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La melancolía:
JI.
.,
el ocaso de una paSlon
Retrotiempo, por los rastros de Caín y Abel
(Un estudio psicoanalítico)
,', Ocurre que los sistemas teóricos, cuando se convierten en ideología adquieren
un poder dogmático. En el psicoanálisis la ideología invade el campo de la
experiencia clínica, único lugar posible de verificación. Es al transitar por este
campo, contestatario de las verdades enunciadas, donde se asegura que la
ciencia está al servicio de la verdad y no al servicio de un poder autoritario
y sacralizado.
Es en este último caso donde se produce un oscurantismo científico en el
que un abusivo uso del poder transforma a las teorías en terrorismo ideo-
lógico, apagando el intento científico de búsqueda de la verdad inalcanzable.
La melancolía: el ocaso de una pasión 697
1, Entre los psicoanalistas hay cierta tendencia a pensar que Freud sólo se
ocupó de la melancolía en sus primeros trabajos (manuscrito K, "Duelo y
melancolía") sin advertir que su referencia a la melancolía es constante.
La melancolía,' el ocaso de una pasión 701
* Quisiera comentar a modo de digresión que toda esta temática tiene su centro
en "Introducción del narcisismo", que es el eje teórico y clínico. A partir de
"Duelo y melancolía" se inaugura toda esta nueva problemática que hace nece-
saria la inclusión de otras eonccptualizaciones teóricas (pulsión de muerte, ctc.) ,
pero además se torna imprescindible para Freud volver a reformular el concepto
de narcisismo.
706 Norberto Carlos Marucco
* Aquel "sano egoísmo" del que hablaba Freud como condición para que el
individuo no enferme (Freud, 1914).
"* Sé que se me podrá objetar el hablar de ideal y no de superyó. Ocurre que
como en otros trabajos he señalado, diferencio entre yo ideal, ideal del yo y
"supcryó", Este último supone un estadio avanzado de la estructuración psí-
quica. 'Por lo pronto un ingreso y un egreso del Edipo, que se suele pensar
infaltable.
La melancolía: el ocaso de una pasión 709
"Ven, muerte, pero tan serena que "Un loco, creen, es como un muer-
yo no te sienta venir, porque el to. Y tienen razón, porque un loco
placer de morir me puede devolver lleva dentro de sí a un muerto ... "
la vida."
Michel de Montaigne Miguel de Unamuno, "El otro"
Resumen
estarán fusionados para siempre. Creo que lo único que puede romper seme-
jante alianza es el amor que discrimina, el contingente, el que es libertad y
vida. Así se opondrían: fijeza o contingencia objetal. Dependencia e indepen-
dencia del objeto. Esclavitud o libertad del hombre. El amor o el poder. La
muerte o la vida.
Résumé
Surnrnary
In the introduction I warn the reader that in this paper Ideal with melan-
cholia on the basis of a personal reading of Freud's theorizing, a reading that
attempts to account for this c1inical picture but also to go beyond this objec-
tive. 1 regard it as a pathological picture and, at the same time, as a constitu-
tive structure in the formation of psychic life. A structure that emerges in the
c1angor of the relationship between the drive and an "object" of love and
need and which, in the vicissitudes of the bond, is lost... as a lave object.
The history of the "passionate falling-in-love" of a "helpless being" (initial
helplessness) whose image becomes larger o smaller as reflected by the
"source" of "life" (or of "death"). I wonder if it is only a question of falling
in love with his own image (erogenous narcissism) or of the terror in the
face of the "source" that givcs him life and which might, should this "source"
stop looking at him, bring about "death". Is this the one who became ena-
mored and who longingly looks for himself in the experience of pleasurc or
the one that was enamored and is virtually seen, begging, in the glitter of
other eyes? He who seeks being or he who wiII forever depend on the look
that makes him come into being? I am talking about primary identification
(of being identified). I feel this in-love relationship is based on a primary
lack (the initial helplessness together with the object's indiference). And thus
we might ask whether melancholia ís the consequen ce of the pathologic pro-
cess of "becoming enarnored" or whether "being enamored" is the conse-
quence of a melancholic structure. In the first case, an extreme "enarnoring"
characterized by the suggestion that preserves in the enamo red subject an
increasingly strong passion for his ideal object. In the second case, a patho-
logical mourning split by disavowal that remains latent and that is at sorne
time or other ejected outwards seeking, and finding, an object capable of
enamoring him and immobilizing the pathological mourning. This melancholic
structure, split, latent, would amount to what Freud called "character" in
The Ego and the Id, a remmant of the earliest identifications. Hence the
dialectics between love and power. Is not melancholia a love historv that
tragically becomes a story of power resulting from the necd, the fixity 01
the drivc, the illusion of being unique?
724 Norberto Carlos Marucco
vis-á-vis the loss of his love object, this implies the murder of that part of
the ego which progressively stops loving the superego. A destruction that
serves to maintain "in the decline" a passion beset by the coldness oi unlove.
The illusion of the melancholic is to preserve the possibility that the object
of his "passion" may trascend the barrier of death. Immortality without life,
"the irnmortality without life of Narcissus".
Passion is sustained by the illusion of the fulIfilment of a wish, the illusion
of defeatíng suffering. Fury aroused by challenging the limits imposed by
passion itself. Rather than acknowledge the inevitable certitude of losing
life when losing pass ion, the melancholic surrenders to death and begins to
wait. A (passive) victim of the passion that has devoured his life; a (active)
victimizer of that alienating passion in order to live his life activeIy in passion.
The melancholic is confronted with an object that, vis-á-vis the agony of his
narcissisrn, must appropriate itself of another narcissism in order to survive.
Thus, both must swear indissoluble mutual alIegiance, in the hope tu preserve
"love" for the rest of their lives. He kills himself (and at the same time kills
an alienating passion) and murders in defense of an erogenous pass ion that
is life. Passion in suffering (guilt) or passion in lave (the flame of Eros).
The melancholic's suicidal act seals with death a lave that existed only as the
"decline of a passion".
The title of the fifth section is "Harrnoníes or counterpoints in connection
with a myth: from melancholia, retrospectively, along the trail of Cain and
Abel". I try to explain melancholia on the basis of thc analysis of the myth
of Cain and Abel. AbeI, full of good qualities, grandiose, beautiful, who stands
(or is made to stand) as the ideal ego, vis-á-vis someone who, in turn, degrades
himself (or is degraded) to the condition of the humiliated one. Owing to
the extreme preference of God (ideal ego) for Abel, Caín is condemned to be
his murderer. In being the victim of the constant torture of denigration,
humiliation and disqualification, he becomes an executioner. To kill o to kili
himself are identical alternatives in this case. Through being the victim of a
murder, Abel manages to free himself from the domination of that ideal Other
that has transformed him and demands that he should be perfect and splendid.
As the victim, he is fraternalIy united to his brother in the place of hel-
plessness.
It is my contention that this double uncanny, present in each of us, cons-
tantly evokes the ancient story of Cain and Abel. Hence, the uncanny com-
pulsion to the repetition of an archaic crime in the origins of mankind. Death
instinct as demonic repetition of that fraternal hatred which has eventually
become embodied in the psychic structurating and is compulsively repeated
in history (Abel, the expression of purity, kindness, beauty, the power recog-
nized and designated by the ideal ego. Cain, disqualified and despised in spite
of his efforts to pIease God (ideal ego): a sinister pair, embracing each other
in the fire kindled by the hatred of the ideal ego and a love that has turned
into fright).
God-ideals-culture-Iather that punishes or remains silent. It is my belief that,
if the psychoanaIytic science is to preserve its strength in the face of religious
dogma and to continue fighting repression, it must denounce what "God"-
"culture" found it convenient to silence. To silence the tragedy pre-existing
in the maternal womb: a child (every child) condemned to be Abel and Caín,
flooded by a fraternal affection that is love and hatred,
The melancholic, bearing the burden of another that lives inside him and
faced with the evidence that this other (ideal ego) has never loved him, wiII
726 Norberto Carlos Marucco
stake the fate of his passion on a final card: suicide. A pact of eternity in
which both will be fused forever. I think that the only thing capable of brea-
king such an alliance is the kind of love that can discrirninate, love that is
contingent, love that is freedom and life. Thus, object fixity and contingency
would oppose cach othcr. The same may be said of dependence and indepen-
dence from the object; man's slavery or freedom; love or power, death or love.
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