Arid Mental Landscapes and Avid Cravings for Human Contact: Beckettian and Analytic Narratives

This paper focuses on states of mind in which a psychic void predominates, characterized by a deep sense of meaninglessness and formlessness, and on the various survival strategies and protective shells employed in the attempt to ‘a-void’ this experience/state. At one pole, through a clinical case, I will illustrate the use of excitation envelopes and rebirth phantasies, as main pacifiers of the psychic void; at the other pole, through a discussion of Beckett's short play ‘Rockaby’, I will elaborate on overly rhythmic, controlled manoeuvres that are devoid of aliveness, but protect against the awareness of such depleted states of mind. In both cases, one can notice the oscillation between the defence employed and the ever-pulsating need for human contact, however faint it may be. The seemingly paradoxical contradiction between the psychic void and the overly structured literary text that embodies this void is frequently encountered in texts that express and give form to otherwise formless experiences through the structuring and ordering aspects of the text. These structures simultaneously express both something of the defence against the experience of fragmentation and dissolution, and something of the experience that is being defended against by the protagonist.