a Star Chamber for the Queen or the Minister's disgrace.
We will not know why the Minister does not resort to any of these uses, and it is fitting that we don't, since the effect of this non-use alone concerns us; it suffices for us to know that the way in which the letter was acquired would pose no obstacle to any of them.
For it is clear that if the use of the letter, independent of its meaning, is obligatory for the Minister, its use for ends of power can only be potential, since it cannot become actual without vanishing in the process– but in that case the letter exists as a means of power only through the final assignations of the pure signifier, namely: by prolonging its diversion, making it reach whomever it may concern through a supplementary transfer, that is, by an additional act of treason whose effects the letter's gravity makes it difficult to predict–or indeed by destroying the letter, the only sure means, as Dupin divulges at the start, of being rid of what is destined by nature to signify the annulment of what it signifies.
The ascendancy which the Minister derives from the situation is thus not a function of the letter, but, whether he knows it or not, of the role it constitutes for him. And the Prefect's remarks indeed present him as someone "who dares all things," which is commented upon significantly: "those unbecoming as well as those becoming a man," words whose pungency escapes Baudelaire when he translates: "ce qui est indigne d'un homme aussi bien que ce qui est digne de lui" (those unbecoming a man as well as those becoming him). For in its original form, the appraisal is far more appropriate to what might concern a woman.
This allows us to see the imaginary import of the character, that is, the narcissistic relation in which the Minister is engaged, this time, no doubt, without knowing it. It is indicated, as well, as early as the second page of the English text by one of the narrator's remarks, whose form is worth savoring: the Minister's ascendancy, we are told, "would depend upon the robber's knowledge of the loser's knowledge of the robber." Words whose importance the author underscores by having Dupin repeat them literally after the narration of the scene of the theft of the letter. Here again we may say that Baudelaire is imprecise in his language in having one ask, the other confirm, in these words: "Le voleur saitil? . . ." (Does the robber know?), then: "Le voleur salt . . ." (the robber knows). What? "que la personne volée connâit son voleur" (that the loser knows his robber).
For what matters to the robber is not only that the said person knows who robbed her, but rather with what kind of a robber she is dealing; for she believes him capable of anything, which should be understood as her having conferred upon him the position that no one is in fact capable of assuming, since it is imaginary, that of absolute master.
In truth, it is a position of absolute weakness, but not for the person of whom we are expected to believe so. The proof is not only that the Queen dares to call the police. For she is only conforming to her displacement to the next slot in the arrangement of the initial triad in trusting to the very blindness required to occupy that place: "No more sagacious agent could, I suppose," Dupin notes ironically, "be desired or even imagined." No, if she has taken that step, it is less out of being "driven to despair," as we are told, than in assuming the charge of an impatience best imputed to a specular mirage.
For the Minister is kept quite busy confining himself to the idleness which is presently his lot. The Minister, in point of fact, is not altogether mad. That's a remark made by the Prefect, whose every word is gold: it is true that the gold of his words flows only for Dupin and will continue to flow to the amount of the fifty thousand francs worth it will cost him by the metal standard of the day, though not without leaving him a margin of profit. The Minister then is not altogether mad in his insane stagnation, and that is why he will behave according to the mode of neurosis. Like the man who withdrew to an island to forget, what? he forgot–so the Minister, through not making use of the letter, comes to forget it. As is expressed by the persistence of his conduct. But the letter, no more than the neurotic's unconscious, does not forget him. It forgets him so little that it transforms him more and more in the image of her who offered it to his capture, so that he now will surrender it, following her example, to a similar capture.
The features of that transformation are noted, and in a form so characteristic in their apparent gratuitousness that they might validly be compared to the return of the repressed.
Thus we first learn that the Minister in turn has turned the letter over, not, of course, as in the Queen's hasty gesture, but, more assiduously, as one turns a garment inside out. So he must proceed, according to the methods of the day for folding and sealing a letter, in order to free the virgin space on which to inscribe a new address.12
That address becomes his own. Whether it be in his hand or another, it will appear in an extremely delicate feminine script, and, the seal changing from the red of passion to the black of its mirrors, he will imprint his stamp upon it. This oddity of a letter marked with the recipient's stamp is all the more striking in its conception, since, though forcefully articulated in the text, it is not even mentioned by Dupin in the discussion he devotes to the identification of the letter.
Whether that omission be intentional or involuntary, it will surprise in the economy of a work whose meticulous rigor is evident. But in either case it is significant that the letter which the Minister, in point of fact, addresses to himself is a letter from a woman: as though this were a phase he had to pass through out of a natural affinity of the signifier.
Thus the aura of apathy, verging at times on an affectation of effeminacy; the display of an ennui bordering on disgust in his conversation; the mood the author of the philosophy of furniture 13 can elicit from virtually impalpable details (like that of the musical instrument on the table), everything seems intended for a character, all of whose utterances have revealed the most virile traits, to exude the oddest odor di femina when he appears.
Dupin does not fail to stress that this is an artifice, describing behind the bogus finery the vigilance of a beast of prey ready to spring. But that this is the very effect of the unconscious in the precise sense that we teach that the unconscious means that man is inhabited by the signifier: Could we find a more beautiful image of it than the one Poe himself forges to help us appreciate Dupin's exploit? For with this aim in mind, he refers to those toponymical inscriptions which a geographical map, lest it remain mute, superimposes on its design, and which may become the object of a guessing game: Who can find the name chosen by a partner?–noting immediately that the name most likely to foil a beginner will be one which, in large letters spaced out widely across the map, discloses, often without an eye pausing to notice it, the name of an entire country....
Just so does the purloined letter, like an immense female body, screech out across the Minister's office when Dupin enters. But just so does he already expect to find it, and has only, with his eyes veiled by green lenses, to undress that huge body.
And that is why without needing any more than being able to listen in at the door of Professor Freud, he will go straight to the spot in which lies and lives what that body is designed to hide, in a gorgeous center caught in a glimpse, nay, to the very place seducers name Sant' Angelo's Castle in their innocent illusion of controlling the City from within it. Look! between the cheeks of the fireplace, there's the object already in reach of a hand the ravisher has but to extend.... The question of deciding whether he seizes it above the mantelpiece as Baudelaire translates, orbeneath it, as in the original text, may be abandoned without harm to the inferences of those whose profession is grilling.14
Were the effectiveness of symbols to cease there, would it mean that the symbolic debt would as well be extinguished? Even if we could believe so, we would be advised of the contrary by two episodes which we may all the less dismiss as secondary in that they seem, at first sight, to clash with the rest of the work.
First of all, there's the business of Dupin's remuneration, which, far from being a closing pirouette, has been present from the beginning in the rather unselfconscious question he asks the Prefect about the amount of the reward promised him, and whose enormousness, the Prefect, however reticent he may be about the precise figure, does not dream of hiding from him, even returning later on to refer to its increase.
The fact that Dupin had been previously presented to us as a virtual pauper in his ethereal shelter ought rather to lead us to reflect on the deal he makes out of delivering the letter, promptly assured as it is by the checkbook he produces. We do not regard it as negligible that the unequivocal hint through which he introduces the matter is a "story attributed to the character, as famous as it was eccentric," Baudelaire tells us, of an English doctor named Abernethy, in which a rich miser, hoping to sponge upon him for a medical opinion, is sharply told not to take medicine, but to take advice.
Do we not in fact feel concerned with good reason when for Dupin what is perhaps at stake is his withdrawal from the symbolic circuit of the letter–we who become the emissaries of all the purloined letters which at least for a time remain in sufferance with us in the transference. And is it not the responsibility their transference entails which we neutralize by equating it with the signifier most destructive of all signification; namely money.
But that's not all. The profit Dupin so nimbly extracts from his exploit, if its purpose is to allow him to withdraw his stakes from the game, makes all the more paradoxical, even shocking, the partisan attack, the underhanded blow, he suddenly permits himself to launch against the Minister, whose insolent prestige, after all, would seem to have been auflficiently deflated by the trick Dupin has just played on him.
We have already quoted the atrocious lines Dupin claims he could not help dedicating, in his counterfeit letter, to the moment in which the Minister, enraged by the inevitable defiance of the Queen, will think he is demolishing her and will plunge into the abyss: facilis descensus Averni,15 he waxes sententious, adding that the Minister cannot fail to recognize his handwriting, all of which, since depriving of any danger a merciless act of infamy, would seem, concerning a figure who is not without merit, a triumph without glory, and the rancor he invokes, seemming from an evil turn done him at Vienna (at the Congress?) only adds an additional bit of blackness to the whole.
Lee us consider, however, more closely this explosion of feeling, and more specifically the moment it occurs in a sequence of acts whose success depends on so cool a head.
It comes just after the moment in which the decisive ace of identifying the letter having been accomplished, it may be said that Dupin already has the letter as much as if he had seized it, without, however, as yet being in a position to rid himself of it.
He is thus, in fact, fully participant in the intersubjective triad, and, as such, in the median position previously occupied by the Queen and the Minister. Will he, in showing himself to be above it, reveal to us at the same time the auchor's intentions?
If he has succeeded in returning the letter to its proper course, it remains for him to make it arrive at its address. And that address is in the place previously occupied by the King, since it is there that it would reenter the order of the Law.
As we have seen, neither the King nor the police who replaced him in that position were able to read the letter because that place entailed blindness.
Rex et augur, the legendary, archaic quality of the words seems to resound only to impress us with the absurdity of applying them to a man. And the figures of history, for some time now, hardly encourage us to do so. It is not natural for man to bear alone the weight of the highest of signifiers. And the place he occupies as soon as he dons it may be equally apt to become the symbol of the mose outrageous imbecility.16
Let us say that the King here is invested with the equivocation natural to the sacred, with the imbecility which prizes none other than the Subject.
That is what will give their meaning to the characters who will follow him in his place. Not that the police should be regarded as constitutionally illiterate, and we know the role of pikes planted on the campus in the birth of the State. Bue the police who exercise their functions here are plainly marked by the forms of liberalism, that is, by those imposed on them by masters on the whole indifferent to eliminating their indiscreet tendencits. Which is why on occasion words are not minced as to what is expected of them: "Sutor ne uItra crepidam, just take care of your crooks. We'll even give you scientific means to do it with. That will help you not to think of truths you'd be better off leaving in the dark."17
We know that the relief which results from such prudent principles shall have lasted in history but a morning's time, that already the march of destiny is everywhere bringing back–a sequel to a just aspiration to freedom's reign–an interest in those who trouble it with their crimes, which occasionally goes so far as to forge its proofs. It may even be observed that this practice, which was always well received to the extent that it was exercised only in favor of the greatest number, comes to be authenticated in public confessions of forgery by the very ones who might very well object to it: the most recent manifestation of the preeminence of the signifier over the subject.
It remains, nevertheless, that a police record has always been the object of a certain reserve, of which we have difficulty understanding that it amply transcends the guild of historians.
It is by dint of this vanishing credit that Dupin's intended delivery of the letter to the Prefect of Police will diminish its import. What now remains of the signifier when, already relieved of its message for the Queen, it is now invalidated in its text as soon as it leaves the Minister's hands?
It remains for it now only to answer that very question, of what remains of a signifier when it has no more signification. But this is the same question asked of it by the person Dupin now finds in the spot marked by blindness.
For that is indeed the question which has led the Minister there, if he be the gambler we are told and which his act sufficiently indicates. For the gambler's passion is nothing but that question asked of the signifier, figured by the automaton of chance.
"What are you, figure of the die I turn over in your encounter (tyche) with my fortune?18 Nothing, if not that presence of death which makes of human life a reprieve obtained from morning to morning in the name of meanings whose sign is your crook. Thus did Schcherazade for a thousand and one nights, and thus have I done for eighteen months, suffering the ascendancy of this sign at the cost of a dizzying series of fraudulent turns at the game of even or odd."
So it is that Dupin, from the place he now occupies, cannot help feeling a rage of manifestly feminine nature against him who poses such a question. The prestigious image in which the poet's inventiveness and the mathematician's rigor joined up with the serenity of the dandy and the elegance of the cheat suddenly becomes, for the very person who invited us to savor it, the true monstrum horrendum, for such are his words, "an unprincipled man of genius."
It is here that the origin of that horror betrays itself, and he who experiences it has no need to declare himself (in a most unexpected manner) "a partisan of the lady" in order to reveal it to us: it is known that ladies detest calling principles into question, for their charms owe much to the mystery of the signifier.
Which is why Dupin will at last turn toward us the medusoid face of the signifier nothing but whose obverse anyone except the Queen has been able to read. The commonplace of the quotation is fitting for the oracle that face bears in its grimace, as is also its source in tragedy: ". . . Un destin si funeste, / S'il n'est digne d'Atrée, est digne de Thyeste. "
So runs the signifier's answer, above and beyond all significations: "You think you act when I stir you at the mercy of the bonds through which I knot your desires. Thus do they grow in force and multiply in objects, bringing you back to the fragmentation of your shattered childhood. So be it: such will be your feast until the return of the stone guest I shall be for you since you call me forth."
Or, to return to a more moderate tone, let us say, as in the quip with which–along with some of you who had followed us to the Zurich Congress last year–we rendered homage to the local password, the signifier's answer to whoever interrogates it is: "Eat your Dasein."
Is that then what awaits the Minister at a rendezvous with destiny? Dupin assures us of it, but we have already learned not to be too credulous of his diversions.
No doubt the brazen creature is here reduced to the state of blindness which is man's in relation to the letters on the wall that dictate his destiny. But what effect, in calling him to confront them, may we expect from the sole provocations of the Queen, on a man like him? Love or hatred. The former is blind and will make him lay down his arms. The latter is lucid, but will awaken his suspicions. But if he is truly the gambler we are told he is, he will consult his cards a final time before laying them down and, upon reading his hand, will leave the cable in time to avoid disgrace.
Is that all, and shall we believe we have deciphered Dupin's real strategy above and beyond the imaginary tricks with which he was obliged to deceive us? No doubt, yes, for if "any poin requiring reflection," as Dupin states at the start, is "examined to best purpose in the dark," we may now easily read its solution in broad daylight. It was already implicit and easy to derive from the title of our tale, according to the very formula we have long submitted to your discretion: in which the sender, we tell you, receives from the receiver his own message in reverse form. Thus it is that what the "purloined letter" nay, the "letter in sufferance," means is that a letter always arrives at its destination.

The names of ALLAH

noreply@blogger.com (Murni) — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 22:00:00 -0800

1.ALLAH (الله)
2.Al Rahman (الرحمن)
3.Al Rahim (الرحيم)
4.Al Malik (الملك)
5.Al Quddus (القدوس)
6.Al Salam (السلام)
7.Al Mu'min (المؤمن)
8.Al Muhaymin (المهيمن)
9.Al 'Aziz (العزيز)
10.Al Jabbar (الجبار)
11.Al Mutakabbir (المتكبر)
12.Al Khaliq (الخالق)
13.Al Bari' (البارئ)
14.Al Musawwir (المصور)
15.Al Ghaffar (الغفار)
16.Al Qahhar (القهار)
17.Al Wahhab (الوهاب)
18.Al Razzaq (الرزاق)
19.Al Fattah (الفتاح)
20.Al Alim (العليم)
21.Al Qabid (القابض)
22.Al Basit (الباسط)
23.Al Khafid (الخافض)
24.Al Rafi' (الرافع)
25.Al Mu'izz (المعز)
26.Al Mudhill (المذل)
27.Al Sami' (السميع)
28.Al Basir (البصير)
29.Al Hakam (الحكم)
30.Al 'Adl (العدل)
31.Al Latif (اللطيف)
32.Al Khabir (الخبير)
33.Al Halim (الحليم)
34.Al 'Azim (العظيم)
35.Al Ghafur (الغفور)
36.Al Shakur (الشكور)
37.Al 'Ali (العلى)
38.Al Kabir (الكبير)
39.Al Hafiz (الحفيظ)
40.Al Muqit (المقيت)
41.Al Hasib (الحسيب)
42.Al Jalil (الجليل)
43.Al Karim (الكريم)
44.Al Raqib (الرقيب)
45.Al Mujib (المجيب)
46.Al Wasi' (الواسع)
47.Al Hakim (الحكيم)
48.Al Wadud (الودود)
49.Al Majid (المجيد)
50.Al Ba'ith (الباعث)
51.Al Shahid (الشهيد)
52.Al Haqq (الحق)
53.Al Wakil (الوكيل)
54.Al Qawiyy (القوى)
55.Al Matin (المتين)
56.Al Wali (الولى)
57.Al Hamid (الحميد)
58.Al Muhsi (المحصى)
59.Al Mubdi' (المبدئ)
60.Al Mu'id (المعيد)
61.Al Muhyi (المحيى)
62.Al Mumit (المميت)
63.Al Hayy (الحي)
64.Al Qayyum (القيوم)
65.Al Wajid (الواجد)
66.Al Majid (الماجد)
67.Al Wahid (الواحد)
68.Al Samad (الصمد)
69.Al Qadir (القادر)
70.Al Muqtadir (المقتدر)
71.Al Muqaddim (المقدم)
72.Al Mu'akhk (المؤخر)
73.Al Awwal (الأول)
74.Al Akhir (الأخر)
75.Al Zahir (الظاهر)
76.Al Batin (الباطن)
77.Al Wali (الوالي)
78.Al Muta'al (المتعالي)
79.Al Barr (البر)
80.Al Tawwab (التوا )
81.Al Muntaqim (المنتقم)
82.Al 'Afuww (العفو)
83.Al Ra'uf (الرؤوف)
84.Malik al Mulk (مالك) (الملك)
85.Dhu al Jalal wa al Ikram (ذو الجلال و الإكرام)
86.Al Muqsit (المقسط
87.Al Jami' (الجامع)
88.Al Ghani (الغنى)
89.Al Mughni (المغنى)
90.Al Mani'(المانع)
91.Al Darr (الضار)
92.Al Nafi' (النافع)
93.Al Nur (النور)
94.Al Hadi (الهادئ)
95.Al Badi (البديع)
96.Al Baqi (الباقي)
97.Al Warith (الوارث)
98.Al Rashid (الرشيد)
99.Al Sabur (الصبور)

I*S*L*A*M

Islam is a way of life, try it.

Islam is a gift, accept it.

Islam is a journey, complete it.

Islam is a struggle, fight for it.

Islam is a goal, achieve it.

Islam is an opportunity, take it.

Islam is not for sinners, overcome it.

Islam is not a game, don't play with it.

Islam is not a mystery, behold it.

Islam is not for cowards, face it.

Islam is not for the dead, live it.

Islam is a promise, fulfill it.

Islam is a duty, perform it.

Islam is a treasure (the Prayer), pray it.

Islam is a beautiful way of life, see it.

Islam has a message for you, hear it.

Tiga pertanyaan !!

noreply@blogger.com (Murni) — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 21:51:00 -0800

-----Inline Message Follows-----

Ada seorang pemuda yang lama sekolah
di luar negeri, kembali ke tanah
air. Sesampainya di rumah ia meminta
kepada orang tuanya untuk mencari
seorang guru agama, kiyai atau siapa
saja yang bisa menjawab 3
pertanyaannya. Akhirnya orang tua
pemuda itu mendapatkan orang tersebut,
seorang kiyai.

Pemuda : Anda siapa dan apakah bisa
menjawab pertanyaan-pertanyaan saya?
Kiyai : Saya hamba Allah dan dengan
izin-Nya saya akan menjawab
pertanyaan anda.

Pemuda : Anda yakin? Sedangkan
Profesor dan ramai orang yang pintar
tidak mampu menjawab pertanyaan saya.
Kiyai : Saya akan mencoba sejauh
kemampuan saya.

Pemuda : Saya ada 3 pertanyaan:
1.Kalau memang Allah itu ada,tunjukan
wujud Allah kepada saya ?
2.Apakah yang dinamakan takdir ?
3.Kalau syaitan diciptakan dari api
kenapa dimasukan ke neraka yang dibuat
dari api,
tentu tidak menyakitkan buat syaitan.
Sebab mereka memiliki unsur yang sama.
Apakah Allah tidak pernah berfikir
sejauh itu ?

Tiba-tiba kyai tersebut menampar pipi
pemuda tadi dengan keras.

Pemuda : (sambil menahan sakit) Kenapa
anda marah kepada saya?
Kiyai : Saya tidak marah...Tamparan
itu adalah jawaban saya atas 3
pertanyaan
yang anda ajukan kepada saya.

Pemuda : Saya sungguh-sungguh tidak
mengerti.
Kiyai : Bagaimana rasanya tamparan
saya?

Pemuda : Tentu saja saya merasakan
sakit..
Kiyai : Jadi anda percaya bahawa sakit
itu ada?

Pemuda : Ya!
Kiyai : Tunjukan pada saya wujud sakit
itu!

Pemuda : Saya tidak bisa.
Kiyai : Itulah jawaban pertanyaan
pertama...kita semua merasakan
kewujudan Allah tanpa mampu melihat
wujudnya.

Kiyai : Apakah tadi malam anda
bermimpi akan ditampar oleh saya?
Pemuda : Tidak.

Kiyai : Apakah pernah terfikir oleh
anda akan menerima tamparan dari
saya hari ini?
Pemuda : Tidak.

Kiyai : Itulah yang dinamakan takdir.

Kiyai : Terbuat dari apa tangan yang
saya gunakan untuk menampar anda?
Pemuda : Kulit.

Kiyai : Terbuat dari apa pipi anda?
Pemuda : Kulit.

Kiyai : Bagaimana rasanya tamparan
saya?
Pemuda : Sakit.

Kiyai : Walaupun syaitan dijadikan
dari api dan neraka juga terbuat dari
api, jika Allah menghendaki maka
neraka akan menjadi tempat yang
menyakitkan untuk syaitan.

Sekarang anda mempunyai dua pilihan:
1. Biarkan E-mail ini tetap dalam
mailbox anda (..dan kena pula tamparan
dari 'u know who')
2. Forward E-mail ini kepada orang
yang anda kasihi
dan Insya Allah keredhaan Allah akan
dianugerahkan kepada setiap orang
yang anda kirimi.

Wassalam

Ilmu merupakan harta abstrak titipan
Allah Subhanahu wata'ala kepada umat
manusia...

Siapakah Anda?

noreply@blogger.com (Murni) — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 21:47:00 -0800

Original message from WANDA HAMIDAH: Original message from DODO: Siapakah Anda?
Siapakah orang yang sibuk? Orang yang sibuk adalah orang yang suka menyepelekan waktu solatnya seolah-olah ia mempunyai kerajaan seperti kerajaan Nabi Sulaiman a..s
Siapakah orang yang manis senyumannya? Orang yang mempunyai senyuman yang manis adalah orang yang ditimpa musibah lalu dia berkata "Inna lillahi wainna illaihi rajiuun." Lalu sambil berkata,"Ya Rabb, Aku ridha dengan ketentuanMu ini", sambil mengukir senyuman.

Siapakah orang yang kaya? Orang yang kaya adalah orang yang bersyukur dengan apa yang ada dan tidak lupa akan kenikmatan dunia yang sementara ini. Siapakah orang yang miskin? Orang yang miskin adalah orang tidak puas dengan nikmat yang ada selalu menumpuk-numpukkan harta.
Siapakah orang yang rugi? Orang yang rugi adalah orang yang sudah sampai usia pertengahan namun masih berat untuk melakukan ibadat dan amal-amal kebaikan. Siapakah orang yang paling cantik? Orang yang paling cantik adalah orang yang mempunyai akhlak yang baik.

Siapakah orang yang mempunyai rumah yang paling luas? Orang yang mempunyai rumah yang paling luas adalah orang yang mati membawa amal-amal kebaikan di mana kuburnya akan di perluaskan sejauh mata memandang. Siapakah orang yang mempunyai rumah yang sempit lagi dihimpit? Orang yang mempunyai rumah yang sempit adalah orang yang mati tidak membawa amal-amal kebaikkan lalu kuburnya menghimpitnya.

Siapakah orang yang mempunyai akal? Orang yang mempunyai akal adalah orang-orang yang menghuni syurga kelak karena telah menggunakan akal sewaktu di dunia untuk menghindari siksa neraka.
Siapakah org yg PELIT? Orang yang pelit adalah orang yang membiarkan pesan ini tetap di tempatnya tanpa mau berusaha membagi dengan teman sesama muslim

The truth!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Murni) — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 21:35:00 -0800

Jangan simpan kuku panjang walaupun hanya 1 mm atau pun hanya jari kelingking.

Bagi orang Islam adalah tidak sesuai berkuku panjang atas apa alasan sekalipun kerana ia t idak membayangkan kesucian dan ia juga bukan budaya kita apatah lagi menggunakan tangan untuk beristinjak.

Orang Melayu yang berkuku panjang biasanya mempunyai anak yang bodoh atau pun degil dan suka melepak sebab diberi makan bahan kotor yang berada di kuku jari emaknya semasa menyediakan makanan seperti memerah santan kelapa, buat cokodok pisang, u li tepong, dll. Apa ilmu pun yang di ajar pun tak akan boleh diterima masuk ke dalam kepala. Percayalah.

Pasal tabiat berkuku panjang inilah yang membuatkan orang Melayu mundur dan tidak berjaya. Syarikat Melayu yang bangkrap dan rugi teruk adalah kerana mempunyai pekerja dan pemilik yang berkuku panjang.

Untuk yang bujang beringatlah. Kalau hendak cari pasangan dan hendak anak yang pandai dan mendengar kata pilihlah wanita atau lelaki yang sentiasa berkuku pendek. Insya-Allah.

And additional info, kuku panjang mempunyai sejenis kuman seperti yang terdapat dalam najis manusia, iaitu E-Coli. Kuman tersebut tidak akan hilang walaupun kita mencuci tangan dengan sabun. Oleh itu, sentiasalah berkuku pendek untuk kesihatan d an kebersihan diri sendiri

Nasihat Nabi Muhammad Saw. kepada Saidina Ali kw. sesudah Saidina Ali berkahwin dengan Siti Fatimah iaitu anakanda kesayangan Nabi Muhammad Saw.

Nabi Saw. berpesan kepada Saidina Ali iaitu kalau memakai cincin pakail ah di jari
1] jari manis
2] jari kelingking (anak jari)

dan jangan memakai pada jari
1] jari tengah
2] jari telunjuk

Nabi Muhammad saw. melarang kerana memakai cincin pada jari telunjuk dan jari tengah adalah meniru cara berhias kaum yang dilaknat oleh Allah iaitu k aum yang derhaka di zaman Nabi Lut a.s.
Perhatian : Cara memakai cincin adalah termasuk lelaki ataupun perempuan.

p/s: saudara dan saudari, sila nasihatkan kawan-kawan dan juga saudara-mara ataupun anak-anak tentang kaedah yang betul untuk berhias di dalam syariat Islam, kalau tidak sia-sia saja kita mendapat laknat dari Allah Swt. Nabi saw.memakai cincin dan kalau kita memakai cincin dengan niat
mengikut sunnah Nabi saw. dapatlah kita pahala.

Wallahu a'lam Wassalam.

Seorang Teman ,,,,,,,,!!

noreply@blogger.com (Murni) — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 07:48:00 -0700

Tuhan...
Saat aku menyukai
seorang teman,...
Ingatkanlah aku
bahwa akan ada sebuah akhir,...
Sehingga aku tetap
bersama yg Tak Pernah
Berakhir.

Tuhan...
Ketika aku merindukan
seorang kekasih,...
Rindukanlah aku
kepada yang rindu
Cinta Sejati-Mu
Agar kerinduanku
terhadap-Mu
semakin menjadi.

Tuhan...
Jika aku hendak
mencintai seseorang,...
Temukan aku dengan
orang yang mencintai-Mu,...
Agar bertambah kuat
cintaku pada-Mu

bismillah...
Rabbana laa tuziq quluubanaa,..
ba'da idzhadaitanaa
wahablana milladunka rahmaatan
innaka anntalwahabb.

Ya Tuhan kami,
janganlah Engkau jadikan hati
kami condong kepada kesesatan
sesudah Engkau beri petunjuk
kepada kami, dan
karuniakanlah kepada kami
rahmat dari sisi Engkau;
karena sesungguhnya
Engkaulah Maha Pemberi.

Amiinnn ya rabbal 'Aalamiinn...