Table Of ContentPsychoanalytic Pure War: Interactions with the
Post-Apocalyptic Unconscious
Mark B. Borg
Journal for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society, Volume 8,
Number 1, Spring 2003, pp. 57-67 (Article)
Published by The Ohio State University Press
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/psy.2003.0004
For additional information about this article
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/40697
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Psychoanalytic Pure War:
Interactions with the Post-Apocalyptic Unconscious1
Mark B. Borg, Jr.
Paul Virilio and Sylvere Lotringer’s concept of “pure tence of nuclear armaments) that imposes the dread
war” refers to the potential of a culture to destroy characteristic of a pure war psychology but the belief
itself completely (12).2We as psychoanalysts can—and systems that this capacity sets up. Psychological sur-
increasingly must—explore the impact of this concept vival requires that a way be found (at least uncon-
on our practice, and on the growing number of pa- sciously) to escape inevitable destruction—it requires a
tients who live with the inability to repress or dissoci- way out—but this enforces an irresolvable paradox, be-
ate their experience and awareness of the pure war con- cause the definition of pure war culture is that there is
dition. The realization of a patient’s worst fears in no escape. Once people believe in the external possibil-
actual catastrophic events has always been a profound ity—at least those people whose defenses cannot han-
enough psychotherapeutic challenge. These days, how- dle the weight of the dread that pure war imposes—
ever, catastrophic events not only threaten friends, pure war becomes an internal condition, a perpetual
family, and neighbors; they also become the stuff of state of preparation for absolute destruction and for
endless repetitions and dramatizations on radio, televi- personal, social, and cultural death.
sion, and Internet.3Such continual reminders of death The tragedy at the World Trade Center in New
and destruction affect us all. What is the role of the an- York City has given us a bitter but important opportu-
alyst treating patients who live with an ever-threaten- nity to study the effects of the pure war condition on
ing sense of the pure war lying just below the surface of individuals. It allows us to look at how this all-encom-
our cultural veneer? passing state appears in psychoanalytic treatment and
At the end of the First World War, the first “total to observe its influence through the analysis of trans-
war,” Walter Benjamin observed that “nothing [after ference/countertransference dynamics. The pure war
the war] remained unchanged but the clouds, and be- condition has been brought grimly to consciousness.
neath these clouds, in a field of force of destructive tor- In this paper, I will explore how it manifests itself in
rents and explosions, was the tiny, fragile human society, in character, and most specifically in the psy-
body”(84). Julia Kristeva makes a similar note about choanalytic treatment of one patient whose dynamics
our contemporary situation, “The recourse to atomic highlight significant aspects of the pure war state.
weapons seems to prove that horror...can rage ab- How does treatment happen when, at some level,
solutely” (232). And, as if he too were acknowledging we perceive ourselves as already dead? Whatever our
this same fragility and uncontainability, the French individual differences, our visions of the psychoana-
politician Georges Clemenceau commented in the con- lytic endeavor arise out of the social defense of the cul-
text of World War I that “war is too serious to be con- ture within which we live and work (I have referred to
fined to the military” (qtd. in Virilio and Lotringer 15). this as “community character,” cf. Borg 350). And
Virilio and Lotringer gave the name “pure war”to whatever our individual differences, in a pure war situ-
the psychological condition that results when people ation the primary taskis simply to sustain the dream of
know that they live in a world where the possibility for psychic survival. The case of Joyce, who saw the first
absolute destruction (e.g., nuclear holocaust) exists. As explosion at the World Trade Center as she rode down
Virilio and Lotringer see it, it is not the technological Fifth Avenue in a bus after her session with me, exem-
capacity for destruction (that is, for example, the exis- plifies this task.
JPCS:Journal for the Psychoanalysis of Culture & Society, Volume 8, Number 1, Spring 2003
copyright © 2003 by The Ohio State University
58 Mark B. Borg, Jr.
THE PURE WARRIOR enact a perpetual preparation for war—the notion of
The philosophy (or practice) of “pure warriors,” that peace is itself a defensive fantasy, although to survive
is, of people who are preoccupied with the pure war psychically we distract ourselves from such frightening
condition of their society, is based on the perpetual stimuli as widespread terrorist activities and other
failure within them of the dissociation and repression events that demonstrate our pure war status. Pure war
that allow others to function in a situation that is oth- obliterates the distinction between soldier and citizen.
erwise completely overwhelming. Joyce was one of We have all been drafted. According to Virilio and
those who lived on the border of life and death; she Lotringer, “All of us are already civilian soldiers, with-
could not escape awareness of that dread dichotomy out knowing it...War happens everywhere, but we no
that most of us are at great pains to dissociate. She longer have the means of recognizing it” (42).
manifested the state of perpetual preparation that is Some of us do, though, and Joyce was one of
the hallmark of pure war culture and of the insuffi- those. And even the rest of us occasionally catch a
ciently defended pure warrior, and also a constant glimpse of the pure war condition in the dark light of
awareness of the nearness of death in all its various such acute traumatic events as aircraft hijackings, race
forms. She understood quite well, for instance, that riots, “ethnic cleansings,” the World Trade Center Dis-
when people are institutionalized (as she had been on aster, and suicide bombings. As precise psychoanalytic
numerous occasions), “society is defining them as so- interpretations illuminate well-entrenched personal
cially dead, [and that at that point] the essential task to psychological defenses, so acute traumas and disasters
be carried out is to help inmates to make their transi- may highlight the massive insecurities that lie beneath
tion from social death to physical death” (Miller and the surface of an otherwise well-protected cultural
Gwynne 74). Against this backdrop, Joyce sought psy- exterior.
choanalysis as a “new world,” the place where she
would break free from the deathly institutionalized as-
ORIGINS OF THE PSYCHOANALYTIC
pects of her self, and begin her life anew. Her search for
STUDY OF PURE WAR
a “new world” included the possibility of a world that
A precursor to the notion of pure war can be seen in a
was not a pure war world—a prelapsarian Eden.
comment made by Freud in the aftermath of the First
Virilio and Lotringer state that “war exists in its
World War:
preparation” (53). And Sun Tsu, who wrote over 2400
years ago and yet is often considered the originator of The primitive fear of death is still strong within us
modern warfare, said in The Art of War, “Preparation and always ready to come to the surface on any
everywhere means lack everywhere” (44). This means provocation. Most likely, our fear still implies the
that when the members of a culture must be on guard old belief that the dead man becomes the enemy of
on all fronts, the resources of that culture are necessar- his survivor and seeks to carry him off to share his
ily scattered and taxed. The more defenses are induced new life with him. (242)
and enacted, the more psychologically impoverished a
That is, through the constant preparation for war de-
culture (or a person) will be. In war-torn nations, re-
manded by the pure war condition and the enactments
sources like food, clothing, and materials for shelter
that such preparation entails, we “share” our lives with
may be scarce in the general population because they
the dead.
are shunted off to the military. Similarly, the hoarding
Winnicott’s description of “fear of breakdown” is a
of psychological resources and the constant alert status
related vision, addressing fear of a previous, rather than
of the defense system are outcomes of existence in a
a future, event (103). In his view, haunting of the liv-
pure war culture. We can see this scattering and
ing by the dead relates to past, current, and ongoing
scarcity of resources occurring already in the United
conditions of internalized pure war, rather than to ac-
States as billions of dollars are shunted from social ser-
tual or certain future events:
vices to war efforts and homeland security.
In pure war cultures—that is, in cultures that It must be asked here: why does the patient go on
Psychoanalytic Pure War 59
being worried by this that belongs to the past? The communicating the message, “See? Everything’s really
answer must be that the original experience of OK after all.”
primitive agony cannot get into the past tense un- Patients like Joyce end up in our offices when such
less the ego can first gather it into its own present reassurance becomes impossible. The specters with
and into omnipotent control now. (105) whom we share our (internal) lives perpetually
threaten to retaliate, the harbingers of pure war. As we
In pure war, omnipotence is shattered. Winnicott share our lives with them, they share their deaths with
speaks to a timelessness in the unconscious, and indeed us, pulling away the covers under which we keep our
pure war represents the ultimate end point of the ego’s own internalized and dissociated personal visions of
once seemingly infinite timeline. As in Winnicott’s no- total annihilation.
tion of fear of breakdown, we cannot ward off pure war Some of us manage to catch glimpses of the pure
without anticipating it, and we cannot anticipate it war reality and hold onto them long enough to report
without its being already there, forming our horizon. them before the familiar processes of defense kick in.
In a similar vein, Sullivan delineated the interper- G. Brock Chisholm was a psychiatrist who looked the
sonal security operations that people call upon to inat- reality of pure war in the eye after the dropping of the
tend to or dissociate from the internal conditions (that atom bomb on Hiroshima. Chisholm organized a con-
is, anxiety) inherent in unbearable states of preparation ference titled “The Tensions That Cause Wars,” and he
(Interpersonal Theory 110). Both selective inattention wrote:
and dissociation are security operations that circum-
As mundane distance shriveled into insignificance
vent awareness of anxiety. Without them, as psychoan-
in the eddies of radioactive matter which swept
alysts know, the recollected dreaded primitive experi-
space around the earth, so also did the swathings
ences appear to be returning in approaching future
of immaterial fictions and habitual evasions with
events. This entrapping feedback loop, which is the
which everyone had been methodically en-
plight of the anxious individual, can be seen on a larger
wrapped. The peoples of the world, wherever lan-
scale in the pure war culture. All we need for the pure
guage reaches, caught a glimpse of Reality, felt
war condition to exist is the belief in apocalyptic possi-
with whatever terror a moment of insight into
bility—and our global culture and its technology of
alike the miniscule and the magnificent Human
communication bolster this belief day by day, indeed
Being. (85)
minute by minute.
From their individual viewpoints, therefore, Sullivan responded to this commentary by asking sar-
Freud, Winnicott, and Sullivan each described facets of donically, “Do we want nearly everyone to die in order
the pure war condition. They outlined the processes by that the human race may begin all over? It is seemly
which it may be translated into patterns of interaction that we, momentarily honorable among the builders of
with the environment (individuals, institutions, etc.), the future, shall further by irresponsibility a schizo-
and they examined the repetition/enactment of these phrenic dream of death and rebirth” (“Remobilization”
processes in the transference. A person’s attitude to- 244). Like Joyce, Sullivan was traversing the life/death
ward his or her environment (of which one representa- tightrope—dreaming of “new beginnings”—in the
tion is the analyst) is inevitably made up of transferen- context of Chisholm’s grisly glimpse of “Reality.” But
tial appraisals, which are formed initially and notwithstanding his characteristic sarcasm, even Sulli-
maintained afterward in cultural as well as familial van in his focus on rebirth may have been denying the
contexts. Of course, to the degree that pure war is an pure war reality that Chisholm let himself see.
internal condition, reaction to it may be observed in all
forms of psychological defense: sublimation, dissocia- PURE WAR AND CHARACTER
tion, repression, splitting, obsessive-compulsive behav- I understand character as the repetitive interpersonal
iors, and so on. Each one of these processes addresses behaviors or interactive patterns that typify a person’s
the underlying terror of the pure war perception by sense of self. These adaptive/defensive interactive pat-
60 Mark B. Borg, Jr.
terns form a personality structure stable enough to Schizophrenia is a process that breaks with what
pursue security and the satisfaction of needs even in Deleuze and Guattari call “molar formations” (Anti-
the face of anxiety (e.g., A. Cooper 721; Sullivan, In- Oedipus 128): modes of thought that have been cap-
terpersonal Theoryesp. 42–43, 267–268). They may re- tured by the rules and regulations sanctioned by con-
quire reinforcement, however, when access to security sensus in a population—the familial, community, and
and satisfaction is fundamentally threatened. Given re- societal standards and expectations, the “Thou Shalts”
lationships (between parent and child, for example), or and “Thou Shalt Nots” of a culture. Once a person has
specific communities (as in prejudices, taboos, laws, experienced a break, he or she becomes in Deleuze and
sanctioned rules of conduct, or cultural norms) may Guattari’s terms “molecular” (213) or “deterritorial-
pose such threats. Our contemporary global commu- ized,”5 and is then an outlier to those standards (in
nity is constantly demonstrating for us threats against their terms, a “nomad” [Thousand Plateaus 54–55]).
societies and peoples, documenting the unrelenting Or, in the terms of their translator and student, Brian
environment of threat in which we live. The devasta- Massumi, “a [molar] structure is defined by what es-
tion of life in Israel by the recent suicide bombings capes it—[supermolecularizedindividuals, schizophren-
there has given us a rare glimpse of what we could ex- ics, for example]” (Massumi 57).
pect in an ongoing “war on terror,” however defen- Accordingly, Massumi says: “Schizophrenia is a
sively we might call such a war “Enduring Freedom.” breakaway into the unstable equilibrium of continuing
The ways that the pure war mode manifests itself self-invention” (92) (as opposed to invention by soci-
in societies can be understood through the concept of ety and its prescriptions). For the schizophrenic (“out
community character: like an individual, communities for a walk”) model to work, this supermolecular ap-
or cultures (especially in the context of chronic proach to living has to exist outside the power dynam-
trauma) can develop characteristic ways of interacting ics of the pure war system (the system that maintains
that work to maintain security and decrease awareness the capacity of some to inflict annihilation on others).
of overwhelming levels of anxiety within the culture This is exactly why such a painful state as schizophre-
(Borg 347).4These repetitive ways of interacting often nia can at times appear to be a seductive alternative to
manifest in rules, regulations, taboos, and stereotypes. the constraints of conventional socialization. It can
This implies that character formation based on adjust- seem as if the only alternative to a break (-down) of
ment to a pathological society can produce psy- this or some other kind is conformity and subscription
chopathology by two related mechanisms. Ours is a so- to the pure war character. In his introduction to Anti-
ciety in which some people suffer from an inability to Oedipus, Foucault describes this conformity as “the fas-
adapt while others suffer from the compromises they cism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behav-
have made in the service of adaptation. Examples of ior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire
the former are easily found in psychiatric hospitals; the the very thing that dominates and exploits us” (xiii).
symptomatic compromise of the latter are visible, for A looming question remains, particularly for ana-
instance, in the degeneration of corporate ethics, a lysts doing clinical work: how to use these concepts to
growing tolerance of cruelty, and the tendency to tar- help their patients deal with the problems that bring
get and scapegoat criminals without accounting for the them into treatment. Deleuze and Guattari suggest
criminogenic environments that sustain crime as a re- that societies and their members may be characterized
action to intolerable living conditions. The ultimate on a continuum that stretches between the absolute
pathological compromise is the acceptance of these limit-points of fascism-paranoia and anarchy-schizo-
and similar behaviors as the norm. Perhaps this pro- phrenia. At the fascist-paranoid pole are the indoctri-
vides a context for a statement made by French cultural nating, colonizing maneuvers that lead to social con-
theorists Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari: that in trol and conformity, while the anarchy-schizophrenia
such a society “a schizophrenic out for a walk is a bet- pole stretches the limits of life’s possibilities and per-
ter model [for living] than a neurotic lying on the ana- ceives the world as an infinitely open system (Thou-
lyst’s couch” (Anti-Oedipus2). sand Plateaus 10–11). In their view, schizophrenia is
Psychoanalytic Pure War 61
not a metaphor. They view schizophrenics as lone no- Joyce claimed numerous physical (diabetes, epilepsy,
mads whose thinking processes are capable of challeng- cardiac dysrhythmias) as well as emotional (depression,
ing a fascist system. While this can be a seductive per- loneliness, rage) problems, but she said that she was
spective, it is also highly romanticized, and few more interested in making use of the capacities that she
clinicians who are intimately familiar with the ravages still had than in focusing endlessly on those that she
of schizophrenia could literally advocate for becoming lacked.
a schizophrenic, especially in a fascist society. I am, In her initial evaluation, Joyce described her life in
therefore, presenting an unresolved tension between institutions. She felt that she had to fight to make any
the view of schizophrenia as clinical entity (and a kind of decisions about her daily life (when to go to
metaphor) and the sort of experiment in thinking seen bed, who would be her roommate, etc.). This made her
in Deleuze and Guattari’s work. very angry, but at the same time she was almost totally
In this vein, Lynne Layton (esp. Ch. 1 and 5) has dependent upon the very institutions (Medicare, her
presented a helpful critique of the ways in which many community residence, etc.) that she felt were taking
postmodern theorists (including Deleuze and Guattari away her freedom, especially when they imposed upon
3) celebrate and romanticize processes such as identity her frequent and involuntary admissions to local psy-
fluidity and fragmentation while disavowing the possi- chiatric hospitals. The anti-psychiatrist David Cooper
ble traumatic underpinnings (often related to physical has said that “those admitted into a psychiatric hospital
and/or sexual abuse), relational etiologies, and reper- are admitted not so much because they are sick, as be-
cussions of such processes. The question that emerges cause they are protesting in a more or less adequate
is whether or not analysts inevitably push their patients way against the social order” (48–49).
into social conformity in their (sometimes desperate) This was how Joyce felt. She lived with intensely
efforts to “cure.” Or, as Layton wonders (personal conflicted feelings of defiant dependency about the
communication), can analysts strive for something system within which she felt, and was, constrained. As
else, like helping patients find less self-destructive ways these feelings were enacted in her analysis, we began to
to resist conformity, and thereby avoid the pathologies recognize a social system based on a “warehousing ide-
of both rebellion against (psychosis and paranoia) and ology”—that is, a system for “storing” those that do
adaptation to (dysthymia, i.e., resignation) the pure not fit into the “molar formation.” This system served
war world? I continue to work with the notion that solely “to prolong physical life” (Miller and Gwynne
this is possible, while realizing that, perhaps, these 71)—at least that was the only benefit that accrued to
questions are never finally answerable. Joyce. She perceived correctly that reimbursement pro-
cedures (SSDI, Medicare, Medicaid) made her admis-
ANALYSIS IN PURE WAR sions profitable to her keepers, and that the result was a
Joyce is a thirty-nine-year-old Jewish New Yorker who self-serving institutional system that was apathetic (if
“snuck” her way into my office, as she put it. When she not actively hostile) to her actual needs. Joyce was also
contacted the psychoanalytic clinic where I work, she acutely aware that upon entry into an institution she
represented herself as a psychiatrist seeking a referral entered the realm of the socially rejected. Miller and
for an analyst who accepted Medicare. Some months Gwynne have addressed this experience:
into her treatment, she explained to me that she had an
“infamous history,” including many therapists and By crossing the boundary into the institution they
psychiatric hospitalizations, and she felt certain that no [those institutionalized] have demonstrated that
one who knew about it would give her an “adequate” they lack any role that is socially valued in the out-
referral. She had long been labeled schizoaffective, and side world…They are defined as social dropouts,
she had recently endured an extremely painful separa- parasitical upon the wider society…The harsh re-
tion from her previous therapist of two years. She told ality, therefore, is that by the very fact of commit-
me that she needed psychological treatment as a condi- ting them to institutions, society is in effect defin-
tion of remaining housed at her community residence. ing them as socially dead. (73–74)
62 Mark B. Borg, Jr.
Thus, schizophrenia may be, in part, the lot of vet- my patient, it was not until the day of the World Trade
erans of the hard-won battle of acknowledging, disso- Center attack that she was hospitalized during her
ciating from, accepting, and rebelling against the pure analysis with me. On September 11, Joyce had at-
war condition. tended an early morning analytic session and then
Psychological defense generally does a fairly decent caught a bus to go to an appointment with the social
job of maintaining a separation between our current security administration. Going downtown on Fifth Av-
state of being alive and our future state of being dead; enue, she saw from the bus window the explosion as
this separation allows us to function. However, when the first plane hit the World Trade Center. She told me
an analyst steps outside of this consensually valid disso- that she watched quietly while others on the bus
ciation to interact with a patient who has done the screamed out in horror. But when she got to her ap-
same, the awareness of pure war erupts into the con- pointment she too began screaming, and was promptly
sciousness of both. The analytic engagement coalesces transported to a nearby psychiatric hospital.
around the reality that we are likely to remain in a state Joyce had begun her analysis a year earlier with the
of pure war for the duration of our lives, and so we are statement that “I feel as if I have been dumped into the
challenged to grapple with our own anxieties about de- mental health system as a schizophrenic, and that there
terioration, annihilation, and death. is no return.” She had an inability to repress that left
Organizational theorists posit that social systems her with the flotsam and jetsam of thoughts and affects
can provide useful (also not so useful) defenses against that result when there are massive failures of defensive
anxiety (Jaques 478; Menzies 95). Most people belong functioning; if she thought it or felt it, odds were she
to many social systems, but some, who, like Joyce, are was acting on it. A major question in the first year was
condemned to existence within institutions, belong to whether analysis would be able to contain the affect
few. In cases such as hers, the analytic relationship be- and content that flooded her, and this question became
comes the representative of these missing social sys- more pressing after September 11.
tems. For Joyce, the issue of maintaining a relationship Joyce called my answering service from the hospi-
with any system upon which she feels dependent was tal in a terrified fantasy that I had been killed at the
complicated, as the social systems in her life, far from World Trade Center. Even after I told her that I was
reinforcing her defenses, have clearly served to exacer- unharmed, she continued calling my voice mail dozens
bate her anxiety. We therefore had to resist the tempta- of time each day for several days, maintaining the fan-
tion to make me, the analyst, a “leader” who erodes the tasy that I was endangering myself through volunteer
ego functioning of his patient by identifying himself work, which, she imagined, was taking place amidst
with an ill-functioning system (like a psychiatric hospi- the debris. Joyce’s consistent problems around bound-
tal), already perceived by her as incapable of contain- aries were another manifestation of her projective ten-
ing her terrifying experience. When we managed to do dencies. For instance, she would leave innumerable
so, we were able to work toward sustaining awareness “emergency” messages on my voice-mail, often claim-
of the extremely uncomfortable reality that results ing that her sole intention was to “save our relation-
when institutional structures cannot deal with ex- ship.” The combination of her flooding paranoid
tremely anxiety-provoking (i.e., pure war) existence. processes and her poor boundary maintenance gave
her a terrible potential for pure war perception—that
ATTACK AND CONFINEMENT is, for the awareness of the flimsy lines that separate
Pure war dynamics played out in many subtle ways be- fantasy from reality, inside from outside, murderer
tween Joyce and me through the first year of her four- from murdered, and, most especially, present from fu-
times-weekly psychoanalytic treatment. But they came ture. The future, in this case, was infected by her
into the treatment relationship full force after the Sep- awareness (profoundly realized on September 11) that
tember 11 terrorist attack on New York City, where I absolute destruction is possible.
am in practice. Although Joyce had been psychiatri- It seemed to me sometimes that Joyce existed to
cally hospitalized numerous times before she became challenge (if not to sustain an ongoing hostile attack
Psychoanalytic Pure War 63
upon) the social order, as it had been imparted to and tems that sustained her; she would call for help, and
imposed upon her. She challenged this order in her ses- these “emergency” calls would often result in the next
sions in many ways, attacking the professionals whom hospitalization. This is all the more poignant in view of
she’d “hired” to treat her, for example, with a facile her feeling that in their deaths her parents had been
combination of criticism, profanity, and flatulence. We failed by the medical system that they had served.
talked about the fact that it often seemed as if she had Realistically Joyce did not have anyone to protect
challenged the social order so long and so hard that she her, and she consistently tried to put me into the
had “forgotten the rules,” and so was infinitely per- treacherous (i.e., idealized) transferential position of
plexed when the system fought back. She was obsessed protector. To protect requires authority, however, and
by sexual, aggressive, and rebellious impulses that cov- as Shea and Wilson note, “Every act of authority is, in
ered the entire span of psychosexual development. fact, an invasion of the psychic and physical territory
Joyce consistently made clear after September 11 of another” (793). She envied everyone who had the
her acute awareness of the struggle that she felt within foundation that she felt she lacked (and actually did),
herself “between life and death.” In some ways this and her envy was so intense that her life had become a
struggle was literally true; she did have severe physical process of tearing other people apart. She did this in
problems. Joyce had diabetes; her mother had died of her mind (especially with regard to my other patients,
this disease and had lost both of her legs to it in an am- whom she refers to as schvartzas and faggots), and
putation shortly before she died, a falling apart that often in reality as well: she had a track record of report-
resonated deeply in Joyce. But there was a symbolic ing her physicians to state boards and developing com-
struggle as well. Both of her parents had been well plicated litigation scenarios that she sent to prospective
known and respected physicians, and Joyce felt that lawyers, and once to the White House. It was our ex-
her mother in particular quite literally had a power ploration of these attack patterns that revealed the first
over life and death, over coherence and chaos, that glimmerings of her pure war condition.
could be shared or withdrawn at will. Joyce’s mother As we began to outline Joyce’s preoccupation with
had died when Joyce was seventeen, and the world fell destroying and being destroyed, she made it clear that
apart for her. Her father died a month later, having lost her capacity to focus was being derailed by a growing
his own power source, and Joyce’s siblings (one of obsessive awareness of her vagina. Joyce told me that
whom is her twin) then turned upon her, “attacking she had engaged in compulsive masturbation since her
and destroying” her (by sending her to her first psychi- teens. But it was only after the World Trade Center dis-
atric hospital) after that. They also ensured that Joyce aster that she began to reveal her fascination with her
would never have access to her inheritance. vagina, her masturbatory practices, and her associated
Joyce’s vision of her mother’s power, and the acute- fantasies. Upon her return from the hospital a week
ness and catastrophic results of her loss, led Joyce to ex- after September 11, she began to discuss the details of
tremely complicated relationships with power/author- her “hours and hours” of daily masturbation. Joyce had
ity figures. The police and fire fighters, for example, never had any sexual contact because she was terrified of
were heroes for their bravery on September 11and rep- being penetrated by a violent and uncontrollable penis
resented to her potential sources of “salvation.” But or being infected by diseased vaginas. Her fantasies fre-
they were also the people who constantly “fucked” her quently included packs of men wielding knife-penises
(by getting her hospitalized) through their inhospitable who are coming to rape her. She also believed that the
responses to the 911 calls she makes perpetually when vaginas of other women carried diseases that would in-
she feels anxious. When her needs for salvation are not fect and destroy her. However, her fantasies about
met, Joyce feels abused and powerless. She had come to women also conjured up more nurturing scenarios that
believe that people with status use their power to abuse were made safe, in part, by their focus on non-contact
her, and that she possessed neither the tools nor the parallel masturbation rather than direct physical con-
status to prevent the abuse. To her way of thinking, she tact. She began her discussion of the masturbation and
received abuse from the very medical and social sys- her related fantasy life by presenting a dream:
64 Mark B. Borg, Jr.
I was masturbating on the driveway of my family course, at the core of the paranoid process. This rage
home and became embarrassed when I noticed was motivated by her intolerable feelings of growing
that there was water flowing underneath my feet dependence on me. After all, the last time she allowed
from the garage. As I noticed this, you went riding herself to become dependent on a clinician (her previ-
by on a bicycle waving and smiling though not, ous therapist) she ended up being abandoned, finding
apparently, noticing that I was beating off. But herself in the rubble. By putting me in the rubble, she
still, in the dream I knew that you knew what was had transformed me into fragmented body parts, too.
going on. So, on the other hand, killing me, tearing me apart in
the rubble was also a constructive psychic act, one that
When she described the emotions related to her allowed a perceived commonality from which to begin
dream, Joyce said that she felt ashamed, as somehow it relating her experiences of living in such a shattered,
had become clear in our interaction that I knew now, dissected condition. On numerous occasions I asked
“for sure,” that she was “actually psychotic.” Up to that Joyce why she needed to break me apart and she was
point she had pretended not to know that I knew able over time to share her feelings of envy (that, in her
about her difficulties; if that were the case, we would fantasy, I give more to my other patients, of my being
not have to discuss them. Upon exploration, it seemed in a committed partnership, of my being an accom-
that the dream was revealing Joyce’s feelings about the plished professional), fear of abandonment, and, she
processes of her own body, both her extreme fascina- said, “because I love you.”
tion with them and her sense of alienation from them, Tearing me apart let her accept an increased level of
as from the “wetness” of her vagina, the water flowing intimacy between us—another dissected, fragmented
from the garage. She revealed that her shame (in the person could be safely negotiated, she felt, whereas a
dream) was not that I had “caught [her] beating off,” whole person could not, would not tolerate her. The
but that I was in a position to witness how it was that extent to which this dissection process was projected
she “actually worked.” into others in her world became increasingly accessible
Joyce said that the only reason that she was now in treatment. Her obsession with her vagina, and the
willing to address this issue was because she had re- sense of fragmentation that this sustained, had been an
cently experienced an irritating intruder into her fan- unintended entry point into her experience of and de-
tasy life—her analyst. Each time she tried to engage in fense against the pure war condition in her (our) world.
one of her fantasies she would sense a foreign presence
and then would notice that I was sitting somewhere FALL APART
just on the periphery of her fantasy in my chair, silently Joyce revealed that she had long since stopped believ-
taking notes. ing in herself as an organized entity. Deleuze and
As we talked, we developed an understanding of Guattari have said that “we live in a world of partial
Joyce existing as a shell. Within the shell were con- objects, bricks that have been shattered to pieces”
tained body parts, all of which had essential, though (Anti-Oedipus42). They describe the psyche (and soci-
separate and fragmented relationships with the outside ety) as a system of flows and interruptions—they call
world (that is, with me). She also saw herself as relating them break/flows—analogous to a circuit board that al-
to others primarily if she could perceive them as frag- lows or disallows the flow of electricity. Desire (or li-
mented also, similar to herself. Her fantasy of me being bido) is an example of a simple but pertinent
killed at the World Trade Center focused on the per- break/flow pattern: its expression is a flow, its (social)
ception that I had been torn to pieces, “caught in the prohibition a break. Prohibition may be challenged by
rubble.” Why she had created this particular fantasy the flow of desire (even if unconscious and enacted) in
scenario became a key question for us upon her return ways that either thwart or reinforce the initial prohibi-
from her one-week hospitalization. tion, and so on. Prohibitions, in fact, can foster a retro-
On the one hand, she was clearly not aware of the spective perspective on desire: “That’s what I’m not al-
degree of rage that informed her fear that I was dead lowed to have? That must mean it’s what I want(ed).”6
(“in the rubble”). Projection of rage of this sort is, of Joyce seemed in her experience of the pure war
Psychoanalytic Pure War 65
condition to have been effectively “shattered to pieces.” a sequence that (in her mind) destroyed her father, her
As she obsessively described her masturbatory prac- family, and ultimately herself. Falling apart was a fam-
tices, I began to perceive heras a system of break/flows: ily pattern, and she reenacted it in most all of her en-
call it countertransference. In this fantasy (which she deavors, including the transference. It appeared in her
confirmed by her own description), the break/flow experience to be a social pattern, too, and in fact her
process begins with the flow, the desire underlying her psychological process of falling apart was both a de-
masturbation that is represented by her wetness, the fense against and a reluctant acceptance of the pure
flow of water in the dream. It is broken by painful im- war state in which she lived. Joyce knew about pure
ages of unrequited love and wished-for, prohibited war: the things and people that had represented the
lovers (including most specifically her previous thera- world for Joyce had been annihilated. Like the rest of
pist). These images then transform again and flow into us, Joyce cannot completely escape her “certain fate” –
erotic social images of these lovers (hybrid versions death. But to be able to “count on” the process of her
made up of body images appropriated from porno- analysis became a possibility.
graphic materials with various familiar people’s heads Joyce is highly committed to the defenses around
attached). The new flow is broken again by prohibition her conflicted desires and needs for intimacy and de-
(i.e., her shame about using porn), until her frantic pendency—as committed as the rest of us are to our
work at re-arousal erases the prohibitions and allows defenses against the perception of imminent death.
the flow of desire once more. And she uses them in a similar way—to keep herself
Joyce could allow no identifiable “I” in her experi- from awareness of her own destruction—and so she re-
ence, no self that could be targeted in the (current, sists any analysis of them that might increase her
past, and future) attacks whose perpetual anticipation awareness of the conflict.
is her life. To be a series of disconnected processes and Trying to figure out what was actually happening
body parts, to transcend the integrity of fixed selfhood between us was always tricky. Was she being brought
allowed her to feel, at some level, that there was no “I” back together (as an “I”), or was I being broken apart?
to destroy and therefore she was “safe”—“See? Every- Who was more resistant to the authority/indoctrina-
thing’s OK after all.” tion/razing of the other at any given time? As part of
Of course, any form of attachment to a whole sub- her analytic contribution, she shared her shattered
ject/object was profoundly threatening to the experi- state, and, as part of mine, I fervently imparted my
enced incoherence that was so necessary to her sense of conscious sense of coherent existence. Neither of those
security. To counteract her increasing, and often eroti- two defensive states could really sustain any kind of
cally-charged attachment to me she had to continue to valid status as truth; both positions seemed to be more
break herself apart. As her sense of attachment in treat- like inhabited roles than fixed positions. Joyce’s mas-
ment increased after September 11, her need to break turbation continued unabated. Sometimes we both ex-
her analyst apart increased as well. The fact that she perienced my interpretations as a violent attempt to
broke me apart in her fantasy of me in the rubble actu- draw her in to a more understandable existence, cor-
ally and ironically increased the felt intimacy of the an- ralling her for the purposes of branding, social confor-
alytic relationship, intensified her attachment, and mity. She retreated into the spaces of her schizophrenic
brought a distant but sometimes more consistent sense part-object escapes from the pure war condition, while
of “I” into her awareness. I scrambled for comfort into supervision, into the safe
and sturdy mommy-daddy-me triangle upon which
CHRONIC DISASTER AND CERTAIN FATE psychoanalysis was built. Even so, Joyce’s decompensa-
Falling apart is the “certain fate” of the pure war world, tions wormed their way into me, and it was not often
and the punk band Mission of Burma asks a telling clear who was branding whom.
question: “Can I count on you if I fall apart?...That’s I wish I could wrap this up neatly—patient gets
how I escaped my certain fate”[emphasis mine]. Their better and analyst puts together a highly coherent the-
question was Joyce’s question, and their solution was oretical conceptualization of the treatment to be pre-
hers also. Her mother’s body had fallen apart, initiating sented at the Summer Meeting of the American Psy-
Description:Interactions with the Post-Apocalyptic Unconscious1. Mark B. Borg, Jr. Paul Virilio
and Sylvere Lotringer's concept of “pure war” refers to the potential of a culture
