Freud and return

At the outset of his psychological excavations, Freud believed that all disruptive trauma came to the subject from without. Violent intrusion from the outside produced what he perceived as malignant development. Freud named his early theoretical construct The Seduction Theory.

The shattering of self-assured subjectivity came about through the entrance of the other, the shadow lurking just beyond my gaze.

Eventually, Freud reassessed his earlier assumptions, and came to see the subject itself as the source, the place of the conflict. The other, no longer a strange, violent intruder, was revealed to be the underbelly of consciousness itself. The known unknown of the unconscious removed the thinking subject from it’s fantastical self-assurance. No longer the center of cognition, the ego was shown to be prisoner to the great unknown-other within the same.

The traumatic de-centering of the I grew forth, not from beyond my gaze, but rather from within my gaze.

The inclination towards transgression, the point of breakage within our lives, is often closer, more intimate than we like to believe. Return, to the self, to the I. Reconnect to the subterranean streams of inner experience. Quiet the outside. Release the gaze, end the unending process of blame. “We have met the enemy…and he is us…”