From the Arab-Muslim world to the Scandinavian countries, the theme of the “gaze” has deeply marked all civilizations. An Arabic proverb, often quoted in Lebanon, preserves its authenticity against the illusions of language: “The mouth may lie or betray, but the eyes always express what is deepest in the heart.” In the Nordic regions, when toasting and saying the ritual word “Skol”, one must clink glasses and drink while looking the other person in the eye. Remnants of an ancestral practice among warriors to watch for the first effects of poison poured into one of the cups. “The enigma of the gaze,” raised by child psychiatrist Daniel Marcelli, indeed poses the question of what happens when we look “eye to eye.” Beyond the functional purpose of seeing and being seen, the psychic dimension of this “sense organ” that characterizes human beings does not escape the author: few higher primates are capable of “sustaining their gazes at each other.”
A mother and her baby know something about this when it complements voice and touch. In the necessarily enigmatic exchange between the mother and her offspring, both try to interpret the message of the gaze: that of beatific love or ecstasy-filled, certainly more burdensome for the latter, even more formidable according to Daniel Marcelli, that of the inquisitive mother in search of a sign of recognition, of reciprocity that the baby will probably refuse to offer. Who does not remember the little blonde or brunette head looking for parental approval when about to perform a novel action, even if it is a mischief? In adolescence, the gaze is also the one that triggers “love at first sight.” A terrible ordeal that of this first pubertal love charged with sexual impulse and placing the adolescent between “the fear of being revealed and the need to be looked at.” The author rightly lingers on contemporary deviations of the gaze. That of the athlete whose essential physical activity demands to be watched. Sometimes to the point of forgetting the performance itself or shifting it onto the “field” of personal conquest for glory. Throughout time, the child psychiatrist reminds us, “the other” remains constitutive of human existence. “No grace without failure,” said St. Paul already. It is impossible to find the world’s axis without making the “sidestep” that Pythagoras also taught his disciples of the Croton school. “No identity without alterity,” added Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. Man needs a deviation from himself to grasp himself. But after two millennia devoted, not without turmoil, to the pursuit and triumph of our individuality, the movement seems to have been altered.
The entirety of “the other” is found fragmented, reduced to the “partial” expression of their gaze. No matter the rest, greatness of soul or intelligence of the heart. We no longer construct ourselves through the other but alienate ourselves in the manner they scrutinize us. A new form of dependency. The image of the thing has replaced the idea that Plato could have had of the thing itself. Appearance serves as a guarantee of substance. Fashion trends, dietary or festive habits, groupings by cultural, ethnic, religious, or sexual affinities, the human being seems afraid to live by and for themselves. They derive from the mere gaze of the other energy, an appetite for the world that seems to be lacking. Might this indeed be the enigma of the gaze?
Daniel Marcelli, Les yeux dans les Yeux, L’énigme du regard, Albin Michel, 2006, 275 p., 19,50 Euros
Jean-Luc Vannier
Psychoanalyst
jlvannier@free.fr
tel: 06 16 52 55 20
