LE NOM DU PÈRE IS PÉEREL
In the current issue of „Przegląd Polityczny” (78/2006), the main section concerns embitterment. Embitterment is a unique blend of love and hate. What is it all about? It is all about being hurt. It is distressing, especially if caused by someone close, by a person who should bring relief and not harm. On the face of it, embitterment seems to be a simple hatred. However, it is not. It is extremely difficult to admit that you love someone who you actually hate. What to do about this? According to Nietzsche and psychotherapy, it should be cured. Embitterment is a result of trauma and it is required to come back to that situation and constructively answer to that. It is a demanding and thankless job. Those most persistent can expect a prize and it will not be a pat on the back or a lollipop but existential promotion and dignity. Soft package includes tranquility and delight.
I presume these articles have as an overriding objective to make the embitterment victims aware of being the victims. Caution! Victims. They are victims on their own request (bitter truth that makes many people prejudiced against psychology) but still, the very fact of being victims makes them entitled to care and support. The “Przegląd Polityczny” mission is completed and the recovery begins: the embitterment victim can count only on advice from a friend or a therapist (which should be two different persons actually). It is known that looking at them is not pleasant neither for themselves nor for people who are looking.
Language drama. Public speech in the Fourth Polish Republic by Michał Głowiński has become popular after its reprint in “Gazeta Wyborcza”. Jacques Lacan remarked that unawareness can be compared to language, a place where father rules and actually his Name. What about unawareness of our national politics? And who is the Father? Głowiński suggests that le Nom du Père is Péerel, PRL in short (If Lacan had been alive, he could have conducted a seminar named like that). Rules governing the language of the IV Polish Republic stem from the former one that has no number actually. How does it work? Głowiński is astonished and worried about the fact that the ability to debunk attacks on the language (acquired under communism) turns out to be very useful nowadays. Polish Peoples’ Republic in its afterlife can be easily understood by the embitterment logic: subject of our love becomes subject of our hatred. Father is loved, no matter how bad he is, even when he is hated. Although we have scorned and renounced it, we still speak in a way that we were taught. An old joke can be brought up: man was exploiting man under communism and now the reverse happens. Communists were fighting the opposition and now the former opposition is fighting the former communists. It is a vicious circle that we can avoid only by burying it and a period of deep mourning after that. Neither renouncing communism (“it was worse once”) nor melancholy (“it was better once”) can be a solution. The only complete solution is a real state of mourning. If not, we can just escape – and conversely chase after – traumatic and carefree childhood, escape le péerel.
do uslyszenia niedlugo :)
The embitterment section opens with a short and pathetic letter by Hanna Buczyńska–Garewicz. In the final paragraph, she writes: “In my opinion, no part of the discourse can be used to analysis in order to search for the inner presence of embitterment. The reason is not lack of examples but the fact that these examples are not serious enough to make this analysis”. Before, the author remarks: “[…] some level of foolishness makes it impossible to carry out any analysis and interpretation”. However, stubbornness is sometimes expedient. The least promising cases may follow the final scene of I ♥ Huckabees film, directed by David O. Russell. Two young men get a very up-to-date exercise: they are pounding each other with elastic balls. The result is that they get rid of their own thoughts and treat themselves less seriously. (“The best therapy for those who suffer from envy is distance to themselves” – wrote Tadeusz Sławek in an essay On envy from the same issue of “PP”). It seems that those who suffer from embitterment need the same: blunt and soft thing kept at hand for all the time that can always help to keep distance. (By the way, I am going to sell balls, pillows and inflatable truncheons with a concise instruction: “Sit down and bang yourself . In any order.”).
However, in the beginning of “Przegląd Polityczny” one can find a story titled Giedroyc-Gombrowicz. Invective and geneaology, written by Janusz Margański. Gombrowicz and Giedroyc were closer to each other on paper than in flesh. Thus, the outdated distance enabled them to realize and value their roles. Of course, I will not reveal the punch line.
“Przegląd Polityczny” is worth reading also because of the polemical article by Michał Warchala Liberal passions and stoical look. A brilliant article with lots of comments on psychoanalysis.
Maciej Stroiński
Translated by Natalia Mielech
Discussed journals: Przegląd Polityczny