Out of light comes darkness in the infinite play of destructivity. What was once whole has now become incomplete, a new de-creation of death-in-life. We want to hold onto the very fabric of living and beauty without realizing that each moment slips away, creating space for something new to emerge. It is this space of emergence which we find how meaning is made, through the constructs of destruction.

This all might sound a bit dark, and that is the point. Without the serpent there would be no Fall, hence no redemption. Necropsychoanalysis does not have room for a savior, not even in the form of the analyst, though. One could say that it is a process of becoming attuned to dying, that life is miserable and meaningless, a dark cavern with infinite depths. Instead of analysis leading the subject outside of the world of shadows into the daylight of freedom, necropsychoanalysts seem to be co-developers of a deeper tread into darkness, the lightless plunge further into modes of despair.

I’m not sure what to make of this, though. On the one hand, hasn’t the world seen enough of messiahs? Maybe. However, the principle of developing coping mechanisms is a healthy step when confronted with the evidence that our illusions enslave us to forms of reality which create modes of destruction.

I really appreciated Julie’s thoughtfulness and her pushback towards clarity. Julie Reshe is a necropsychoanalyst with a private practice that can be accessed through her website: https://www.drjuliereshe.com/. She is also professor of philosophy and director of the Institute of Psychoanalysis at the Global Center for Advanced Studies: https://thegcas.org/.