The logic of turmoil: Some epistemological and clinical considerations on emotional experience and the infinite

Abstract

The idea of the infinite has its origins in the very beginnings of western philosophy and was developed significantly by modern philosophers such as Galileo and Leibniz. Freud discovered the Unconscious which does not respect the laws of classical logic, flouting its fundamental principle of non-contradiction. This opened the way to a new epistemology in which classical logic coexists with an aberrant logic of infinite affects. Matte Blanco reorganized this Freudian revolution in logic and introduced the concept of bi-logic, which is an intermingling of symmetric and Aristotelic logics. The authors explore some epistemological and clinical aspects of the functioning of the deep unconscious where the emergence of infinity threatens to overwhelm the containing function of thought, connecting this topic to some of Bion's propositions. They then suggest that bodily experiences can be considered a prime source of the logic of turmoil, and link a psychoanalytic consideration of the infinite to the mind-body relation. Emotional catastrophe is seen both as a defect-a breakdown of the unfolding function which translates unconscious material into conscious experience-and as the consequence of affective bodily pressures. These pressures function in turn as symmetrizing or infinitizing operators. Two clinical vignettes are presented to exemplify the hypotheses.

Flexibility of the Psychoanalytic Approach in the Treatment of a Suicidal Patient: Stubborn Silences as “Playing Dead”

“…Or, in more general terms: When one is dead one lives better, because one is not subject to the anxieties and dangers of life.Although these theories represent a glaring assault on common sense, they appear repeatedly in so-called difficult patients. One need but think of the importance such a theory can have in cases of anorexia, for instance, to the point where it supports the fundamental perversion whereby the most radical way of asserting one's desire to live is by dying of hunger (see, e.g., the case of anorexia quoted by Bria & Lombardi, 2008).…”

Clinical applications of Matte Blanco's thinking

“…If Albertine abandons her pattern of thought, she finds herself faced with a purely symmetrical world because she is lacking the tool of ideation (ideas being asymmetrizing by definition, since they differentiate situations and thoughts): changing reference points, for her, would mean quite simply losing them all and having to confront a catastrophic change, a confrontation with the infiniteness of the unconscious mind described by Bion (Bria and Lombardi, ).This is what a traveller may experience, in an unknown land when he loses all his topographical bearings.

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The body, adolescence, and psychosis

“…From the bi‐logical standpoint (Matte Blanco, 1975, 1988), the psychotic adolescent’s tendency to negate the body as a source of new stimuli and of change has the consequence that the container/contained relationship becomes symmetrical (Bria, 1989; Bria and Lombardi, 2008). This in turn leads to catastrophic outcomes of non‐containment, since the topological subversion of this relationship and the collapse of the container makes it impossible ‘to contain and transform that persecuting infinity that arises in the body ’ (Bria and Lombardi, 2008, p. 719, our emphasis). In terms of Freud’s biblical metaphor from the Studies on Hysteria (Breuer and Freud, 1893–95), during adolescence the body and the experiential turmoil associated with it must necessarily pass ‘through the eye of the needle’ of consciousness (Lombardi, 2009a).…”