Is fashion to be happy?

Text: Caroline Gouvêa Silva Wallner * published in 2015 by Revista Psicanálise, publisher Mythos .

One morning, when I opened my computer, I read a sentence: “We need to allow the painful vaccine to be applied so that everyone can feel the inevitable and natural pain of living”…

What is the search of human beings today?

A relentless pursuit of happiness. Being happy at any cost and with minimal suffering. But that’s where many things get lost, because in this pursuit of happiness, suffering is forbidden. There is a difficulty among parents and those directly responsible for the child, even in early childhood, in not knowing how to set limits, and an insecurity in saying no, especially because this hurts and causes tears that some interpret as unnecessary suffering.

When I started working as a clinical psychologist, back in 2006, the complaints I would hear repeatedly in my office were: fear, emotional imbalance, phobia, sadness over the loss of someone I loved, frustration over a choice, etc. These symptoms are already known to professionals in the field of psychology and will always appear in offices. The issue is not just the names given to the symptoms. What I want to draw attention to is the proportion and intensity of some of these symptoms, which are possibly treatable, sometimes without medication, such as sadness or mourning, and even some cases of fear and phobia. Nowadays, people resort to happy pills. Nowadays, any sadness is treated as a psychiatric illness. Suffering is forbidden. People prefer to resort to medication rather than face their suffering, whether it is the loss of someone or something, or even feeling sad. “You can no longer be sad or bored, because that is immediately transformed and named depression.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) predicts that depression will be the most common illness in the world by 2030 – currently, 121 million people suffer from the problem. According to a study by some psychiatrists, both doctors and some patients are confusing sadness with depression.

Today, symptoms are associated with depression, not mild, moderate or severe depression, following the psychiatric model, but disorders that involve a tendency to suicide, a destructive act against one’s own body. These cases have been appearing more frequently in clinics, especially among adolescents between the ages of 14 and 19. What I want to highlight here is the intensity and ( de )valuation of human suffering. What was previously considered natural, such as feeling sad, is now pathological.

It is not possible to be sad, cry, feel alone and isolate yourself for a while. You are already marked by the other with the name depression. What is this place that I occupy and that the Other wants from me?

We are living in a time where suffering is not possible and we need to do more than that. For what or for whom?

What is the malaise of today’s civilization?

It’s not enough to be a father or a mother, you need to show the world how you act as a mother and father. It’s not enough to be a son, you have to be the best son. It’s not enough to have a project, to aim for a business proposal , you need to go beyond that, be successful with it and showcase your achievements. It’s not enough to dream, you need to fight to make this dream come true. Is it an internal or external demand? So what will be the search of the human being today?

We live in a constant exposure on social media of our lifestyle habits, children and teenagers. Social media has ceased to be a space for professional marketing and has become a space for personal marketing. Today, professional exposure, or the promotion of a brand or product, goes beyond the object itself; you need to sell your identity associated with the product. Personal exposure has become a lifestyle. If someone accepts me and likes me and what I do, then I get more likes , more likes. If they are sad or hurt by someone, they immediately expose this feeling or attitude on social media, as if it were a diary. Why? It is not enough to just talk to someone (doctor, dentist, physiotherapist, psychologist, psychoanalyst); it is necessary to expose this to the world, in social media identification groups. We live in a culture of carpe diem , of the moment, of immediacy, with an intense lack of concern for the duration of things. What matters is immediate pleasure. The sovereignty of the pleasure principle. Liquid modernity, based on the pleasure principle, promotes the abolition of the postponement of satisfaction, and the reward must be instantaneous. However, this satisfaction is brief, a moment of ecstasy, because complete satisfaction is not assured, since it is not constant because it is too quick. In this sense, psychoanalysis has made a great contribution, from Freud to Lacan.

So I arrive at the doctor’s office and hear a constant complaint: who am I? Everything I do is not enough, I need to do more and if I don’t do it I feel guilty. What do others want from me? Why am I like this? Why do people judge me for what I do or don’t do? And they conclude that they don’t belong in this world because it doesn’t make sense!

The impossibility of an experience of absolute pleasure is what ensures the durability of desire and keeps it alive. But since the contemporary imperative is “satisfaction now,” the suffering and pain inherent to humans are no longer bearable.

Today the clinic is all about the clinic of death, narcissism, and the speaking body. In Civilization and its Discontents , Freud points to relationships with others as the cause of man’s greatest suffering. Civilization and its Discontents are the discontents of social bonds.

Freud also believed that the goal of life is happiness, but the path to this achievement can be cloudy. A time to suffer and rediscover life, to overcome the dark fog.

Schpenhauer says: “Life is pain, and if it is not pain, it is boredom.” Today we live in a society that says: we have to seek happiness, without suffering. If you suffer, it is because something is wrong. It is forbidden to suffer!

The subject seeks pleasure without taking into account the limits of the paternal symbolic and the reality principle. The attempt to appease displeasure in a way that leads to absolute enjoyment leads the subject to death. This is a culture of the death drive in which pleasure is no longer controlled and the search for it becomes the ultimate purpose of life. The death drive, treated here in the sense of abolishing tension, of living sheltered from suffering, characterizes what Freud proposed in 1920 that goes beyond the pleasure principle . It can be seen, therefore, that in today’s culture suffering is not tolerated. And in the search for total satisfaction, one prefers to give up feeling to the detriment of action.

“The paradox of our existence consists in the fact that the more we conquer within ourselves the capacity to feel, to have emotions and feelings, the more we dispose ourselves to pain.” Freud in Civilization and Its Discontents. 1929.

“People today defend themselves intensely from recognizing themselves as depressed, sad about something, as if this were ugly or reprehensible in our society. Contemporary society, although “depressive”, does not offer these same people “time to suffer”. This is the result of their inability to be happy. In fact, there is no experience of pain or real happiness, only the momentary illusion of total satisfaction.

Joel Birman also points out that contemporary subjectivity manifests itself as essentially narcissistic. In my practice, I have noticed a significant increase in the number of adolescents between the ages of 14 and 19 with borderline symptoms. It is noticeable that this type of patient is very similar to the symptoms of narcissistic pathologies due to their characteristic of a considerably fragile existence. The psychopathology of these contemporary patients involves problems of identity (“I don’t know if I am myself or someone else”) and no longer of identification (“being like my father or mother”).

Freud emphasizes the importance of narcissism as a structuring factor; the issue is the dissolutions and rearrangements of the marks of primary and secondary narcissism in psychic development. “Before narcissism there was no ego, only a fragmented body, traversed by partial drives without any unity”. I will not emphasize this difference at this point, although it is relevant to the understanding of this text. Freud explores these narcissistic issues, libido, life and death drives, in the texts On Narcissism: An Introduction and Mourning and Melancholia.

How can psychoanalysis help with these complaints and demands about contemporary suffering?

If the aim is to investigate the new forms of suffering that are presented in the clinic today, it is necessary to first verify in what world these suffering subjects live – not that this is decisive, but it is certainly a contributing factor in understanding them. And if the pain of today’s man is different from the pain of man from centuries past, it is necessary to investigate what has changed in this subject and in the world around him, in order to reach a broader and more complete understanding of what, in fact, contributes to today’s talk of new subjective configurations.

Bauman ‘s (2001) understanding of the evolution of society, there is a shift from a solid modernity to a liquid modernity. Solids are more stable, more resistant, and evoke the idea of durability and reliability. Liquids, in turn, are more mobile, lighter, more flexible, and adaptable to any space. Fluids, unlike solids, do not maintain their shape for a long time, are clearly more slippery, and consequently more elusive. In this way, the author uses “fluidity as the main metaphor for the present stage of the modern era.”

Bauman (2001) characterizes solid modernity as:

A state of perfection to be attained tomorrow, next year or in the next millennium, some kind of good society, a just society without conflicts in all or some of its postulated aspects: of the firm balance between supply and demand and the satisfaction of all needs; of perfect order, in which everything is put in its right place, nothing that is out of place persists and no place is put in doubt; of human things that become totally transparent because everything that needs to be known is known; of complete mastery over the future – so complete that it puts an end to all contingency, dispute, ambivalence and unforeseen consequences of human initiatives (p. 37).

Bruno Latour contributes by saying that the first modernity was, therefore, controlled, safe and reliable, because people were content to live according to what they had, conforming to the standard, imitating and not deviating from the norm. Everything was designed, controlled, regulated in a rigid way and in accordance with the principles of reason and common sense. It should not be forgotten, however, that such characteristics were part of the modernity project as ideals, not necessarily achieved in their entirety.

Zygmunt Baumam states that current modernity, on the other hand, is configured by an appeal to speed, constant production, and continuous consumerism. The objectives to be pursued are fragile and change very frequently. The contemporary world is full of interruption, instantaneity, incoherence, surprise, and permeated by stimuli that are constantly renewed. In this way, “our institutions, frames of reference, lifestyles, beliefs, and convictions change before they have time to solidify into customs, habits, and self-evident truths .” In the contemporary model of life, everything is temporary and there is an inability to maintain form, just like liquids.

Here is the paradox in which we live: “the process of constituting subjectivity requires time, and culture (at least contemporary culture) requires immediacy”.

If they become ill, it is assumed that it is because they were not determined and industrious enough to follow through with their treatments; if they become unemployed, it is because they have not learned how to pass an interview, or because they have not tried hard enough to find work, or because they are simply averse to work; if they are uncertain about their career prospects and agonize about the future, it is because they are not good enough at making friends and influencing people, and have failed to learn and master, as they should, the arts of self-expression and impression making. This is, in any case, what they are told today, and what they have come to believe, so that they now behave as if this were the truth ( Bauman , 2001, p. 43).

The consequence of this is that contemporary man has become more fragile and feels more powerless in the face of so much loneliness.

Contemporary fluid culture is essentially marked by the instability of relationships, the impoverishment of emotional bonds and the absence of references, since values are constantly consumed and replaced. Contemporary man is alone, there are no rules or models to follow. The imperative is the principle of autonomy and the disease of the postmodern subject is uncertainty. What is at stake in contemporary malaise is the loss of meaning in life, the feeling of unreality, the futility of existence, the crisis of identity, the fear of annihilation.

The subject of psychoanalysis is, therefore, from its origin, related to the other. Our desire is interpreted by the other. The structuring of desire occurs through the structuring of affective bonds with the other, in which the subject’s needs are transformed into a demand for the other to love him. This is the only guarantee of survival. However, there is something that escapes between need and demand. This something is the unconscious desire, which comes from the failure, from the impossibility of the other fully understanding him, or even fully meeting him, since his demand for love is inexhaustible and, therefore, impossible to meet. It is when the mother “leaves something to be desired” that the child’s desire is established.

In other words, we only desire what we lack, and this lack arises where the other fails. In this sense, the missing object is the cause of desire. That is why it is said that it is from lack that we become desiring subjects. Therefore, it is only because desire remains unsatisfied that it continues to exist and move human life.

If it were satisfied it would cease to exist: that is precisely the constitutive void.

What keeps us alive is the one who holds the enigmatic answer to the question: Who am I? In this way, according to Freud, we can talk about love, even if we can only talk about ways of loving and not about love. In other words, even in the greatest internal solitude, we still depend on the other.

* Caroline Gouvêa Silva Wallner is a clinical psychologist with continuing education in psychoanalysis and mental health for almost 20 years. She is the administrator of the Facebook page Psicanálise e Amor. She works with adolescents and adults. www.carolinegouvea.com

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Bibliographic References:

BAUMAN, Zygmunt . Liquid Modernity. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar Editor, 2001.

BIRMAN, Joel. Discomfort in the present day: psychoanalysis and new forms of subjectivation. 3rd edition . Rio de Janeiro: Ed. Civilização Brazilian , 2001.

FREUD, Sigmund. “Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning” (1911). In: Standard Brazilian Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. XII. Rio de Janeiro: Imago, 1996.

_______. “On Narcissism: An Introduction” (1914). In: Standard Brazilian Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. XIV. Rio de Janeiro: Imago, 1996.

_______. “Mourning and Melancholia” (1915). In: Standard Brazilian Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. XIV. Rio de Janeiro: Imago, 1996.

_______. “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” (1920). In: Standard Brazilian Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. XVIII. Rio de Janeiro: Imago, 1996.

KEGLER, Paula. The Pathologies of Narcissism and the Psychoanalytic Clinic: new subjective configurations in contemporary times . Final course work. UFSM, 2006.

LATOUR, Bruno. We have never been modern. São Paulo: Ed. 34 Letras , 1997.