“Every time we are further removed from everything that produces us…

The psychoanalyst and family doctor Luis Salvador López Herrero is organizing a new psychoanalysis seminar that will revolve around the theme ‘Good life: self-care or ethics of desire?’. It is held on the last Saturday of each month from January to June and from October to December. The presentation ceremony will be on January 19 at 7:00 p.m. at the College of Physicians of León and will include the participation of López Herrero, as president of the Círculo de Psicoanálisis de León and the doctor from Caule and Master in Bioethics Antonio Blanco Mercadé. The conversation is moderated by the doctor Ana Isabel Barragán.

—What is the good life in the eyes of the 21st century?

—I cannot give a global answer, but from what is perceived in the environment of our time dominated by the image, the spectacle, the consumption of objects and the drive of nameless jouissance, we could say that each time the individual feels more invited to parasitize the system without having to work, to thus enjoy the excellent products of technology and the daily sterile blablabla.

“Does it have something to do with what the ancients imagined or thought?”

-Of course not. Who cares today about wisdom, the love of knowledge, or the contemplative otium. In addition, the current masters work more and more like their own slaves. Therefore, our time cannot be understood through the prism of an ancient world that will not return.

—If the masters of today work like slaves, what kind of life do the workers of the 21st century have?

—Job precariousness, the bizarre contract or the different types of aid for the unemployed, which will increase, will be the ways of life that will permeate the world of workers, in areas that are increasingly disenchanted and lacking in hope.

—Does that explain that after the pandemic, the richest 1% of the population has increased its wealth by 20%, while that of the majority of the population has decreased?

—The inertia of the time is clearly in favor of the one who has, as it always has been. That is why recession of any kind always hits the pockets of the disinherited, which are many and will continue to increase. Thanks for the careful reading. I hope it has been of interest to you.

—The Psychoanalysis Seminar that you are going to start raises the dilemma of whether the good life is self-care or the ethics of desire. It can not be both?.

—Rather, it opposes the “good life”, which is a deeply rooted theme since Antiquity, and the “care for oneself” of hypermodernity, with the ethics of desire. Which forces us to think that neither one nor the other is truly possible. And the Seminar will be in charge precisely of showing this approach from a human condition traversed by Language.

—Taking care of oneself, is it selfishness or hedonism?

—Taking care of oneself, as we see in the clinic every day through the different behaviors and ideas of our patients, is impossible. That is why people tend to look for someone to take care of them, to take charge of their situation. Today the State turned into the Other is the supposed guarantor of the health of citizens, of family disagreements and abandonment, of the problems of couples or of the economic hardships that assail everywhere… But do not forget that deep down the subject does not want your good.

—It is evident that the world has improved, although sometimes it seems that everything has gotten worse. What are the main shortcomings to reach that ideal or something that comes close to it in our time?

“What world has improved itself?” I say this because our Western world is not the same as the underdeveloped African or Asian world or the indigenous communities of many countries that are being devastated by human greed, as has always happened throughout history. But if we think about it only from our “comfort zone”, my impression is that we are increasingly far from everything that can produce a certain well-being, because the imperative of enjoyment in which we are culturally housed prevents it. As for what can be done. The analytic experience is the individual way of dealing with malaise in culture.

—Is the good life confused with filling ourselves with objects of desire while emptying ourselves as subjects?

—Actually, it would be better to pose this trap from the subject’s own vacuity, that is, as soon as the subject feels lacking, empty, he tries to close it off with the different objects or proposals of the market, nevertheless ignoring all that it moves him to it, which is precisely what should be questioned.

—Is the epidemic of mental health problems the tip of the iceberg of the bad life we ​​lead?

—It is the thermometer of the fragility in which individuals find themselves in hypermodernity, and what is worse, with saturated devices that neither have nor can adequately address the multiple and different demands in progress.

“The good life also implies the good death?”

—The theme of death in our culture is taboo due to the attack on narcissism and the horror that its presence precipitates. But since the lady in black is always at the end of our path waiting for us, it would be better for her to deal with this matter in a different way. So, indeed, knowing how to live is also a way of accepting death, which is ultimately the way of understanding life and our destiny.

—Euthanasia is already a right in Spain. Do you think it has to do with good living standards?

—Like any legalized general measure, this is part of the thought or ideology of the moment. If the ultimate destiny no longer depends on the will of God but on the individual, then this trance is its logical consequence. Which, by the way, is a humane way of dealing with unnecessary suffering, once all our possibilities of being able to live with dignity have been exhausted.

—What is that piece that we are missing in the puzzle of existence that you point to in the presentation of the course?

—The signifier and the object capable of giving a full answer to the essential questions of the subject are missing: who am I, what is my sexual identity or choice of sexual object, what am I for the desire of the Other, what joy…

“How to find her?”

—Rather what it would be about is how to stop looking for it, or at least, not be fooled by this question.

—What do you think that Sacyl offers women who are going to abort to go to mental health consultations?

—As long as the choice of the individual prevails in this type of matter, I don’t see any problem. The device is there and the subject chooses it or not. The problem arises when the system is too zealous to want to take care of citizens. In this case you always have to suspect a hidden interest of some kind.

—Several authors in the field of psychoanalysis in France are positioning themselves in France against the push of transgender theories, which they even accuse of being a fascist ideology. Does it have to do with the concept of ethics of desire?

—Not only in France but also in our country this issue is being addressed from psychoanalysis. The Lacanian School of psychoanalysis has made different proposals and amendments on this very delicate subject, and what moves it is precisely to address the choice of sex from the question of the subject about sexuality, and not under the ideological imperative or the fanaticism of a will to jouissance, which wants to impose itself at any price. In this sense, in our country, more caution and reflection are needed when proposing socio-cultural innovations. But the truth is that it is evident as a desire to speed up all this, both because of our cultural inferiority complex and because of the Hispanic attachment to the most rancid absolutism.

—Who is the seminar for?

—To everyone with concern, who has not lost hope, or who has lost it, but not completely.

“So is there hope that the good life exists…?”

—To know that answer it would be convenient to attend the presentation, which would not disappoint, without a doubt…