SEVEN PAPERS ON EXISTENTIAL ANALYSIS ... - Wagner College

Whatever the meaning of the physical exchanges, they were not homosexual in the sense
developed by Magnus Hirschfeld, Wilhelm von Krafft-Ebing and Sigmund Freud—the major
craftsmen of the medico-legal concept of homosexuality—or by apologists for “gay sex”
beginning in the 19 th century with men such as Edward Carpenter.
The Greek example of homosocial intergenerational erotism, when well understood, is
helpful in the present discussion, but it is not enough, since we live in a very different world than
the Greeks did. All the same, I would claim that, now as then, eros is the same force. Moreover,
the province of eros is in every respect boyish, just like the god after whom the force is named.
Its mode of operation is essentially ludic—playful—but it comprises other features as well.
Eros can never reduce the one pursued to a what, an “it (Es),” that is, something actual.
It is after the possible. Here I make use of Martin Buber’s (1970) well-known distinction between a
“you” or “Thou” (Du)—which is always a who—and an “it” (Es)—which is always a what. As in
the I-Thou relation, there is in eros no place for a what (something actual), but only a who, the
essence of which is unrealized possibilities. Eros does not distinguish between the human and the
divine, which I think Buber’s distinction was meant to highlight. For me, eros sees no difference
between the two. Under its influence, I go out to a fellow other, as he does to me. Under the
influence of eros, the other draws me to him just as it draws him to me. In the world of sexuality,
by contrast, each of the partners sees the other as a thing (a what).
Eros works in the world playfully. In 1938, the Dutch historian, Johan Huizinga (1971),
characterized anthropos as homo ludens, placing playing above knowing (homo sapiens) and
making (homo faber) as the uniquely distinguishing feature of human beings. A few years earlier
(in 1933), influenced by Karl Groos (2005, 2007), who studied play first in animals (1896) and
subsequently in humans (1899), the Russian psychologist, Lev Vygotsky (1967), was writing about
the pivotal role of play in childhood as the means by which human beings gradually move from
being creatures limited to what goes on in the external world (actuality) to beings with an inner,
imagined and invisible world, a world fully commensurate with external reality but one of sheer
possibility, intimately associated, he thought, with memory. In effect, he was writing about the
operation of the force of eros in the human being at work in the early and middle childhood
years. Vygotsky’s views were confirmed by Jean Piaget’s research, especially in La Formation du
Symbole chez l'Enfant. Imitation, Jeu et Rêve, Image et Representation (1945). More recently,
the work of British object relations psychoanalysts such as Donald Winnicott (1982) and Maria
Piers (1972), and the ego psychologist Erik Erikson (1977) have confirmed the ideas of Vygotsky
and Huizinga on the centrality of the ludic in becoming human. None have explicitly related
play to eros, however, or discussed both in relation to the psychotherapeutic venture.
Eros longs passionately for possibility, not for what is there. It longs for what is yet to
appear, what is to come to pass. It attains its goal with another in intimacy, which is achieved in
what we may call (with Spurzheim) “adhesiveness” or attachment (amité) to the possible in
another human being. Playful, eros may be said to have a sense of humor, unlike sex and
sexuality, which are a serious business with serious consequences, including pregnancy,
maternity—and paternity, as brilliantly traced to its origins by Luigi Zoja (2000) in his study Il Gesto
di Ettore.
To understand eros as the ur-phenomenon, the one with which we must begin to
understand what happens in the psychotherapeutic venture, I now turn to the story of Will. Here
it will become clear how eros provides access to existence.
4. How is eros at play in the therapeutic venture?
From the start, psychotherapists have realized that a patient’s presenting complaints are
never the reason he is there. For Freud, hidden conflicts were the latent causes of
psychopathology. Unsuccessful attempts at conflict resolution—known as symptoms—
motivated the patient to seek out therapy. In a further step, rather than trying to discover such
presumed underlying conflicts and what was termed “wrong” with the patient, Medard Boss
stopped asking the question “Why?” and began to “ask” his patients the rhetorical question