Melancolia bajo un palo de mango: A Review and Critique of “Psychoanalysis in el Barrio”

In Freud, the ego is like Dr. Frankenstein's monster, put together from bits, pieces, and shreds of losses, whereas in Lacan there is something strangely immaculate about the ego…. Where fragmentation as a concept might figure in Freud's theory of the ego insofar as the ego is built up of fragments and shreds, in the early Lacan, fragmentation is what the fledgling organism experiences as its first disarray because of what Lacan theorized at that time as a Real biological lack concerning the human's general prematurity, its motor uncoordination when compared to other species. The organism narcotizes itself against the feeling of fragmentation by identifying with and assuming the specular image.

[T]he analyst's idea about psychoanalysis is an essential variable that contributes to our concept of analyzability. And the analyst's ideas are always shaped by desire. Wishes and defenses organize our perception of the world, including the world of who is or is not analyzable.

There was a huge palo de mango, a mango tree, in my backyard growing up in San Juan, Puerto Rico. I remember playing, running around, and sitting under that tree, kept cool beneath its shade, out of reach from the blazing sun. I would often help my grandfather—who lived with our family—pick up the mangos as they fell from the tree, ripe and ready to be feasted on. I would wash them, throw them up in the air, throw them at my grandfather and play catch with him. On more than one occasion when our house was broken into, my father would brandish the mangos, readying them to be flung at the robbers. I myself threw these sweet projectiles at lizards or snakes should they venture too close to me or to my younger brother. I did everything with these mangos—everything but eat them. “Como que no te gusta el mango?!” friends and relatives would exclaim in disbelief: “What do you mean you don't like mangos?!” “Ah pues, este no es Boricua!” “Oh, but th