As a writer, I
have as little talent for staying on topic as a Mexican jumping bean. This
rather subverts my essays in generalization. I get philosophical, I get argumentative,
I get distracted, I head straight for the wrong goalposts.
However, as a
writer, it must be said that there in one great thing about obsession: you don’t
really have to worry too much about staying on topic – you will inevitably find
your way back to the topics of your particular cancer. You will inevitably bump
against the shore you are seeking, which will, unexpectedly, appear in
Shakespeare, or a news story, or a burst of static on the radio. This is a good
thing, until it becomes a very bad thing.
The OED claims
that obsession derives from the latin for sit opposite (ob -session). It is
interestingly different from possession, with the idea that some devil is
within the self, taking control. Obsession is the devil sitting outside the
self, but fronting the self, always there in one’s line of vision. In Freud’s
vocabulary, obsession is paired with compulsion, compulsive thinking – Zwangsvorstellung.
That pairs it, ultimately, with possession. Obsession, I’d contend, contains a
space that possession abolishes. Which is why I think writers need not fear
cultivating obsession, but should fear the devil’s leap from the other side
into one’s self. Or is this some unalterable sequence in the structure of
obsession? And isn’t there something about “sitting opposite” that reminds one
of the caricature of the therapeutic situation?
Being obsessed
with obsession today, I turned to psychoanalysis. This is from a recent paper
on obsessional neuroses:
“Obsessive
neurosis manifests itself through conjuration rites, obsessing symptoms, and
permanent mental rumination, in which scruples and doubts interfere with
action. It was the French psychiatrist Jules Falret (1824-1902) who used the
term obsession to highlight the fact that the subject is affected by
pathological ideas and a guilt that obsesses and persecutes him, to the point
of being pejoratively compared to a living dead.” (Ronaldo Chicre Araujo,
Welerson Silva Carneiro and Gabriel da Costa Duriguetto).
That
doesn’t sound good. However, it does sound, to an extent, helpful: in as much
as writing, here, is a substitute act, a
succedaneum for power – power being the act in full, outside the text. As if,
my inner Derrida sneers. Figuratively attacking one’s enemies is a rather voodooish
thing – sticking pins into figures.
I
can’t imagine writing without obsession. Like any neurotic, I cling to my
wrecks – don’t take them away from me! It does make me wonder if there is
literature beyond obsession. My question of the day.