What do we do with our helplessness? – 03/18/2024 – Vera Iaconelli

Freud already warned about the psychic effects of human beings’ helplessness at birth. Just compare the baby with a newly given foal to see that our journey is full of obstacles. What made us so vulnerable, on the other hand, would have been responsible for the deep bonds between us and led us to develop a different language.

All animals communicate, but our language is based on equivocation and polysemy, which produces glory but also misfortune. Glory, because it forces us to be poets, and disgrace, because it condemns us to the deepest incommunicability. This tension between what is impossible to communicate —to ourselves and to others— and the imperative need to try to do so moves us.

Human helplessness is inevitable, but there are worse and better ways to face it. Contrary to what the vain neoliberal philosophy would have you believe, we do not overcome existential helplessness by accumulating trinkets, be they goods or titles. At most, we can circumvent it punctually by means that range from the faith that mom and dad would guarantee everything to the unexpected religiosity of the non-believer in the face of death. As the saying goes: there are no atheists in crashing planes.

Helping children deal with the lack of guarantees, or even dealing with the guarantee that something is always missing, depends on how parents view their role. We do not solve children’s suffering, but we are ready to be by their side as much as possible. We can’t even give them the certainty that we won’t die too soon. Suffering alone, but not necessarily unaccompanied, is the possible consolation among humans.

The central issue of the film “All of Us Strangers” (2023) is precisely the way in which the character — played by the hypnotic Andrew Scott — had to face the tragic death of his parents at the age of 12.

Every love loss requires the work of mourning. Freud does not choose the word work for nothing, as it is a process that requires great elaboration to discover what was lost with the beloved object. Scott’s character did not have the chance to make himself known to his parents as an adult, living a life that he knows was not the one his parents planned for him. Obviously, this acceptance projected onto parents is acceptance that can only be achieved by ourselves. Without it, it is impossible to lead a minimally satisfactory life, alone or with someone. Hence, assuming that there are no guarantees in the face of the imponderable is the only way to continue living in a way that is worthwhile.

A central theme in Carolina Maria de Jesus’ work is social helplessness and the absolute lack of resources, but what makes her work great is her refusal to limit herself to that. There, where everything is missing, it is subjective helplessness that leads her to narrate her penury and suffering. She writes to be heard and to make herself heard, in a world in which poverty and invisibility go hand in hand and in which the subjective existence of those who do not have goods is denied.

But not even the greatest poet would be able to convey the dimension of a life, as helplessness is given precisely by the short blanket of language, which always leaves something out.

The end of an analysis does not point to naive self-knowledge, nor to any personal development or claim to superiority to others. In fact, it boils down to radically assuming our structural helplessness, which is far from easy. From this observation, we would be left to seek in relationships with others — as helpless as we are — some type of consolation, of encouragement.

Individualism, as we know, is the religion of modern man revealing that we made the worst choice in the face of suffering. Social networks have enhanced the deception of the omnipresence of others and created the deepest loneliness among their users.

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