Psychoanalytic Perspectives On Emptiness

Abstract

A clinical example illustrates the thesis that the experience of feeling empty, like any other mental event, can be understood in terms of the conflicting wishes, prohibitions , compromises, and gratifications that color any experience in ways that clarify its meaning. Theoretical hypotheses which explain mental events and experiences as the result of deficiencies of structures are difficult to translate into therapeutic practices. This is especially true in the case of the experience of emptiness which, in and of itself and often vigorously, asserts an absence of content. The equating of deficiencies of structures, however formulated, with deficiencies in mental content or activity can result in unconsciously joining the empty patient in repudiating important aspects of internal life, maintaining ultimately pathological gratifications , and often contributing to treatment stalemates in which the "absence of content" is often preferred to the presence of frightening wishes, fantasies, and memories.