Objects of Desire

New or slightly altered perspective on desire . . . . The other is surely unavailable, withdrawn (to use OOO terminology), but the psyche might confuse emotional and physical needs/access (re. contemporary psychological and neuroscientific research on cognition and affect). This makes sense of pathological jealousy--the lover is possessive, obsessive, and controlling of *the psyche* because he cannot bear the thought of loosing physical access.

On the other hand I think it quite proper to physically want, crave (yes, “crave” my Buddhist friends), need, and be devoted to another. It can be fun, healthy (good exercise), adaptive, and unavoidable. A contrary view might even be masculinist. (Though, in truth, I am an unrepentant romantic.)

Maybe the error is in trying to consciously or unconsciously employ the psyche to control, guarantee, or even understand the challenges and opportunities of physical access. If two people cleave, they cleave. Why regret physical desire that isn't mutual? "I'm Scandinavian and everything is what it is [and what it's not]" (Timbaland v. Nephew). In fact the emotional pain of not being with another we desire may just mask the even more painful, but ultimately liberating, reality that everyone (even mummy and daddy) is dark, strange, and withdrawn. (I'm thinking of O3 and the Gothic novel suddenly, the labyrinth of Northanger Abbey . . . ).

But when two people cleave (two meanings, yes) —that can be good. Beautiful. True. Love. We are inseparable, because we are incapable of separation, even in our strangeness.

Interesting to me is not that everyone withdraws (though they do), but that some withdraw more than others, and that some may withdraw emotionally and not physically, or the opposite . . . or can't help but withdraw. I think of my former analyst’s over-the-top, knee-jerk reaction when I touched his shoe on the way out of the office one day. (The one who called me on vacation when I first terminated, and whose “little voice inside said, ‘don’t leave me’” the second time.) What more obvious tokens of withdrawal . . .