What is seen

 

 Félix sits down, places an image between him and Lucian, looks at it for a long moment, then says calmly:
— What do you see, Lucian?
— I see two large parrots dominating the centre of the image. They take up a great deal of space, almost like statues or deities. Around and in front of them, I see a multitude of small costumed figures, very stylised, with exaggerated movements (raised arms, bent bodies, unbalanced poses). At the very bottom, in the centre: a large open book. From this book seems to rise a sort of ramp/branch/tortuous path that crosses the image diagonally. The scenery is made of organic shapes, swirling, like plants, waves, or roots. I also see several large red discs that could evoke suns or spotlights.

— If you agree, I will begin simply by saying what I see.

Lucian, surprised, cannot help asking where this image comes from. Félix replies:
— What we exchanged during our last session disturbed me… deeply. I tried, like Igniatius and like you, to represent our situation in something other than words. It is only an attempt… one of those attempts that tells you what you secretly want to hear… I know, yes, I know, it is not very orthodox, but sometimes it works. Would you like to know what I deduced from it? You’ll see—it has everything to do with your… well… with our problem. Forgive me for calling it that.

Lucian, astonished and doubtful, does not know what to think.

— As if I knew nothing of your patient, nothing of the authors he seems to summon—Kafka, Ouaknin or whoever—I decided to act. I went to the gallery you told me about… and I am showing you what I found there, what you and I now have before our eyes.

— There, in the lower part of the image, a book, a large book, is open. But the book is not resting on a table, nor held by hands. It floats on something that looks like coiled waves.

Already something is unfolding: the book—normally the symbol of stable knowledge, of Law, of foundational text—here has no solid support. It drifts. It is on the verge of being carried off, submerged.

The waves are not simple waves. They have an almost spiral shape: appearing, folding back, reforming while coiling around themselves. One has the impression of a cyclical movement, like affects or thoughts that return endlessly in slightly altered forms. And, an important detail: near each wave, as if bound to it, a small flame. Water and fire side by side, without destroying each other. Contradictory, yet coexisting. You hear already what this might say of the psyche, don’t you? Opposing drives that neutralise and reactivate one another.

Lucian nods and lets him continue.

— And then, above all, from this book rises a great flame.
But if you follow this flame with your eyes, it is not only fire.
It is also a path, a trajectory, a ramp on which figures stand. The book does not only contain text; it produces a path… but a burning, unstable path, twisting, capable of going out at any moment… and yet one that illuminates the scene.

— If I think of Ouaknin—you know his “burning book”—I could say: here, to read, to think, to remember, is to burn the very support. The flame feeds on the book, causes it to disappear, and forces a new reading each time. Nothing is ever fixed. Nothing is ever definitively known.

Lucian, intrigued, listens with great attention.

 

 

— Let me return to the waves with their little flames. It seems each wave has its twin flame. The water forms, disappears, returns. The flame forms, disappears, returns. One might see in this the image of a very alive Id, a pulsional ground that never stabilises, never allows itself to be locked away. It is not a deadly Id. It is an Id in loops, rhythmic, archaic… but alive. And the book, resting upon it, must contend with that. Like your patient Igniatius, who tries to hold an inner text, a narrative, but atop a sea of excitations rising, falling, returning almost endlessly.

Félix’s gaze travels upward in the drawing.

— Higher up: a rope. Stretched between two edges we do not see. The past on one side, the future on the other, if you like. In any case, two points outside the frame… because there is a frame. The patient does not draw that past or that future. He is in the present.

— On this rope sit two large parrots. Not one—two. Always this logic of the double. They face each other, or nearly so. The parrot is the one who repeats. He repeats a discourse that is not his. One can hear in him the Superego: learned phrases, injunctions, judgements coming from outside but ending up inhabiting the inside.

 

 — Here, the parrots are enormous, disproportionate. They dominate the scene and perch on the fragile wire that serves as passage. Thus, for the subject to advance on his line, he is exposed to the peril of the gaze and of repetition. And since they are two, one might think: this Superego is not unified. It is duplicated, perhaps contradictory, perhaps redundant. Two voices, two judges, two echoes.

— Tell me, Félix—what… or who do these parrots represent?
— All things in due time, Lucian…

Félix points to the figure on the rope.

— There, to the right of the parrots, a small figure walks in balance. He looks somewhat like Pinocchio: a puppet-body, almost wooden, not quite human yet.

 

 — A beautiful metaphor of the Ego: an Ego in construction, not fully incarnated, not fully assured of its existence. An Ego trying to stand between two unseen extremes, under the gaze of these two parrot-Superegos. Pinocchio is also the one who lies, who plays a role, who wants to become a “real boy.” So, one may imagine that your patient, too, is caught between the need to show himself and the fear of being caught in a falsehood, of being ‘fake.’ Walking the tightrope is to exist. Falling would perhaps be a psychic collapse.

Félix traces back down toward the flame.

— Above this flame-path—perhaps even playing with it—two characters in tuxedos, without jackets. I think of them as K.’s assistants. They are auxiliary Ego figures: always moving, always busy, often absurdly so. They bustle about, but one does not quite understand why. Psychically, they resemble defence mechanisms: working, running, juggling, trying to organise, but with limited effectiveness because the overall scene is too complex. And they are two again. Thus, again, an Ego that does not support itself on a single axis, but multiplies itself in order to hold together: two aides, two mirrors, two relays. As if one Ego were not enough.*

Félix falls silent. Lucian seems lost in thought.

— Are you listening, Lucian?
— I follow you, Félix… but that doesn’t mean I agree with everything…
— We are far from finished with this image… We shall continue tomorrow, Lucian…

* Franz Kafka, The Castle