Psychoanalysis as an Aesthetic of Survival in the Face of Nothingness

[TheVanishingPoint]

Life, stripped of its ornaments, is a constant discomfort, an unwanted wound, an existence thrown into meaninglessness. Existential pain cannot be cured: it is contained, disguised, ritualized. And where the final act fails, the strategy of language begins. Psychoanalysis is not a cure: it is bourgeois coping. It does not extinguish pain—it translates it into an acceptable language, frames it, makes it compatible with survival. It is a ritual, not a revolution. A weekly theatre where the subject recites their trauma under the mute gaze of a secular priest: the analyst. It does not save. It does not liberate. It does not redeem. Psychoanalysis freezes pain beneath the glass of reflection. It gives it speech, but does not let it die. It merely returns to the individual the right to narrate their unhappiness coherently. And this, in its radical uselessness, is all that is needed to avoid collapse. Psychoanalysis is a form of aesthetic resistance to the s***. It is how the intellectual, the disillusioned, the one who does not dare end their life, floats atop the sewage of existence. It builds no bridges. It opens no exits. But it shields the mind from immediate breakdown. If suicide is the logical act, psychoanalysis is the theatrical gesture of postponement. A compromise between nausea and silence. Practically, a sentence to unhappiness and suffering, but at least one dies of natural causes—just as desired by illness, morality, and the majority of religions that still steer global politics today.

 

[Linda]

So, stripped of its ornaments, you are saying that psychoanalysis is useless and pointless. I don't think that's true. It certainly doesn't help everyone, but I have no doubt that it does help some people.

 

[SoulWhisperer]

So, stripped of its ornaments, you are saying that psychoanalysis is useless and pointless. I don't think that's true. It certainly doesn't help everyone, but I have no doubt that it does help some people.

(I think) He meant that psychoanalysis is coping, not a solution/cure, but... Not fully useless I believe he meant.

I'm not sure if he meant some logic I too believe in, I feel like some parts resonated with me.

 

[Linda]

(I think) He meant that psychoanalysis is coping, not a solution/cure, but... Not fully useless I believe he meant.

I'm not sure if he meant some logic I too believe in, I feel like some parts resonated with me.

I think that psychonalysis can truly cure some people. Whether it cures enough people to justify its existence is another question and I don't know the answer to that.

 

[TheVanishingPoint]

Thank you for your comments, Linda and SoulWhisperer.
I would like to clarify my position: I have always said this openly, both here and elsewhere—life, as we experience it, is a sort of slime, a trap from which there is no real escape. Psychotherapy, in my opinion, doesn't cure anything. It merely provides us with tools to survive within this filth, to avoid suicide or escape. It's like Snow White's apple: an illusion, a deception that keeps us in the cage, not a real solution.

The best for human beings, by nature, is unattainable. There is a myth that perfectly summarizes all of this: when King Midas asks Silenus what is best for man, Silenus replies that the best would be never to have been born, and the second best would be to die soon.

This is the bitter truth at the center of existence.
Psychoanalysis and psychotherapy offer neither redemption nor happiness—they only help us bear the unbearable, to stay afloat in the slime.
It's not healing, it's adaptation.
SoulWhisperer has grasped this nuance: it's not about being completely useless, but about realizing that what is offered is only survival, not salvation.

In your opinion, is there really a way out of all this, or do we only learn to coexist with the unbearable?