Liquid modernity: a source of shame

In May 2013 I received a letter from a former patient. His letter reminded me of the difficulties my patient and I had in understanding reality and in finding ways to adapt to it. Reality is a complex concept. It is even more difficult to understand how the relational, bodily, social and political dimensions of reality become psychic. Mats, the patient who wrote the letter in May, was in psychoanalysis with me from August 1998 to June 2004. He wrote: “Still I am surprised about my sense of freedom and safety, whatever happens around me. Of course I feel worried many times, but I trust myself in a way that still is new for me. Once during our analysis you said that you would like me to feel content with myself and it works surprisingly well. I feel that I have a different relation to those thoughts that earlier made me lose my self-confidence. What you did for me is fantastic, Christer. You gave me another and better life. Those six years, when I was in psychoanalysis, were the most terrible years in my life, but I came to every session, whatever aversive feeling I had. The result is something that I never could have anticipated. Today I have a feeling of inner strength, which makes it possible for me to believe in myself. You are an important person for me.”

Mats suffered from anxiety and struggled with identity problems when he began his analysis. He was preoccupied with his body and had different somatic symptoms, many of which were related to his genetic condition, Klinefelter syndrome. Reading Zygmunt Bauman's latest book Collateral damage: Social inequalities in a global age I thought of Mats and our work together. Mats's genetic reality, following Bauman, can be thought about as the result of a game of chance, something which, in turn, evokes questions linked to the relationship between reason and faith. As an analyst and medical doctor it is tempting to look at genetic fate with rational medical eyes and ignore the despair related to an unfair fate, and the qu