Always There and Never Before: The Eclipse of “Everyday Life”

The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the state of emergency in which we live is not the exception but the rule.

Psychoanalysis began by recognizing the state of emergency in the lives of women suffering from hysteria. We listened to what these women said. We saw what they saw. And we learned our first lesson, a lesson true then and true now: that underneath the rule, underneath the cover of everyday life, there lurked, and still lurks, an ongoing, and usually unspoken, state of emergency. These states of emergency are, indeed, emergencies. It remains our task to name and address them, to rescue them from the waste bin of “everyday life.”

A 25-year-old man begins his session: “I just saw a homeless guy right outside your office. He's got a huge pile of stuff in a cart. On top of the stuff he's put Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl. Man's Search for Meaning. Who is that guy? What's he doing? I can't take it. It's too much for me. I don't know how people live.”

The image of the homeless guy stays with me the rest of the day. We're alike, him and me, I somehow think.

Afterward … I scoff at my sense of identification with him. It's ludicrous. Nonetheless, I go outside to look for him. He's not there. There are other homeless people, though, each one begging. The sidewalk is jammed with wealthy strollers. The strollers are a blur to me. My gaze focuses on two guys asking for money and food. These guys,

each in a state of emergency, have their eyes on “everyday life.” I want to know what they see.

There was a time in the United States when the psychoanalytically iconic phrase “everyday life” could be written without scare quotes—nothing ironic about it. The phrase would have referred t