Unraveling, exploring.
“What we think we are is completely arbitrary and is mainly inherited from what everybody else tells us that we are and that’s another reason that I decided to destroy myself.”
- Genesis Breyer P-Orridge. “Sacred Intent - Conversations with Carl Abrahamsson.” Trapart Books.
Despite the personal nature of this essay I feel it’s so important to share. As it reads on the cut-up collage above my desk right now: “Let’s uplift each other more, expansive, nurturing.” I take these words to heart.
The most profound magic I ever did, at least intentionally, was a sincere ritual of prayer to my ancestors on Midsummers Eve 2020. This became the starting point for a quite intense, personal journey of mending and rebuilding of a self more in tune with my true… everything. Moving with integrity and momentum. Honing and honoring intuition. And a new name too, with new meaning. Something I’ve deeply desired for a long time. A focal point for what I needed to embody now. Each time I encounter my name in writing and symbol, I’m affirmed in my decision to embrace it, deepening my appreciation for it’s meanings. River. Self, in constant change, always moving from the source, towards the source. Containing everything in it’s shifting shape.
On this journey of self-exploration I eventually approached psychoanalysis. Being in analysis is a privilege, I’m well aware. I wish it was more accessible, because for me it changed everything.
I had no idea what analysis actually was when I booked my first session. I had only heard a lot of interesting people talk about it on various podcasts over the years and picked up some fragments of theory here and there. It seemed fascinating, but I didn’t really know what to make of it in practice. Expecting instructions and explanations during my first session I was quite surprised when my initial queries where met only with:
-“What do you think it is?”
All my attempts to avoid talking and having them tell me what to do where gently turned back to me, waiting for me to speak. Many of the defensive patterns I had back then activated and warned me that this must be some kind of trap! But something else awakes to, and I do speak. I remember saying that I thought psychoanalysis seemed a much more curios form of therapy, curios rather than attempting to pathologize and box things in. Now, in my experience, I can confirm I was right.
I took to the process of analysis quite quickly because it felt very familiar, having experimented with hypnotherapy just before. It was a very useful introduction, because it made me go into analysis with an already established experience of my unconscious as something with agency. Myself as a multitude. Not just of “parts” as an abstract theoretical term, but in a more animist sense. Analysis creates a space set-apart, a break in daily life where these various parts can rise to the surface or speak muffled behind imagined membranes, still loud enough to move me.
In analysis I rediscovered my own voice, and I re-learned how to speak with my own words. I can tell instantly in analysis if I’m speaking words that are authentic, or if I’m just speaking words for the sake of speaking, to hide from myself. It feels different. When the words dry up I let myself be filled with images, memories replaying, feeling the sensations in my body. Looking for the next key. More often than not, the session will end with me giving myself the answer to the question I raised in the beginning.
In analysis I peel away slowly my layers of defensive behaviors, outdated survival strategies and varying narratives of self. Layer upon layer slowly unraveled by my unconscious which is more and more able to come to the surface and affect change. My analyst never tells me what to do, in fact they don’t say much at all, the medicine comes from within myself and because of this, it’s so much more potent. Because only I know how to be me.
Facing ourselves is not easy, in fact it’s extremely hard. The process is sometimes painful, exhausting, revolting. The grief comes in waves, I’ve learned to embrace it. To find strength in the promise of change that it carries with it. When I become aware, I gain distance. Distance provides better awareness, eventually leading to change. I certainly see the world differently, knowing how much we all deal with, acknowledged or not.
Psychoanalysis is also time travel. Literally. It’s quite thrilling sometimes, quite exhausting most times. The parts of you connected to certain memories, they take you back in time. The parts of you who wants to give you a taste of the potential to come move you forward. And moments of realization, of connecting the dots, grounds you in the present. Linear time is exposed for the illusion it is, while at the same time its tangible effect on our very real reality is made undeniable. The unconscious is not bound by linear time, I’d even say the unconscious knows no linear time. (An experience reinforced every time I turn to the cards. Developing a relationship with the tarot and learning to read for myself has been a beautiful and extremely helpful addition to life as well. It hones my intuition and ability to think poetically.)
Our unconscious is where magic happens if you ask me, being alive and existing in this universe is magical. To practice magic is to explore life deeply, eyes closed, eyes open. This is my love letter to psychoanalysis, for holding space for the unconscious and conscious to meet. A ritual magic with incredible potency. With immense gratitude to my ancestors who led me here, to greater joy and health.
“This is very important, I think, in your life: in the end, you are born alone and you live in one universe that is yours alone; and you will pass on from that apparent universe alone. And what you build during the time you appear to be here is absolutely your responsibility. And no one but you should choose what that is - because only you are there all the time. No one else. The rest are just visitors who never see the world; the universe that you are. Its yours, and if you don’t choose to build it the way you really want, you’re wasting the time you have.” — “No-one else, no-one, has the right to build your universe! And don’t let them ever, ever teach you otherwise.”
- Genesis Breyer P-Orridge. “Sacred Intent - Conversations with Carl Abrahamsson.” Trapart Books.
