An Infinite Doubt: The Obsessional in 40 Lessons
Good Fit
- Readers of psychoanalysis, Freud and Lacan who want to see how theory works in life
- Anyone familiar with doubt, a tendency to postpone and the pressure to «say everything exactly right», and who likes the literary-essay style
- Readers looking for a psychology book told through film and literature examples
Not a Fit
- Readers who want practical techniques and exercises for treating OCD: the book openly does not promise this
- Anyone who wants plain language without terms: the text is full of Lacanian concepts
- Readers sensitive to sections on sexual fantasy and clinical cases
The preface says the author wanted to call the book «Fragments of an Obsessional Discourse» and then arrived at the idea «Lessons to Be Learned from the Obsessional». Abelhauser regards as the obsessional's main feature a discourse that wants to say everything at once and as exactly as possible, so that in the end nothing is heard. This is the preface's own style: long sentences, added clarifications, a chain of «and in addition…».
The author makes two important things clear at the outset. First, «neurosis» and «obsessional» are for him neither a diagnosis nor an insult but one of the psychic structures that set up the subject's relation to the Other, to himself and to the world; being obsessional is a way of being human. Second, the book is neither a catalogue of symptoms nor a treatment recipe: the reader will find no technique for OCD here. Abelhauser sees the «obsessional» as a magnifying glass that enlarges psychic life and proposes «becoming a pupil in the school of the obsessional».
At the end of the preface the author closes the title thus: the last title is «Infinite Doubt», because in the obsessional's world in the beginning there is not the word but doubt. He also gives a story about «warning»: a brave explorer reaches a bridge over an abyss in the jungle, a sign says «the bridge bears one person at a time»; being alone, he crosses and the bridge breaks — because the «learned» man counts as two. The author draws the conclusion «a warning speeds up the fall».
The first lesson of part one is a scene from «Once Upon a Time in the West»: the traitor comes to warn Frank, played by Henry Fonda, and Frank says «I don't trust you, because you wear both braces and a belt». The author reads this not only as the obsessional's doubt but as doubt in the «structure» itself: the obsessional doubts that the structure will guarantee that his desire is kept unsatisfied, and tries to «back it up» with a belt of contingency. Unlike the hysteric, who tests the structure, the obsessional protects it.
The second lesson interprets Lacan's two formulas: the hysteric's desire is «unsatisfied», the obsessional's is «impossible». The author shows it with an everyday dialogue: whatever you propose to the obsessional, he will say «I would love to, but not today». The third lesson rests on lines in Freud's preface to the «Rat Man»: the language of obsessional neurosis is a dialect of the language of hysteria. The weakness is that Lacanian terms («the Other», jouissance, structure) are used without explanation and demand familiarity from the reader.
- Each lesson is 2–10 pages, begins with short vignettes and does not keep the reader long in abstract theory
- The examples are wide: Leone, Freud, Oedipus, Hamlet and others
- The author's ironic, sometimes self-mocking tone lightens a heavy subject
- Long sentences full of additions imitate the obsessional's discourse at the level of style
The obsessional-neurosis case the book refers to most
The core text of the Lacanian theory Abelhauser draws on
An introduction that explains Lacanian structures (neurosis, psychosis, perversion) in plain language
In the fourth lesson the author remembers going on holiday by train with his parents in childhood. They arrive at the station an hour before the train leaves, his mother checks the tickets again and again and questions the train, the platform and the place of the carriage; his father has already «withdrawn». Every ticket inspector, everyone who looks like a SNCF employee, is questioned.
The author explains this episode thus: for the obsessional, travel is leaving habits, the routine that protects him from the threat of desire; the real danger of the journey is the appearance, behind the «Other of the code», of the «Other of jouissance». Some for this reason travel only around their room. The lesson ends: the risk is there in any case — stepping one pace outside the shelter.
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