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xxv INTRODUCTION Family Matters Thus the possibility that we can envision birth and death, that we can contemplate them within time and that we can speak about them with the Other by sharing with other people—in a word, the possibility that we can tell a story—is at the heart of the specific, nonanimalistic, and nonphysiological nature of human life. —Julia Kristeva, Hannah Arendt O prah Winfrey, icon of popular culture, pens a monthly column titled “What I Know For Sure.” Less bold than Oprah, who has been espousing sureties for years, I am certain of few things. However , beyond a doubt, I know that our early life experiences shape our lives in profound ways. My conviction has been tutored by psychoanalytic theory, which offers a compelling account of the lasting impact on us of our early experiences, especially within the family. I frequently draw on my rural setting to explain to students the psychoanalytic perspective on early experience. The snow is dense and deep through much of the Iowa winter. In order to navigate the woods behind my home, I must break a path. “When I go out again,” I ask students, “should I take xxvi Introduction a different route and struggle again through drifts of snow?” My students invariably suggest that I follow the path I previously have broken. My walk in the woods captures our life experiences as psychoanalysis understands it. Without regard for the possible benefits of breaking a new path—avoiding hidden tree stumps over which we have tripped repeatedly or ice on which we have slipped multiple times—in the woods that is our lives, we repetitively traverse the same course. This I know for sure. In the long history of psychoanalytic theory, key proponents—Freud, Klein, Winnicott, and Lacan—take distinct approaches to “the walk in the woods.” But three shared themes can be identified. Psychoanalytic theory proposes that our experiences are shaped by unconscious processes.1 By this, psychoanalytic theory understands that humans harbor a fundamental blindness about the circumstances of our lives: we tread the same path through the woods of our lives oblivious to alternatives, even when another course might make our way easier. Psychoanalytic theory also takes a developmental perspective on human life: early experience undergirds all that follows. Indeed, throughout our lives, we retrace our steps, following paths cut in infancy and early childhood. Although some theorists observe enhanced proficiency among those who reconnoiter a trail traversed many times before, especially under the guidance of others,2 others note ongoing difficulty. They emphasize that those who walk through the woods mourn what has been lost or never found along the trail. Finally, psychoanalytic theory suggests that human life is dynamic but fraught. Our initial posture in the world is one of curiosity: we are eager to see what is on the other side of the woods. But the comforts of home invite us, and the unknown may harbor dangers. Day after day, we arrive at the edge of the woods, inquisitive but wary. We push away recollections of bruises and bumps acquired on earlier walks, or we valorize the path we have cut previously, even though an objective bystander would find little along that way to applaud.3 Significantly, a metaphor often points to the most important elements of the phenomenon we wish to describe at the point when it begins to weaken, requiring that we modify it. As a consequence, I find myself needing to adjust my “walk in the woods” imagery in order to account for a fourth theme in psychoanalysis. Observing that we are not isolated subjects who walk alone through the woods of our lives, psychoanalytic theory asserts that, at the most fundamental level, we are relational beings. The “Forest of No Introduction xxvii Return,” referenced in the 1961 Disney film classic Babes in Toyland, offers a compelling scenario for a revision of my initial metaphor. The “Forest of No Return” is inhabited by trees that are sentient, living beings. Speaking and moving, the trees surround and capture a group of children.4 So also, in the woods of our lives, those among and with whom we have our being are living presences. Not always benign, they sometimes appear as hulking, monstrous entities that thwart our journeys rather than support them.5 InIntimateDomain,Iexplorethesefourthemesofpsychoanalytictheory with special attention to family relationships. Girard’s work features three of the four themes. For Girard, the fundamental blindness that affects human...

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