Abstract

TRACHTENBERG, Renato. The far side of the Moon: some thoughts on bridges, caesuras, and complex ethics. Rev. bras. psicanál [online]. 2022, vol.56, n.2, pp.143-163.  Epub Aug 19, 2024. ISSN 0486-641X.  https://doi.org/10.5935/0486-641x.v56n2.11.

The author describes a model of mind and some concepts used by Bion that try to minimize the deleterious effects, for the human mind, of the presence of morality, the serpent’s egg of so many prejudices and fanaticisms. The spectral model is confronted with evolutionary models, more prone to moral impregnation. While the first one is fundamental to think about the complex ethics of psychoanalysis, the second ones work with simplistic notions, such as superior/inferior, and better/worse. Complexity always brings us a third possibility in the face of these binary or dual logics. This third element, essential for the presence of complex, tertiary, or oedipal logics, is the concept of caesura. Bion, in his last works, places the caesura in a central place in his conception of an essentially psychoanalytic ethics, and of a mind in constant movement between different psychic dimensions. The first spectral model in Bion’s work was that of narcissism ↔ social-ism, where the self and the group are linked in such a way that one cannot be thought of without the other. The individual can connect with the group without losing its uniqueness, and the group can be respected/tolerated in its diversity. The author takes into account different problems brought to psychoanalysis by the one-way evolutionary models – that include notions such as infantile/adult, regression/progression, primitive/developed, and nature/civilization –, so characteristic of the historical domain of the logics of reason, and of a certain pretentious and positivist Enlightenment, that is still present in a world dominated by the sensoriality of common sense.

Keywords : morals; complex ethics; spectral model; caesuras; heterogeneous symmetries.

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