Most probably analytical therapy wants to remain within the confines of its territory as prudent mystics of the interior. That could be our discipline and our job; the inquisitional pursuit in reflective quiet of individual dream, fantasy, mood, image. The investigation and understanding of the individual person. Yes, this is an endeavour, but is it therapy of soul? Does it make the unconscious conscious, as Freud set our task?
For that we must go where the soul is sick and where the unconscious most darkly and thickly reigns: the polis. For the unconscious does not stand still. That’s what the word implies, Where is this unconscious today; certainly not in childhood, family, sexuality, symptomatic anomalies, feelings, relationships, arcane symbols – that stuff is on every talk show, in every self-help manual. What was once the “unconscious” appearing as a slip of the tongue is now on the tip of the tongue.
Where we are least able, however, most suffer from, and anesthetize against, i.e., repress, with ear plugs, door bolts and alcohol, with electronics, hi-fi, coffee and shopping, is the world out there, the polis. We remove psyche from it and we are unconscious in regard to it — the polis is the unconscious. We have become superconscious patients and analysts, very aware and very subtle interiorized individuals, and very unconscious citizens.
“Man Is by Nature a Political Animal”: Patient as Citizen, City & Soul, UE 2