A plea for linking or how are yoga, K-pop and psychoanalysis connected?

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this essay I intend to demonstrate that attacks on linking, as Bion described, limit not only individual self-knowledge, but also the psychoanalytic understanding of the interrelatedness of self and context. Utilizing personal material, I will illustrate the irreducible entanglement between the individual and context, which, when understanding of this interconnection is prevented through attacks on linking, can have disastrous individual outcomes. By collocating this with a professional interaction, I intend not only to show that attacks on linking inhibit curiosity and prevent the development of self-knowledge for individuals, as described by Bion, but also to elaborate on Lynne Layton’s observation that attacks on the linking of individual psyches and society reinforce the paranoid-schizoid splits of White-Black, West-East, colonizer-colonized, that risk the growth and integration of psychoanalytic thought itself.