Jacques Lacan Pt. 8

Nodet eventually suggested Jacques Lacan as MdT continued to shop for analysts. “I saw Dr. Lacan today. Due to an accident that is keeping him at home, he has a few hours available and would be able to begin your treatment immediately. I told him neither your name nor your profession, nor anything about your case. He is a man slightly older than I am, remarkable for his intelligence and culture, and possesses extensive psychiatric and psychoanalytic experience. I believe this is an opportunity you should not let slip by.”

Lacan: Are you still stuck on the idea that we do good through the image we try to project?
MdT: I have to be, because whenever I tried to be myself, I missed the mark—just as has always been the case for me in religious life.
Lacan: For example?
MdT: When I was—or wanted to be—myself, I always fell short of what was required.
Lacan: And then?
MdT: It caused scandal.
Lacan: And then?
MdT: It caused division.
Lacan: And then?
MdT: It prevented peace.
Lacan: And then?
MdT: It prevented the unity that ought to have existed between us.
Lacan: But are you sure that unity existed before?
MdT: It couldn’t have existed between them and me before I arrived—and that’s how it’s been from the very beginning. Father Chauvin taught us unconditional obedience; for my part, the more that obedience ran counter to my deepest inclinations, the more I embraced it—fighting against those very inclinations—to reassure myself of my own sincerity. He held up certain examples for me: a Dominican friar who had never been able to do what he wished, having been constantly shuffled from one convent to another as a stopgap—he was presented to me as a model.
Then there was a nun whose cause for beatification had been proposed in Rome; her file revealed that she had once refused a remedy, and that single refusal was enough to reject her cause. And during a canonical visitation by Bishop Heintz, I told him I could not lead the life to which I felt called. He simply replied that he, too, had dearly wanted to be a teacher but had become a bishop instead; he said we must surrender our entire lives to God. An example of where I missed the mark: one Christmas Eve, I set up a nativity scene in the chapel with the novices, intending to spend the evening in quiet prayer. That night, Mother Saint-Jean told me she had been expecting me that afternoon to arrange the community’s nativity scene. I replied that I had counted on the other sisters. She said she would have preferred me to do it, because I would infuse it with a symbolic meaning the others wouldn’t. So, I set up the nativity scene during the evening, telling myself that once again I had misjudged the situation by trying to carve out time for my spiritual life and prayer. I used to ask to stay up after Matins to study the Psalms, but I did so with apprehension, knowing that Mother Saint-Jean felt I needed sleep given my very active life. I also did so with a sense of guilt: I missed that sleep, yet I found spiritual refreshment. I had to handle absolutely everything: the rulebook; the refectory readings; the Divine Office—tone, pacing, pronunciation, bowing; refectory service—distinguishing between those who were fasting and those who were not. And all the novices’ assignments—since I had to initiate the senior novices, who changed frequently. And also the novices’ classes, the trips, the driving, the role of Assistant, and the Council meetings; I was the Council secretary, too. I handled all of this because I was assigned the tasks, yet at the same time, I was criticized for handling everything.
Lacan: If things happened that way and continued for all those years, it means you must have played a part in making them turn out like that.
MdT: I complained about the heavy workload. I asked to step down, but I never thought I was incapable of handling the duties I was given. I never asked for any position of authority. The novice mistress who held the role for a year or two before me lacked a firm hand; she wasn’t a leader who could rally the troops. I mean, it’s not about telling others, ‘Follow me!’ but rather awakening their own personal drive; besides, she played favorites, paying a lot of attention to some while neglecting others. I often thought, ‘I could do a much better job than she does,’ and I would confess this as a fault, reproaching myself for pride and overconfidence.

MdT felt she was pulled away from what made her interested in Christianity in the first place. “I had always desired this contemplative life. One has an intuition of what suits oneself. I needed a sedentary life, free from distractions and diversions—but that was not to be. There are two possible attitudes toward religious life: a vocation based on esteem—where one desires to live the most perfect life and chooses the religious life, yet there is no personal call or individual grace—or, alternatively, a genuine call from God. It is the same with the contemplative life: I did not desire it out of esteem, but because I felt called to it. And nothing prevents God’s call from grafting itself onto favorable psychological inclinations.”

Lacan: Did you discuss this distinction with Father Motte?
MdT: No; he believed that after a few years of contemplative life, I would rediscover my missionary vocation—but I never had that vocation. I chose the religious life not for its own sake, but as the surest means of union with God. It is solely that union with God that I desire.
Lacan: But it has not been proven that the religious life is the most favorable means.
MdT: There is something better than the Church to ensure it: the Gospel. And I did not find what I was looking for in it; I failed completely. The religious life matters little to me, and so does the contemplative life; what I sought was solely union with God—and I failed completely. I can’t even pray anymore—I’ve lost my bearings and my momentum.
Lacan: But there are successes built on failures. What is stopping you? A small thing? Tears?
MdT: Yes, I missed out on everything.

The feeling of being opposed and opposing, returned, except now with sexual identity. “Recalled that I had once desired to be a priest for the sake of praising God, because it seemed to me that priests were better suited to this task, given the role I saw them playing in religious ceremonies. I desired it for the sake of praise—not at all for the ministry or the apostolate—but for the aspect turned toward God, and solely for that aspect: adoration and praise.”

Lacan: In appearing that way to you, did it seem like an ideal?
MdT: No, but as a reality I possessed—a true reality, not a fictional one. Parcheminey had said that if I had been properly examined before entering religious life, different decisions might have been made: I would not have been admitted—and that, personally, it is not to religious life as such that I am attached, but to what it helps one find: union with God—that I have seen others attached to religious life itself, but not me—for me, it is merely a link enabling me to go beyond it.

Lacan: And of whom did that little boy’s face in your dream remind you?
MdT: Of no one I know. To me, he represents someone I am, yet someone who is not how I appear on the outside: he is me as I am on the inside. It was the same face as that little girl’s. The reason for this Eastern liturgy, in my view, is that praise and adoration are expressed much more explicitly there than in the Latin liturgy. The absence of an altar or vestments signifies, for me, an interior and real—true, invisible—participation in the priesthood of Christ, exercised without the aid of external rites or objects. There are texts regarding this priesthood of all the faithful—in the Book of Revelation and elsewhere.

In another session MdT reiterated her interest in an “orientation toward praise and adoration, rather than ministry to the faithful.” Then the sessions returned again to the complete obedience to Father Motte, which left her feeling unappreciated. “The cycle always leads to this: if only he had been willing to make amends, to give back what he took from me—my conscience, the minimum amount of necessary optimism—and to relieve me of the burdens he piled upon me: guilt, fear, shame.” Finally a connection to the family appeared. “How uncomfortable I have always felt within the family. A fictional persona: the one expected of me, not the one I truly was—except during my final year at boarding school in Italy, at age thirteen. The free exercise of my own self always in conflict with my environment; the awkwardness regarding my religious vocation.”

Lacan: This behavior of separation… The only person you can trust: yourself.
MdT: I spoke about this religion of sin, about my dread of opening the Breviary and stumbling upon that sin again. And always the dilemma: doing as everyone else does—which I am willing to do—but which feels to me like lying to myself.

Her dreams began incorporating Jacques Lacan. “I’m invited—along with others—to Dr. Lacan’s home; he was entertaining a large group and observing me, though I was unaware of it. I only realized this at the end of the meal, horrified that he might have noticed my gluttony; I then left the table and fled. At the session, I complained about him: his conditions, the brevity of the sessions—despite what he had said at the start and upon resuming in September—and the fact that he was teaching me nothing. I spoke of the waves of regret regarding experiences I never had—experiences I now feel as deprivations—even though it has always been held that such things are unnecessary for the spiritual life. As I write this, I think of the Virgin Mary: whole, intact, ‘inviolata’ [spotless]—and could one imagine any diminution of her ultimate fulfillment? In religious life, I have always been reproached for having an overly imperious will; both in my family and in religious life, I have always had to suppress the ‘me’—my own distinct self.”

The spiritual conflict was found in MdT’s need for rest. “Psalm 94 (Heb. 9:5), warns the rebellious that they will not be admitted into the Rest. This rest is something other than peace—peace being equilibrium within order, compatible with complexity and movement (or at least not excluding them). What, then, is rest? Perhaps it is the density of being—the being of the Nature of Deity—which can also be applied to the density of His fullness, His reality, and His holiness: attributes to which our humble human nature cannot lay claim, yet in which it is capable of sharing with God, and which He has promised to it. This rest is static, like God Himself; if there is nothing beyond, movement finds its completion upon reaching it. This completion—this static state—finds a kind of parallel in the metaphysical knowledge of reality; knowledge as such cannot go beyond this point; it is, by analogy, its own form of rest. This metaphysical perspective can be applied to the knowledge of the mysteries of faith; indeed, it is there that it feels most at home—it is there that, in prayer, I found myself, as the saying goes, ‘in my element.’ This has always been the very foundation of my personal life; it was what I lived by, right up until the rupture; and I lived it with burning ardor—I was consumed by it, and my strength lay in that very consumption; I mean the strength of my spiritual striving. Before me, and within me, lay a perpetual feeling—a kind of spiritual sensation—of the rightness and urgency of constantly escaping the realm below to reach toward the realm above: an escape taking place within my own nature. For it is through the interior of one’s nature that one reaches God—through the innermost center of the self: ‘Go into your room and shut the door’—’The kingdom of God is within you.’ Living on earth like Gideon’s soldiers—taking only enough water in the hollow of the hand to quench one’s thirst—represented a yearning for rest. It mirrored the impulse that seized me once my mind was liberated: a desire to leap into reality, casting aside mere accidents and qualities to find rest in ‘Being’ itself—a craving for solitude and a static state of existence. All these elements harmonized. As for instinctive needs—warmth, sleep, food—I sought to satisfy them only enough for the body to lend its proper support to the spirit, and nothing more. I felt at ease within my own conscience—internally joyful, happy, alert, unburdened, and relieved—in direct proportion to that fidelity. Yet, the fulfillment of my ‘external’ duties—whether within my family or the religious order—did not touch my inner self; I met those obligations simply because I had to, but my true life lay elsewhere. That external existence always remained alien to me and was a source of torment. No amount of faithfulness ever lifted the weight of that anguish; I did not feel cut out for that life. No matter how diligently I strove to meet those demands, I was constantly haunted by the cowardly fear of failing to break free from them.”

Any basic personal satisfaction was sign of backsliding for MdT, even at levels that were petty. “My true personal vocation always crystallized in an inner call to a life lived face-to-face with God from within; consequently, I lived in a state of perpetual guilt for living otherwise—and for failing to declare loudly enough that my ordinary life was nothing but a sham, an act of hypocrisy. Whenever others seemed pleased with my diligence regarding the tasks entrusted to me, I would tell myself: ‘You are carrying hypocrisy to its absolute limit.’ Food is what brings relaxation most quickly and easily—yet maintaining just the right amount of tension despite it required a balance that was hard to gauge—or at least, one that no one else could gauge for me. Sticking to that balance strengthened me; overindulging was an act of cowardice that I felt both morally and physically. Physically, the relaxation that dispelled the tension also dispelled my drive; morally, I felt weakened—whereas when I fasted, any other effort came easily to me. For years, I faced opposition from those to whom I owed obedience; whenever they intervened to make me eat as they saw fit, I felt an agonizing sense of my will slackening and my drive weakening—a feeling, too, that I was renouncing myself and my fundamental calling. Yet I threw myself into it with all my might, mindful of the value of obedience. To guard against the fear that I might be obeying only superficially—holding onto a stubborn resolve beneath the outward act of submission—I strove to deny my own resistance, to deny the will that pulled me in a direction contrary to what was expected of me, to deny that I harbored such inclinations, and to deny myself in every way I could. My deepest desire was so inextricably bound up with my very self that denying it in this regard inevitably meant denying myself. This went on for years—every single day of those years, and multiple times each day. It caused a physical shock, a kind of swoon; it was as if my will had been pulverized, dissolved, and utterly obliterated. I felt a sense of moral enfeeblement, a draining blandness that ravaged and distressed me—if I spoke of it, the reply was: ‘Since you are obeying, what is there to torment yourself about?’—so I became distressed at my own torment, reproaching myself for anything personal within me, since whenever the personal surfaced, it always proved to be at odds with what was deemed appropriate.

Even at the level of desire for food, MdT could not muster an autonomy towards it. “Food became the chosen emblem of this tension—more than a sign, it was the translation, the focal point—and this remains with me, and will remain, until some physical shock intervenes. I no longer need anyone else to run through the cycle of my desires: the opposition, the guilt of my stubbornness, the cowardice of my compliance—my inescapable anxiety. It is enough to capture the entire field of my desires and my inner life; anything unrelated to this matter is drained of vitality—I experience it as one watches a movie. There is no longer any impulse toward anything else, no tension directed anywhere but at a point along this cycle—the only thing that makes me vibrate, the only thing that moves me; everything else is dead. Yet the memory of that ‘everything else’ haunts me—along with who I was, who I might have been, and all the figures who stoned me, hemmed me in, and coerced me through moral pressure. The memory of my actual actions recedes into the background, for I acted only out of fear; my own inner impulse ran directly counter to my concrete ‘duty of state’—that duty imposed from without—whereas it always seemed to me that my true duty was to follow that inner call. I experienced faithfulness in the eyes of men as unfaithfulness to God—while they deemed unfaithfulness what I considered ‘my’ faithfulness to God, my path. It is all this that paralyzes and binds me: the force of that inner calling was neutralized by opposition; it remains with me, yet drained of life and no longer sparking any impulse—it stays within me like a stuffed bird. External obligations are no longer imposed upon me, yet the weight, the specter of past obligations lingers, along with the accusatory judgment of those who demanded my trust and substituted their conscience for mine; so much so that now, nothing seems more suspect to me than my own conscience—nothing more to be shunned, or regarded as dangerous and guilty from the start. This is what persists at every moment of the day, no matter what I do: it imposes itself upon me, and there is nothing I can do about it.”

A hint at the death drive appears with MdT’s ideal static bliss. “I notice that I am developing a mental desire for sleep—for non-life—analogous to the mental desire for food, and one that is becoming constant; it is added to the other without replacing it. I have taken up the Rosary again since making a set of beads using a ring; it is easy to follow.”

MdT: For me, obedience to God currently means faithfulness to my conscience. I need to become myself—not for my own sake, but to fulfill God’s will for me.
Lacan: And yet, given your status, you are the last person who should seek that.
MdT: It isn’t for me; it’s so that it may embody God’s will for me.

The topic of masculinity and femininity returned in a dream of flagellation. “I am—psychologically and to some extent physically—both man and woman. I could adopt a masculine or feminine mental structure at will; indeed, even physically, I possess something masculine…[There is a] difference regarding the female heart, which becomes the sensitive organ for lack of other organs (unlike men?). The heart is the organ of the richest thought. Initially, female affectivity is spiritual, whereas male affectivity is content to be corporeal. Thus, at the start of their psychological evolution, women’s affectivity is centered in the heart, while men’s is centered in the body—a distinction that alters everything thereafter…I spoke about the female condition as viewed by men—specifically, the tendency to equate women’s psychological development with that of men, whereas the reality is quite different for us. Development cannot proceed from a hollow starting point, a void, or a state of lack. The density of the cosmic fluid seeks out a privileged site within the female body—an organ of vibration—and that organ is the heart.
[Lacan] told me that my ideas were absolutely correct.”

Lacan felt there was progress, while MdT wanted to move faster, especially in the ironic hope of slowing down and relaxing. Lacan was happy that MdT was communicating personal ideas that were hers. Some of his questions were blunt and coarse about MdT’s bodily rhythms.

Lacan: Have you had your period recently?
MdT: (the question cuts right to my gut): Yes, this morning—I told you; since March 26th, it’s become regular, whereas before it never was. I’m very happy when it happens. When I’ve fasted properly, it goes much better—the flow is always heavier.

Returning to childhood memories, MdT recounted an “anxiety regarding the source of the ‘evil’ and its manifestation through breast development.”
Lacan: You thought the evil came from there?

MdT recounted a memory about her mother. “The sight of her aging bosom; my search for feminine beauty back then.” She was “outside, looking at all women based on their breasts—waiting for the day I would become like them. Until then, my body felt unbearable to me. Dad – and – Mom. Human love seemed forbidden to me by religion.”

During this phase of the sessions, MdT was starting to integrate corporeality with spirituality, and seeing the necessity of both working together. “Obligations of conscience artificially superimposed, yet subsequently integrated—hence remorse, and contradictions triggering one another.
The unity of the human person: encouraging grace while discouraging nature cannot succeed. Above men and women stand human nature and the human person—and wisdom. Above the clergy and the laity stand God and holiness, which is a participation in Him. Congress of religious?”

MdT returned to a negative transference towards Lacan, including paranoia of collusion between him and the other psychologists she worked with. Afterwards some self-assertion bubbled up and she was free to communicate it. “The autonomy of my conscience. It has been singularly neglected and supplanted by successive spiritual directors who, rather than enlightening and strengthening it, have effectively taken its place—as you well know. To exert moral pressure on a conscience, to lay siege to it regarding life’s gravest decisions—those unique, once-in-a-lifetime choices—while insisting on being the sole advisor, disapproving of or even forbidding consultation with others, and ultimately compelling one to trample upon one’s own conscience and harden oneself against it in order to perform out of obedience what one inwardly condemns: this can only lead, over the years, to the erosion of personality and the loss of moral sense. For if I must call ‘good’ what I judge to be evil—and call ‘evil’ what I judge to be good—and if I must furthermore carry out what I judge to be evil while refraining from what I judge I ought to do, I inevitably end up in that kingdom ‘divided against itself’ which ‘cannot stand.’ Advise, enlighten, exhort: yes—but after that, if the conscience remains inwardly unyielding, one must not violate it, crush it, or enslave it. It is one thing to help a weak conscience to strengthen itself in the direction toward which it leans, albeit too timidly—in which case one must help it assert itself rather than clothe itself in another’s conscience—but it is quite another to tear a conscience apart by imposing upon it that to which it is unyieldingly averse. Can you help me rediscover this conscience? It has been so mutilated, trampled, harassed, and mocked (dismissed as mere ‘fads’ and ‘whims,’ ​​etc.) that barely any shreds of it remain. And I feel this to be the most tragic and horrible thing in the world—along with the realization that, more than once, a spirit of male rivalry and male domination has played a part—and to attribute these tendencies, which all men harbor toward all…women (consciously or unconsciously, whether in a raw or veiled form, or cloaked in religious motives that are very sincerely and guilelessly embraced)—to harness these tendencies for the sake of religious ministry, to subsume them within the purely spiritual motivations that ought to drive that ministry—is abhorrent. Here we see, in a form that is both magnified and deeply revealing, a man’s constant tendency—when facing a woman who is not his wife—to demean her. This serves as a means (however unconscious) of aggrandizing himself, of bolstering his own confidence through a subtle tactic—one that is all the harder to detect precisely because of its subtlety and because the rectitude of his intentions and goals is beyond doubt.”

MdT also communicated her distaste for how clergy and laity were treated as one superior and the other inferior. “Why are the faithful never told of their divine greatness? Why is God never mentioned in sermons? Why is there never any talk of the merit gained directly between the soul and its God, while the sacraments are endlessly revisited? Why is so little—or indeed nothing—said about the supernatural wisdom and divine holiness toward which all God’s children must journey? In practice, there are two classes within the Church on earth—classes defined only by their opposition to one another: the clerical class and the undifferentiated mass of sinful laity. It is as if religion consisted of having the clergy on one side, radiant with God’s glory, and the faithful on the other, plunged in the shadow of evil. The mindset is clerico-centric, and logically so: the priest is Christ, and Christ is God—ergo… In the early centuries, the faithful were told ‘a Christian is another Christ’—but now the faithful are sidelined; they are merely sinners. I fully embrace religion—the whole of religion—but I want it free from such admixtures, from these particularities masquerading as religion…One does not make others humble by suppressing, repressing, scorning, or viewing them with suspicion—actions that instead provoke neuroses, mutilate, paralyze, and stifle one’s vital drive. Rather, humility is best fostered by embodying it oneself; it consists largely of returning to God all the glory for the gifts He has bestowed upon us—gifts we must acknowledge and cherish so that they may grow and bear fruit.”

Matching with early psychoanalysis, MdT didn’t like the ignorance fostered on generations based on a devaluation of nature, or modern wild swings in the opposite direction. “In recent centuries—and increasingly so—it was deemed preferable to keep young people in ignorance regarding the life forces inherent in human nature. This ignorance resulted in far more sin and imbalance than benefit; for generations, young people were led to view as evil, dangerous, or threatening something that was good in itself—like all of God’s creation—even if its misuse could be immoral. A similar approach was adopted regarding the gifts of God, out of fear that acknowledging them directly might breed pride. Mutilating reality comes at a high price. Reactions regarding the body’s vital forces have swung to the opposite extreme: as if, now that we are permitted to speak of them, they are the ‘only’ thing worth discussing. Yet, we are also rightly haunted and alarmed by the havoc wrought with the complicity of ignorance and silence. This same mentality persists regarding the self-knowledge imparted to the faithful: a negative view, where the primary lesson is that the believer is, above all, unfaithful. Everything I received from God was good—yet, in contrast, everything I did in my capacity as a mere creature became grounds for reprimand, suspicion, and so on.”

Again the desire for permanent rest returned. “I note my spontaneous tendency toward organization aimed at achieving rest—rather than action—or rather, toward the ultimate state of action.” She confided in Dr. Nodet once more to complain. “He [Lacan] hardly speaks. He assured me that it is not at all too late and that he will help me get out of this state. I would add that he understands me well and does not fragment me, yet without jumbling everything together. He told me at the start that he had had the opportunity to study the problems of spiritual life in particular. That is the positive side, but there is something else that made me hesitate to resume sessions with him and continues to trouble me. I have told him so, but nothing changes; even though he tells me he will change whenever he sees me hesitating to continue, he never actually does. First, there is the extreme brevity of the sessions: thirty minutes at most—and quite often not even that, just twenty or twenty-five minutes; only two or three times out of so many sessions did they last thirty-five or forty minutes. The exact number of minutes doesn’t matter to me, but this brevity prevents any sense of relaxation from ever setting in, and I leave feeling more tense than when I arrived: I never find myself in a situation that allows me to relive things or dissolve them; what is said is simply said, because I am far too tense to relive it. That is his style, I believe, for as far as I could tell while waiting, he grants no more time to the others. Then there is this: since he says almost nothing to me, I am hardly any clearer on things. I fully understand that I need to speak, and I do so, but I had expected more clarification. His questions or observations serve more to clarify what I am saying or to highlight its significance than to help me get my bearings… there is no talk of the ‘id’ or the ‘superego.’ He is highly cultivated—perhaps too much so, for I need those elementary insights to be shed upon me as things unfold. I keep waiting for them, yet they never come. Furthermore, he bills these brief sessions at the same rate as full-length ones, leaving me with the uncomfortable feeling that he is arbitrarily taking advantage of a situation where I am unable to defend myself. This, of course, hardly fosters a sense of ease. I have told him all this, but he pays no heed. On the other hand, he strikes me as so conscientious that I cannot reconcile his methods with the person he appears to be.”

Dr. Nodet advised MdT to continue and noted her improvements and advised her to accept the normality of negative transference. “There can be no hesitation; you must go on: 1/ Anything is better than a squandering of energy and advice. 2/ Despite the trying nature of the sessions, there is overall improvement. 3/ This difficulty in relaxing stems from a fear of analysis. Any well-conducted analysis—even one involving slightly longer sessions (though Dr. Lacan seems to compensate for this regarding quantity)—inevitably induces a state of frustration. You must accept and analyze this present frustration: it can lead to the archaic, fundamental frustration that lies at the root of your neurosis. Courage and patience, moving in a single direction. It is your only path to salvation.”

MdT then had a dream of exploitation for her contributions. “Dreamt last night: I am in a very large, dilapidated house that my sister Mad tells me to accept (it is a gift) and fix up. I have the unpleasant feeling that she has an ulterior motive and that, once I have fixed it up, she will take it for herself. She asks me to prepare a community celebration with a religious theme and songs. I am to perform in it, and I must know the part by heart. I stop thinking about it. The day arrives: I don’t know the part…Just beforehand, I look everywhere for a toilet…I have just got my period, and having nothing else, I used part of my apron. To go to the presentation I have to put it on, and it is all stained. I was going to go as I was, but a sister stopped me, saying I wasn’t presentable. It is Sister Agnès du Rosaire who does the cooking; she brought me a large blue kitchen apron and I put it on: I don’t care about anything.”

MdT: Did I love Father Motte?
Lacan: Quite simply, the way one loves an ideal Father—and that could have helped you rise to the Heavenly Father—had there not been a clash. It was normal; there was nothing wrong with it. As proof, you wanted him to write that [Act of holocaust] himself.
MdT: I was in the habit of regarding only what some authority had approved as good or valid. This act is simply in line with everything else.
Lacan: But why this obedience? Why did you obey in so many situations where you would have preferred the opposite? What would you have done if you hadn’t obeyed? Wasn’t it simpler for you to obey than to do something else? If you obeyed in that way, was it because obedience was more agreeable to you? Why? It is a very serious question—one that has dominated your entire life, that calls your whole life into question; and I assure you, I feel very small asking it of you. It is not for me, but for you, to answer it.
MdT: I obeyed out of anguish, because only obedience shielded me from fear and shame—shame at myself. It was my only safeguard. It did not take the anguish away. It merely allowed me to go on living. Only prayer transcended it. I have noticed that my natural impulse is to turn back to whatever gives me the most acute sense of being alive—even if it is painful. For me, that is certainly anguish—though it is surpassed by prayer, which reaches a far deeper inner realm.

MdT: It felt to me as though I wasn’t truly obeying unless it went against the grain—I was deeply anxious about the inner conflicts that persisted: the need for prayer and solitude. I felt I was disobeying God by obeying His interpreters. I cannot find myself alone; alone, there is nothing.
So I fill the void with others: P. Motte. A sense of sacrilege in wanting to turn toward God: the path is occupied. I must serve as a foil to Him; that is a way of magnifying Him. I started from an inversion of the ego.
Lacan: In this sense, I told you that you were fixated on your ego: this inverted ego. Recognizing it is already a great deal.

MdT became anxious in the last short session that felt for her like an abandonment. She still needed to see her lack of autonomy, and to understand wanting can be aimed at the Good, and isn’t always evil. “I cannot desire an object—why can I not move past these prohibitions? The inability to love, to feel an emotional stirring, to feel joy.”

Lacan: You view the will as a small, separate trigger. When a desire is rightly oriented, nature follows: that is what the will is. When your desires are rightly oriented, everything else will follow. Regarding food: when you have a meal, do it properly; prepare it suitably, partake of it in the spirit of the Creator. When you do eat, do so at appropriate times—not just whenever. You must not deprive yourself of drink entirely. Do this for the time being; we shall see about the rest later. Those who gave you instructions wished to follow rules of prudence; perhaps they did not apply them appropriately.
MdT: I am afraid to acknowledge desires as my own. As if it were a matter of guilt regarding self-will—of resisting an offering that must reach the deepest part of the soul—and of exercising control by distancing myself from anything to which my being might become attached or find satisfaction in. This is a concept I have internalized: I believe it to be the root cause of the irritation I felt as a child.

MdT continued to struggle with the fact that a True Self may not be found underneath her neurosis. “Holy Scripture serves as bodily nourishment for me.  Impossible to turn inward. I ‘must not’ do what I am inclined to do. I must be impersonal, colorless, and of service to others. These notebooks are a reflection of my soul, and I must finish them. That great white disk. I’m marking time: I’ve hit a plateau. I see things no more clearly, and I do not find my way. Desire or Desert—hard to say which, of solitude through inner richness.” She connected inaction with spirituality while remaining suspicious of personal projects. “Lacan is trying to awaken, to provoke my initiative.”

Lacan: Serenity is synonymous with bad faith. It depends on you. If you find that religious life is poorly organized, you should cast off the habit and create a new religion to your own liking.
MdT: If I tell you something, you pay no heed to it. You are perfectly content to stand there in admiration of yourself. You are in adoration of yourself.
Lacan: You needle and lash out at me to make me anxious. You teem with ideas, and you are in admiration of your own ideas. If you cannot find life within religious life, you must leave it.
MdT: If I tremble before my own thought, it is because there is no objective thought. You want to corner me with my nothingness, my powerlessness, and my error. Where can I find the fulcrum, the starting point? I have done nothing but retreat.
Lacan: The time of the exclusively contemplative life, due to an inability to handle your responsibilities…
MdT: …and I saw it as a substitute at the altar for what is missing from the world in relation to God. It depends on me: on what within me? On reflection? On what?
Lacan: You are haunted by your guilt, and you reproach the Other for speaking of it. You are over-analyzing; we must return to basic attitudes: forgive your enemies—and it is not your psychoanalyst saying this, but a man. What you call perfection is not perfection. The child has the sensation of gaining by eating and losing by rejecting, and in that, there is no contact.”

MdT’s perfectionism laid bare made her feel nauseous upon leaving the session. She became irritated in the metro “by people and by all the objects; ate pasta and cocoa.”

Lacan: Childbirth is a loss. Because one gains as much as one loses. It lies at the origin of many ambivalences.

MdT resisted the insight and wanted to continue towards that quietism as her end goal. “Deep down, I desire nothing more than to resume a purely contemplative and solitary life—should it please God to one day restore to me the capacity for interior prayer—yet I fear that this might be an act of desertion, a way of downplaying God’s will for me; if I must ‘do something,’ it seems to me that this is the one thing for which I would be least unsuited. But will you yourself help me in this?”

She again asked Dr. Lagache to take over, but continued with Lacan. “On the surface, I am doing better—but deep down, things have hardly shifted…I cannot trust my own judgment, especially since the issue goes far beyond me, and—beyond myself—there is another matter of much greater significance.”

More insights emerged from MdT’s childhood, and also a goal to sublimate earthly desires to connect with spirituality, instead of making them mutually exclusive, but at first, instinct and virtue were in conflict. “In my parents, I sensed the shame I felt about myself; I suffered from a shame that was, in fact, the shame ‘they’ felt regarding me. I would secretly mimic people’s gestures—and especially their characteristic signs—in an attempt to experience their mindset. Copying others was a way of stepping into another person, hoping to glean something—anything—that might alleviate my shame. Beyond individuals, there was ‘propriety’—family conventions observed out of fear of blame or of causing hurt. Then came religious conventions, which clashed with what I felt my vocation imperiously demanded. I equated religious requirements with the directives of my spiritual directors—viewing them not as an end, but as a means; these directives drove me to focus on the most perilous terrain: forcing the will to confront an instinct, bringing the full weight of spiritual forces to bear in order to fuse the two together. It was the perfect recipe for unleashing obsession. The satisfaction of an instinct—at a moment when I was compelled to exert my spiritual will to the utmost, even as my body felt the exact opposite urge. That body—the seat of the instinct demanding satisfaction—quivering in every cell under the weight of that instinct; an instinct that nourished them all and lay at the root of every sublime craving. It was the force that imposed this contradiction upon me—within me.”

MdT was heavily influenced by her parents. The father was described as “an example I loved encountering every evening, one that shaped my day and kept my petty vanities in check. I believed that seeing you would lead the Blessed Virgin to forgive all my little lapses in gentleness and patience. Mama’s pursuit of perfection had an admirable side—yet I experienced it as exhausting and stifling to life itself—while simultaneously feeling remorse for not making it my own ideal to follow suit.”

One parent was less perfectionist and about incremental improvements, and the other presented “herself as an ideal that is not absolute but imitable—indeed, one ‘ought’ to imitate her, lest one fall in the estimation of the person embodying that ideal. The practical impossibility of emulating the model breeds despair and anxiety: despair at never succeeding, and anxiety about losing the mother’s love. Paule describes herself as ‘shattered and prevented from living’ by a demand for perfection that is beyond her reach, and by the inevitable disappointment her inadequacy will cause her mother; for a mother’s disappointment is experienced by the child as a withdrawal of love—an abandonment—that leaves the child exposed to ‘helplessness,’ that primal state of helplessness in which one trusts neither oneself nor the world. These two figures—paternal and maternal—could embody what Freud termed the Ego Ideal and the Ideal Ego, concepts Lacan revisited by defining the former as ‘symbolic introjection’ and regarding the latter—the Ideal Ego—as an imaginary projection. [Paule] was the youngest of seven children. The eldest, Jean, was followed by a girl, then by a second boy, Pierre, who died of an infectious flu during his first few weeks of life. Next came three girls, and finally, a boy was hoped for. He was to be named Paul; ‘I was named Paule,’ writes Paule de Mulatier in her memoirs. Paule arrived in the place of the son who would have replaced the one lost to his inconsolable mother. Disappointment for the mother, and—for the daughter—an initial sense of despair at having let down her mother’s hopes and at having, so early on, perhaps sensed her mother’s dissatisfaction with her. Moreover, for the first five years of her life, Paule and her sister were not permitted at the family table. They ate their meals apart, with the cook and the maid. And when, at last, Paule was able to take her place beside her mother, her artlessness and shyness became a source of mockery for her older siblings—to such an extent that she became convinced, for a long time, of a certain inferiority. As a counterpoint to these frustrations, Paule is aware that on the day of her baptism—two days after her birth—she became a “child of God,” and that this day coincided with the Feast of the Precious Blood; she would always celebrate the anniversary of her baptism on the day that solemnity was observed. She was introduced to prayer within the small church formed by her devout Christian family, and it was undoubtedly in this way of praying with her loved ones—slowly, as her mother suggested—that she would draw her aspiration for a prayer of union.”

MdT had to reconstruct a healthy dualism that could negotiate with worldliness and spirituality. “One must be an ‘I’ to be able to say ‘You.’ Without a structured ‘I’—and a structured ‘You’ as well—there is only an amorphous ‘We.'”

MdT: What I miss is concrete participation. What is it in me that is blocked and no longer lends itself to this? I think it is a sign of alienation: no longer being able to situate myself. Am I like the others, or different? I mean, in terms of needs? You are not helping me: neither to see better nor to will better.
Lacan: When you say “I love,” “I want,” what does that mean?…We have seen together what surrounds your ego—and that it is not bad, and simply needs to take itself into account.

To reconstruct a self that had no time in childhood or adolescence for development has to start with I love…I want. “To love: is it finding what suits oneself? [Food] is a single emotional experience. But I must realize that this is not the only possibility and conduct myself accordingly. It is not all about renunciation: one must put one’s talents to use. Being an adult means being capable of discernment and personal choices—without the act of choosing causing unbearable anxiety. I am not acting in bad faith, but I am being false.”

Lacan: Don’t look for how to ‘live’—just live: it’s much simpler. Renunciation alone leads to drifting at random. If you keep blaming others, you will never get out of this: you must look at the part you played in it. Things are beginning to become clear.

Lacan wanted MdT to see for herself the insights that were ready at hand and that desire has a responsibility. One has to negotiate one’s desire with the desires of others. This reduces the need for always blaming, and guilt doesn’t have to be pathological. “What I lack in everything is a personal touch. It is about owning my own self—for others have claimed ownership of it in my stead, wrongfully; they have abused my trust.”

MdT: Why aren’t you saying anything?
Lacan: Because you are making giant strides. Do you sense the fringe? Your decision must come from within yourself; the very fact that you are asking yourself these questions shows that you are beginning to regain awareness of your responsibility. This guilt is real—you would be the only creature to escape it—you must accept it; I accept mine, too, and you must accept yours. Taking on a responsibility is the best way to find your balance again.

MdT: My misfortune is the prohibition of a personality—the very thing that forms the knot—for even in striving toward God, there is a personal mode.
Lacan: As you say, these false paths—useless to rethink in themselves—are useful to know in order to find not what ‘should’ have been, as you put it—since it is in the past and impossible ‘not’ to have lived through—but rather with a view to the future that ‘can’ be realized. That is the direction to take. I cannot repeat—in a different direction—what the spiritual directors did; rather, as a psychologist, I can accompany you in your own search.
MdT: The root of my neurosis is my powerlessness to take responsibility for my life, as I had no right to direct it—and whenever I ‘did’ direct it, I was condemned: that is the story of my entire life. Now I cannot direct it, and I remain unresponsive to a condemnation that I accept. Food turned out to be the sole meeting point between a specific reality imposed by authority and a corresponding reality within myself: the function of nutrition. Yet I could only satisfy that reality (as a reality, not merely a need) by opposing my own conscience—a conscience I could not conquer but could disown. And this deliberate, conscious act of disavowal had the same effect on my conscience as a mortal sin does on divine grace: withdrawal, suppression. I possessed two forces: will and conscience—and my will had to vanquish my conscience.
Lacan: It seems to me that you have never taken your life into your own hands—something which, incidentally, is rarely fully achieved—because it is not ‘given’ as a natural endowment. It is not a component, but a culmination. There was something else besides the love of God. If there had been only the love of God, this would not have happened…The ‘I’ is perceived only by pronouncing itself in speech. If you say, ‘I love, I will,’ it is an act of creation. The ‘I’ creates itself; this opens the door to every hope. Perhaps we should bless this neurosis for having brought to light the obstacle to that creation.
MdT: Revisiting this obstacle – and then, since becoming ill, the “I” is lifeless and can no longer create words: this is what I call being devitalized; it is my illness. If I create, what role does sexuality play in that creation?
Lacan: It drives one to create with another. Sexuality is a tendency to create—not alone—a happiness, finding and giving happiness within it.

Sleep Cure in Bonneval

Regardless of the insight and opening up MdT gain by her sessions with Lacan, there was still too much obsessive noise in her mind and she decided to go ahead with shock therapy. “Dr. Lacan tells me that in October he will take me back to continue the psychoanalytic treatment. Yet, I have been seeing him for three years now. Not once have I left a session feeling relaxed, soothed, or enlightened—but rather anxious, tense, and depressed.”

These so called “therapies,” were quite barbaric at the time, so MdT was in for the fight of her life. “During the first week, Dr. Ey began the insulin treatment; he wanted to add electronarcosis to it, but a single attempt caused me such severe and persistent back pain, and had caused my obsessions to worsen that I did not wish to continue. It does not seem that the insulin has changed anything; my brain is no more relaxed, and the same things keep circulating in my head, blocking the way for anything else…I spent over a month at Bonneval; during the first two weeks, low-dose insulin therapy was tried without success—whereupon a sleep cure was decided upon. Regarding the treatment itself, I recall that nighttime insomnia became increasingly frequent and distressing. My body, under the influence of the absorbed chemicals, gave off a smell of a decomposing corpse that permeated the mattress and pillow. The cleaning woman who came in the morning was kind and gentle; the night nurse constantly forgot to give me my pills and would then make me take them all at once. Until midnight, I would listen to a radio station—and sometimes to the night-time screams of a deranged patient. This anguish continued to grow and multiply. Around the twelfth day, I believe—at the height of the torment—I asked to stop the treatment. The last night was atrocious: They were undoubtedly going to keep me there until I died; they were going to hasten my death, and there was nothing I could do about it: I was locked away, a prisoner, and no one was to show me any mercy; the time for punishment had come. I was going to die, and die of rot; I was going to die of that rot because I myself was a sordid creature, morally rotten; my death would be symbolic of my life. Dr. E. also came, with two assistants; he asked for nothing, simply saying: ‘We mustn’t go on—stop the treatment; she can’t take any more.’ On the scale, they realized I had lost nearly five kilos in those thirteen days. Although it seems to me that I slept only during the day and not at night, I had taken enough medication for two complete sleep cures. The skin around my eyes had thinned and dried out like parchment—just like a mummy’s; when I saw my face, it horrified me—it was a face of terror. Two days later, I left Bonneval. I was so weak that I feared falling with every step. I was tormented by the thought of an imminent—perhaps even sudden—death: it would overtake me in the small room on Rue de la Pompe where I was returning, yet no one would notice until I was completely decomposed. Then I realized that my usual obsessions had vanished. They had consisted of successive anxieties that always centered on the same points. Yet the anguish I had just endured had been more intense than anything I had experienced during the nine years those obsessions had lasted. It was what I had thought for a long time: if I were to experience something more intense, the obsessions would subside. I had regained the ability to direct my attention—and the energy I had left—toward an object of my own choosing. This attention was unsteady, restless, and sickly, yet I could command it.”

Because a lot of Paule de Mulatier’s personality was an obsessive personality, the weakening of the obsessions, through the chemical therapy scare that made them seem small, and Lacan’s analysis that opened up a door for developing a self, after a lifetime of neglect and suppression, an undeveloped self is only experienced as a blank. “What we know of the later part of Marie’s life is marked by the struggle to return to God —a ‘healing’ process that unfolds over time like an ‘imperceptible evolution,’ dominated throughout by a sense of aridity, a dryness so profound that it allows no room to revisit past experiences, requiring instead that she ‘create from scratch.’ In this context, the metaphor that emerges and takes hold is that of the desert—and of a God conceived as the One encountered at the end of that crossing, an encounter that would, in fact, coincide with death. This desert is described as ‘the place where nothing remains: only earth and sky, and between them, the human being—with just enough earth to stand upon.’ As for the dazzling mystical illuminations of the past, they are revisited only through the process of rewriting (typing up and correcting the manuscripts). Yet those very texts, and the experiences they describe, are marked by a radical otherness: ‘it is as if it were not about me at all.’ At this stage, God reveals Himself only as a silent mystery. Marie remains in a state of silent adherence—in what is no longer a mystical experience, but rather what she herself describes as ‘night and non-experience.'”

Layers of Efforting (Excerpt) – Adyashanti: https://youtu.be/5HE5GKZ4Q40?si=R8lhE2uUAOL7K0ar