Fill your life

Psychologies: You show a keen interest in how people search for their own “I”. Why?

Jacques Aren: Jacques Aren: Most of all I am interested in the paradoxical relationship between the concepts of “self” and “other” in the human personality. Today we find ourselves caught between two opposing imperatives: “take care of yourself” and “forget yourself.” Take, for example, relationships in a couple. Many people dream of revealing themselves as a person, but at the same time they expect a lot from their companion: they want him to help them find their own “I”. Now everywhere they say that you need to be independent, but at the same time, many people cannot go through life on their own, without support … My task is to help my patients build their unique personality, define their own identity, not forgetting the importance of the “other”, and then one day they will be able to utter the word “I” meaningfully.

What is it – our “I”?

From the point of view of psychoanalysis, the one who can talk about the history of his life, realizing that it is unique, has found his own “I”. Today I meet many young people who have no access to their own childhood memories. They tell me: “What is there to tell? Nothing special. With parents, everything was like everyone else. ” But how can you build a personality based only on the present? Even before starting the analysis, I suggest that they take an interest in where their grandparents are buried, what kind of anecdotes they liked to tell in the family … Only when they begin to understand that their personal history is voluminous, that it is woven from accidents, sorrows and joys, you can proceed to classical analytical work.

Do you think this is a relatively new problem?

In times Freud the suffering of the neurotic was obvious, and the hidden conflicts appeared at the very beginning of the analysis … My patients, like many of our contemporaries, live in a fog and do not feel suffering. They do not seem to experience conflicts, but rather a vague malaise. Many say that they feel like spectators at the performance of their own lives. They know neither true despair nor true pleasure. One might think of it as a symptom of depression, but when things like this are ubiquitous, it becomes a cultural phenomenon: people feel cut off from themselves. In essence, there is not much difference between real and imaginary existence, except for one thing: the imaginary is uninhabited. The existence of many of our contemporaries is imaginary – in the sense that there is no one inside this existence.

How is it shown?

Some people are unable to articulate what they really like, unable to express their hopes, unable to make even a minimal plan for the future. I just remembered one young man. He is very nice, but making an appointment with him is absolutely impossible: he simply cannot foresee what he will do in the next 48 hours … He is not able to link together the different states of his “I” for three days, he cannot carry out elementary decisions of his own …

Is it so important?

30 years ago, it seemed to people that such “marginal” characters would quickly go into circulation, they were considered very vulnerable. However, today we see that a person with a weak, unstable “I” can also survive. Like many of my patients, this young man has a job and a personal life. This fluidity of the “I” may even have some positive aspects: on a spiritual level, these people are able to experience lightning-fast transformation (the problem is then to stick to the chosen path), besides, they know how to deeply doubt themselves …

How do you explain this “fragmentation of personality”?

To become yourself, you must not be afraid to face reality. It is she who shows us our limits: if you are a man, then you cannot be a woman, or, for example, “it would be nice to go to law school, but only three hundred people a year go there” … These truths, which used to be self-evident, today have ceased to be so, because everyone thinks they are omnipotent. Why? First of all, because of the invasion of the virtual world. I have nothing against the “picture” in itself, but I am worried that a person no longer has time to “digest” fiction, to master the fruits of someone else’s fantasy. On the other hand, we think that our desires can be fulfilled. Those who do not want to endure pain take an analgesic, and those who are afraid of agony ask for euthanasia … Meanwhile, to think that every problem has a solution means to pass by an instructive life experience, namely, by a collision with our own impotence.

And how can this collision help us if we want to become ourselves?

There is a certain quality of reality, its condensation, which is revealed to us only in situations of impotence. What to do when it turns out that the children did not grow up as we expected? Or when you realize you’re getting old? To live in such a way as to experience the maximum possible in every single moment and thereby feel the limits of our human existence means to give our life a special quality, which consists in the pleasure of being ourselves.

Are you saying that suffering brings us to reality?

Yes, unless it crushes you and unless you look for it yourself. Some trials cleanse us. One man told me that he realized he was a father only when he began to live apart from his family. He discovered that he connected him with the children, and may have understood why he fled from them when they were still living together. As time passes, we often notice that trials have allowed us to touch aspects of our “I” that we did not know about when we lived in a normal mode, as if behind an armor.

Tests show a person what he is capable of?

More than that: they reveal its originality, originality. According to the English psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas, each of us has our own special way of going through trials.

You have worked a lot on the modern phenomenon of the “erased” image of the father. Can this explain the difficulties that young people face in trying to find their “I”?

Before the eyes of young people today there are no solid and unshakable parental figures, but only fragmentary ideas. But how can a person succeed if there is no longer a conflict between “fathers and children”? Now young people rely more on their peers, relationships with friends and all the cultural space that is being created around them are especially important for them. This group “Super-I” is an economic and social reality and has nothing to do with what it was 20 years ago. We live in a society where personality is built not on the basis of relations between different generations, as before, but within one generation. Or, even worse, the young become models for those who are older.

What then is the main responsibility of parents?

Understand what they want to pass on to their children and recognize that parent-child relationships are not symmetrical.

In your opinion, a person is not born by himself, but becomes one?

What we are comes into being gradually. And when we finally become ourselves, we feel that we have reached the goal. It is interesting to draw a parallel with genetics: the whole person is not recorded in the genes, but some of his features are set from the very beginning. I think that mental life works in much the same way. Everyone has a certain originality that you need to discover in yourself. In literary characters, it is often symbolically expressed by some kind of mark, for example, a scar on the forehead, like in Harry Potter. The scar appeared at the very beginning of his life and meant that he would become a wizard. Harry finds himself in a situation that he cannot handle, but people feel that he always has a choice, so the decision always depends on his conscience. This idea – to search for one’s own path, one’s own desires, taking into account others and one’s personal history – is also relevant for us. And, even if something is given to us from the very beginning, we are defined by the actions we take and the choices we make.