“In the beginning, there was not the origin. There was the place” [1], says Lacan, making the words of Genesis resonate and indicating the need to rely on topology when exploring the “mystery of the incarnation” as to being into the word. Years later, his statement “Fiat hole!” [2] translates the topological truth of the biblical statement “Fiat lux”.
Usually, this hole is covered by the order of succession between beings. Although, says Lacan, “nothing in the symbolic explains the fact of their individuation, the fact that beings come from beings.” [3] One thing “evades the symbolic tapestry, it’s procreation in its essential root – that one being is born from another.” [4] “Creatures don’t engender creatures.” [5] A creature, he adds, is unthinkable without an act of creation, without an event of saying – “I” – and that makes it different from a mere emergence.
The developments of Éric Laurent and Jean-Claude Maleval allow us to see the importance of Joey’s self-generation fiction, a paradigmatic case of autism that illustrates the foreclosure of the hole and the construction of a border through the use of the “body-machine.” Since he could not find as a support the function of the Other that gives access to the subjectivation of the body, he felt, when going to the toilet, that “the earth was moving.” [6] He became furious when they tried to assure him that his body was fine. “My brain isn’t working right. There’s a forgetfulness part in my brain. You have to cut it out because I don’t remember”, he would say” [7], while justifying the need for a neo-border: “there are live people and then there are people who need tubes.” [8]
The book includes some of his productions, such as body-tubes, body-cables, dinosaurs with excrement coming out of the body. Through this work of nomination, in a world invaded by feces, oil wells and drills surged, extending the series of signifiers and, by means of metonymy, the anal object was able to move outside the body. Bettelheim notes: “Because we were deeply interested in, and accepted these fantasies without forcing ourselves on Joey as participants, or for some other reason, he began slowly to include us.” [9]
The “trail-track game” would mark a substantial advance. On Easter day, the children followed the painted tracks of a bunny to the presents. Joey incorporated this element – the trail-track – into his circuits, which became “our best chance for personal contact.” [10] He used mud and dirty paper as a writing of his passage, the others were glad to participate in his game, he “became clean” and began to talk about his favorite counselor. Then came the development of drainage and sewage systems. He showed a keen interest in all the openings, and furthermore, in his peers.
At the end of his first year in the institution, it was about about a serious passage to the act he had suffered and that had been interpreted as a suicide attempt. Joey asked to be allowed to hurt himself, for he didn’t feel anything in his hand. “We assured him we would always do our best to take good care of him and not let such accidents occur, that we were sorry it had happened.” [11] The child was then able to explain: “the small person’s things were all over and I was rampaging, kind of wild and hard, and I went through the glass; that small person’s things were scattered all over. The small person, gosh darn it; my parents have had her for a long time.” [12] Therefore, the passage to the act clearly appeared to be motivated by his sister’s rejection due to an experience of intrusion. This led to the conquest of a “transitive” identity: a boy three years older, Ken, “fused with Joey’s most powerful tube, a Kenrad” [13]. He functioned as a “despotic god” for months during which Joey displayed exuberant and childish demeanor until the day he put a blanket on and cuddled up in it.
He lived for several months the fiction of papoose (which means “baby among the Indian of north America). He drew himself as an electric papoose: a Connecticut Papoosea person inside a crystal lamp, connected and cut off at the same time (Connect-I-cut). Then he added structures called “hennigan wagons” to them, alluding to the parm in which he wanted to be carried around. Bettelheim deduces that thes signifier refers to hen-I-can, nothing that, unfailingly, he was driving it.
Faced with his concern about this “electronic” birth, the educators had asked him if it would not be better to be born from a hen, which, at least, is a living being. Such intervention may be at the origin of the self-generation fiction: “I laid myself as an egg, hatched myself, and gave birth to me.” [14]
Later, he included another character, a specular double named Valvus: “pecking our way out of the shell when we were born. We weren’t joined together, but we were very close.” [15] At that time he manifested a clear preference for the New World Symphony, a world where Joey would find himself a place by unfreezing his word.
Translation: Aurelie Solliec
Proofreading: Alejandro Sessa
Photography: ©Kervyn Emmanuel: http://emmanuelkervyn.canalblog.com/
[1] Lacan, J. My Teaching, translated by David Macey, Verso, London, 2008, 4.
[2] Lacan, J. (1975), “Religions and the Real”, in Lacanian Review, Hurly-Burly 1, 2016, edited by J.-A. Miller, translated by Grigg. R., 8–14.
[3] Lacan, J. The Seminar, Book III, The Psychoses, 1955-1956, edited by Miller J.-A, translated by Grigg, R., W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 179.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Bettelheim, B. The Empty Fortress: Infantile Autism and the Birth of the Self (1972), The Free Press, New York, 267.
[7] Ibid., 268.
[8] Ibid., 253.
[9] Ibid., 276.
[10] Ibid., 277.
[11] Ibid., 288.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Ibid., 299.
[14] Ibid., 325.
[15] Ibid.
