On Consent
Human Denial, the essay
On Consent
The consent of the governed, to be governed, is necessary to uphold the integrity of power. Just as a patient signs a contract committing to see a psychoanalyst, he is bound to fear the breaking of the contract. This contract, which is verbal and economical, is the initiation of consent to be governed. The patient trusts that the doctor has their best interests at heart, and the doctor is reimbursed for the service he is providing. This is the social structure that power dynamics are made up of– the relative authority on a subject, or the relative physical presence– determines the relative influence that each individual situationally has; and that doesn’t even take into account monetary investment. With any investment, there is an expectation of what will arise from the investment. If the patient expects to be governed with order and proper medicinal authority, and they are manipulated into hotwiring their death drive into an inflammatory, suicidal wrath, then that is going to effect their general mood.
The consent naturally accepted by the domineering aggression of the analyst is the patient’s stasis in the analysis. The fear that curiosity may take over the mind and violate the laws of medicine, the ethics of philosophy, or the morals of civilization is ever-present in the conscience of the analyst. This is not a psychopathic trait. The psychopathy arises at the disobedience of the patient’s conditions for professional and healthy psychoanalysis. How the language of the analyst stuns the patient is what stills them in their seat, cold and lifeless, like the steely-eyed glare of human filth deliberating whether or not to savor the kill or get it over with. Judge the patient if you dare, but do not enact punishment or reward based on that judgment, for any imposed regret for existence is a bloody amputation of your soul’s virtue. Some believe that tarnishing the soul is good– those are the analysts I condemn.