Do We Find or Lose Ourselves in the Negative?

Abstract

This paper pools the language of psychoanalysis with other disciplines to illuminate the very real and ephemeral experience of working with patients who experience states of nonbeing. Using the powerful imagery of Francesca Woodman’s photographs, my patient and I enter the breach in her mind that trauma creates. Barthes, Benjamin, and art criticism enable me to relate to my patient’s condition of trying to exist suspended between life and death.