In the Introduction to a book published in 2005 I write: "My professional name is 'psychoanalyst'"; and in brackets: "(y other name

I have never found.)" Last spring I corresponded with an American colleague regarding the name of an evolving American society. Having in mind my "other name" I wrote to him: "I would think of 'Analysis from Something to Nothing', or 'Psychoanalysis' ('psycho' as strokenthrough word)" and added: "I'm joking now." What began as a joke, started more and more setting its tone on me. "Analysis from Something to Nothing": It is about a course where any "demand", any "problem", any perception of "therapy" are not being elaborated but find their solution by just fading away. "Psychoanalysis". The strokenthrough word "psyche" does not name anything in a positive way; it does not refer to the field and the object of therapy but rather to that which therapy seeks to get rid of. And what does therapy seek to get rid of? What does "psyche" mean here?

Some years ago I came upon a so-called "chamber music theatre" by the Korean composer Younghi Pagh-Paan titled "Mondschatten" [Moon Shadows]. The libretto is based on Sophocles's tragedy "Oedipus at Colonus". There is interposed a poem by the Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han titled "Wundgetrumt" [Wounded from Dreaming]. It is Antigone speaking to her father Oedipus:

Judge Gods, Kill them. They don't care for humans. These Gods strike us Wound upon wound. Wounded from wanderings Wounded from crying Wounded from dreaming Wounded all over is your soul.

Your wounded head isn't yet Nobody's face, Sun and moon, Light's and shadow's Friendly change Don't mirror in there. Your soul is Nothing but a burden. Till death

Breathe through your wounds! Let your wounds blossom!

You are going to suffer it. Cut off your soul.

"God" is here a name for the transcendent, anything going beyond the immanent, that is beyond the mundane, the tangible, sensible, beyond whatever presents itself in its relevant time and place. Transcendence is no more situated in Plato's "hyperouranios topos", the field above the skies, home of the ancient gods and the christian one, of the platonic ideas, of the aristotelian meta-physics (the things beyond the natural), of the spirit and the like. From Rennaisance on, this "beyond" acquired progressively an anthropological dimension. It translocated to consciousness (including the Freudian "unconscious"), to the brain, to anything naming the space "inside" me. The transcendent acquired the form of interiority. Its "beyond" is not heading upwards but inwards. Some examples for the "beyond" of this transcendence, relevant to psychotherapy: - The image of myself and of the others defined by an "I must", "I want", "I fear", "I hope" etc. - The vision of another, better father or mother, partner, child, life, world. - "Thinking", in the sense of retreating to a kind of inner laboratory where one evaluates, judges, compares and then eventually announces the outcome, for example in the mode of translating the words of the client in terms of a model, interpreting them accordingly and finally coming out with an intervention. - "Feeling", perceived as a kind of climate and weather conditions in one's private microcosm. If for example someone expresses his feelings by saying "I love you" or "I hate you", sometimes he is not addressing the one in front of him but he is announcing something occurring inside himself. - Imagining, daydreaming, dwelling in inner dialogues, in the sense of living in an autistic, inner world, where often things are far more vivid and meaningful than in the "outer world" - which, in this case, does not differ much from outer space. - The ego as the point of reference in every encounter. Things are perceived and evaluated on the ground of my personal pronoun, for example, whether something makes me feel good or bad, whether it is safe or risky, whether it brings to me win or loss etc. If for example I ask somebody "How is the weather?" he might answer "good / bad..." This answer says nothing about the weather! - The self. It is the utmost home one lives in. It is "me" and not "you". It determines everything

that can be called "mine" and conversely is determined by this "mine". The place which such images and visions, thinking, feeling and dreaming, the ego and the self abide, could be called "soul". This soul is "nothing but a burden". "Till death / You are going to suffer it." Why does the soul become a burden? Interiority establishes a microcosm. This microcosm will necessarily go crashing through the cosmos. It is always a collision between egg and stone: - The image of myself defined by an "I must", "I want", "I am afraid", "I hope" etc. will ultimately collapse in front of what I am. - The vision of another, better father or mother, partner, child, life, world will collapse in front of the fact that these are my father, mother etc. and there will be no second one, nor will they ever change the way I want them to change. - The private, autistic world of thinking, feeling and imagining. I recall a verse written by the Austrian poet Georg Trakl: "The soul is an alien on this earth". In the eyes of an alien amidst the world, things are more or less "ill seen ill said"1. One is prone to misunderstandings, pseudobonding and pseudo-conflicts which are painful because there will be a time when they will fall upon the wall of reality. Homo sapiens is almost inevitably homo dolorosa. - The ego, its microcosm and its exposure to the great cosmos generates anxiety and guilt. Franz Kafka writes: "I believe that anxieties are the same as Ego. Maybe they are related to each other." Ego and anxiety are related to each other because the ego has to defend itself like a fragile ship amidst the wild open sea. The ego generates guilt because it considers itself responsible for everything, and the great cosmos stands out there challenging, testing and judging it all the time. Ego's microcosm will necessarily go crashing through the cosmos. The poem goes on: "Breathe through your wounds!" I would say that, in the course of psychotherapy, it is often the therapist who sometimes breathes first through his client's wounds. Let me make it a bit more clear. He / she is speaking about an impasse he is stuck in. It is as if we were walking together and find ourselves before such an impasse - an impasse marked by tiredness, sores, suffering, hopelessness. This is neither empathy nor compassion. In our meeting hours it is almost a common fate that we share. Now, while staying before the impasse, we look at it more carefully and there may come a moment where some words of his become signs and I, we, see things, discern paths

that show up for the first time. The impasse thins out. I may start breathing while he is still breathless. I may start breathing even in the absence of a way out. Then, along the pace of our communication, he may start breathing, too. One breathes through his wounds when he has given up his defense against them. When one gives up his defense, then his ego, as the pronoun of his substance, fades away. To the degree that the ego fades away, it does not take sides any more; sun and moon, light and shadow and all things perceived as contraries and conflicting and ambivalent become friendlier to each other. There is less bias, less selectivity, less rowing against the stream. The ego renders one somebody. The more it fades away, the more somebody acquires a tint of "nobody". In the realm of psychotherapy this change may take place depending on the therapist's availability for such things. "Cut off your soul." This appeal is certainly not valid just because a therapist may order it. Its validity comes from things themselves. To the extent that we are not in accord with them, to the extent that we stick to our soul and its biases, to the same extent we become deformed and suffer. The therapist can follow this direction in a friendly and detached attitude, in bare hearing and talking, that is without retreating to an inner world of thinking and feeling, without expectations; to put it shortly, without soul, but, just because of that, with a wide open mind and a wide open heart. This is contagious. Some day the client, without notice, might find himself having been dissolved in his paradigm. It does not mean setting oneself as an ideal and calling the people to follow it. It is rather a resonance from a word of Sophocles in "Ajax": [line 523]

It is grace that always lets grace come forth

1. Title

of a short novel by Samuel Beckett.