MYTH AND PSYCHOANALYSIS: ON THE GARDEN OF EDEN AND PRIMORDIAL HELPLESSNESS

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between the biblical narrative of the Garden of Eden and Primordial Helplessness, as described by Freud from the mythical first experience of satisfaction, the inaugural moment of the psychic apparatus that situates human desire around a primeval loss. The myth of Eden, belonging to the Judeo-Christian tradition, symbolizes the human condition marked by separation from paradise and the incessant search for an irretrievable completeness. In turn, the first experience of satisfaction – as an initial experience that structures desire and inaugurates the activity of the psychic apparatus, mediated by the Nebenmensch – is crossed by the loss and, consequently, by the tireless attempt to recover an object never had. Similarly, while the myth of Eden narrates the loss of the original state of harmony – with the introduction of the interdict and the subsequent expulsion from paradise, encapsulating the idea of a desire impossible to be fully satisfied – the first experience of satisfaction points to the notion of das Ding, an object that has always been lost and which comes to represent the central void around which human desire is structured. Aiming to reflect on the centrality of interdict and helplessness as structuring axes of human existence, by articulating Freud's work and Lacan's teaching with the myth of Eden, this work proposes an interdisciplinary reading that evidences myth as that which comes, with an epic content, to narrate the foundations of human experience.