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If, since the discovery of the unconscious, it is possible to claim that man is a stranger unto himself and that exile is his structural condition, in this book Marina Breccia demonstrates this with particular reference to the condition of psychosis. She also explores the concept in terms of the many ways it manifests itself in various aspects of our lives. Breccia draws on a wide range of sources, including art and literature, to enrich her reflections on the concept of exile.
Her starting point is that exile represents a leak in the mode of self-preservation, as defined by Freud in his early topographical model of the psyche. However, according to the author, the condition of exile should also be regarded as an extreme attempt by the ego to protect itself from total fragmentation by abolishing internal perception, which in turn entails a negation of the meaning of internal experience. This also leads to the withdrawal of the ego both from the external world and from the internal world.
The author sees the biblical myth of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from their earthly paradise as a model in which the human condition is understood in terms of exile. In her view, it is the sudden eruption of the drives into psychic life that forces the human into exile from his existence in the mode of pure self-preservation. But, once the instinctual has forced its way into psychic life, displacing equilibrium in favour of the death drive, the condition of exile also serves to protect the ego from an “excess of death” (p. 37).
And this is where the issue of a possible return from exile arises. It is a process which cannot consist in the re-creation of a condition such as the one that preceded exile, because one does not return from exile in the