The Psychoanalysis of Babel

Perhaps the most disquieting anecdote mentioned in “The Library Of Babel” is the search for the Vindications. Borges’s surrealist nightmare depicts an infinite library containing every possible book (every possible sequence of letters) that could be written. By its infinitude, such a library would necessarily contain “The Vindications–books of apologies and prophecies that would vindicate for all time the actions of every person in the universe and that held wondrous arcana for men’s futures.” I read this to mean that, for each person, there must be some book which tells him everything he would need or want to know about his life and his time. Borges envisions men searching their entire lives in vain for such a book and ultimately going insane.

Have we not reached the same dilemma in the study of psychoanalysis? It seems self-evident that some idea, some sequence of sentences, could resolve the patient’s quandary. But perhaps self-evident too that the patient or the analyst will never be able to find the correct sequence. Psychoanalysis is a search problem and a futile one at that. Consider the number of possible interpretations. Consider the rate at which one examines an interpretation. The math doesn’t look good.

Every man is his own Sphynx. His mind presents him a riddle. If he can solve it, then he will win the world. But it’s too hard. The secret is too obscure. There’s a trick that he’ll never quite get. This is my metaphysics. The metaphysics of ontological confoundment. I am thrown into a world-riddle and thrown into a mind that is inadequate to solve it. What is fundamental to men is his intellectual incompetence. Noetic original sin.

My dear boy, when will you stop waiting for Freud and admit that he’s not coming?