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Cognitive Map - Coggle Diagram

- - - - “When you come back you will not be you. And I may not be I.” In this ominous exchange, the lover Athobai foretells their tragic fate, expressing fear of irrevocable change (essentially, fear of death of the self and the beloved). His words foreshadow violence the unconscious death drive surfacing as a literal threat. Freud would see this as the thanatos instinct entwined with their passion: the missionary’s fear of his own desire (and of divine punishment) has pushed them to a deadly impasse. This dread of annihilation “not be you/not be I” captures the terror of ego dissolution under the pressure of forbidden love. (The Life to Come, p. 102)
    - - “Christopher’s panic attacks always started with a ‘killer headache’ and the anxiety that his head... was going to explode: ‘Kaboom.’” – Christopher suffers acute fear of his own death, manifested literally in panic symptoms. He describes an overpowering anxiety that his head will burst – a physical metaphor for the overwhelming pressure of repressed material. Psychoanalytically, this is the return of the repressed in the form of somatic terror: his unresolved conflicts generate a constant fear of premature death. Freud noted that such neurotic fear often disguises deeper unconscious fears (of annihilation, of forbidden desires). Christopher’s fear highlights the role of the death drive and unresolved trauma fueling his panic. (Racial Melancholia, p. 155)
    - - “I was scared to death. I’ve never felt as scared, as frightened, in my life… it was a different fear than I’ve ever felt.” – This raw testimony by a USC student captures pure fear during the riots. She emphasizes the visceral, unprecedented nature of her terror (“scared to death,” “never… in my life”), indicating a primal fight-or-flight response. Psychologically, such extreme fear can engender regressive behaviors and trauma imprints. Her phrase “a different fear” suggests a loss of the safe framework that normally protects her psyche – a rupture of the protective shield Freud said we have against stimuli. This is fear in the face of the Real: the unmediated threat of violence that overwhelms the ego’s normal coping mechanisms, leaving only raw panic. (Twilight, p. 155)
    - - Psychoanalytic theory emphasizes deep-seated fears (often unconscious) that drive behavior. Freud catalogued fundamental anxieties such as “fear of intimacy, and fear of death, among others”. A character’s overt fear (for instance, phobic or obsessive fear) may mask an underlying fear of loss – loss of a loved one’s affection, loss of identity, or literally loss of life (thanatophobia). These fears often originate in childhood (fear of abandonment or castration in Freud’s view) and are repressed but emerge in displaced forms (e.g. fear of heights might really symbolize fear of failing parental expectations). Thus, psychoanalysts look for how surface fears point to deeper unconscious dread, like the fear of mortality or the unknown forces of the id. (Purdue OWL, Psychoanalytic Criticism)
    - - Fear is explicitly invoked when the text describes how weaponized narratives “foster and exploit existing prejudice to generate fear,” aligning with Freud’s idea that fear arises when the ego perceives threats it cannot master. These narratives attack people's sense of safety, identity, and belonging by “calling into question whose rights and voices count,” creating a social environment where individuals fear repression or violence. The political use of fear resonates with psychoanalytic anxiety produced when the superego imposes harsh external judgments (The Power of Public Narratives, p. 2).
    - - Fear appears when Srinivasan explains how anger is assumed to be “the enemy of reason,” suggesting that expressing anger threatens social belonging. Freud connects this to fear of punishment by the superego and fear of social rejection. The idea that “an angry person must be unsuitable for political community” creates an atmosphere in which individuals fear the consequences of their own emotions, leading to repression and self-surveillance (Aptness of Anger, p. 140).
  - - - “Love had been born somewhere in the forest, of what quality only the future could decide. ... Love had been born for good or evil, for a long life or a short.” The narrative itself casts uncertainty on the nature of the lovers’ bond, reflecting the protagonist’s unconscious conflict between natural desire and moral duty. This moral ambivalence (is their love “good or evil”?) indicates a Freudian confusion: the missionary’s ego is torn between his repressed id impulses and his religious superego, leaving him emotionally disoriented and unable to classify his feelings. (The Life to Come, p. 94)
    - - “With the technocratic flourish of an automaton, he rejects all feelings as unreliable... Ultimately, his unhealthy dissociation of the disparate aspects of his life is a self-disciplining project that proves unsustainable. He cannot create a healthy illusion of a unified me-ness, and the repeated panic attacks that send Christopher to the emergency room underscore his untenable psychic predicament.” – This clinical case analysis illustrates profound confusion in the psyche. Christopher’s identity is split into “disparate aspects” – a classic Freudian dissociation where the ego cannot integrate the conflicting demands of his racial and sexual selves. The result is an “untenable psychic predicament”: a fragmented self that manifests in panic attacks. In psychoanalytic terms, the conflict between his True Self and the False, compliant self creates an inner confusion so severe that it overwhelms his ego’s stability, leaving him psychologically “nowhere” and in crisis. (Racial Melancholia, p. 158)
    - - “Total confusion and chaos. I was just in awe… I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what was goin’ on.” – This eyewitness account (by Reginald Denny, a truck driver dragged from his vehicle during the riots) epitomizes confusion. He is cognitively overwhelmed – his ego flooded by stimuli that make no sense. In psychoanalytic terms, the traumatic eruption of riot violence shatters normal understanding, leaving him in a state of bewilderment similar to a dreamer in an uncanny nightmare. His repetition – “I didn’t know… I couldn’t figure out what was going on” – conveys a mind defensively blanking out (possible denial or shock) in the face of trauma. (Twilight, p. 103)
    - - Confusion: Psychoanalytic criticism often interprets character behaviors as expressions of unconscious conflict, which can appear as confusing or irrational to the characters themselves. For example, “...repression doesn’t eliminate our painful experiences and emotions…we unconsciously behave in ways that will allow us to ‘play out’…our conflicted feelings about the painful experiences and emotions we repress”. In other words, a character might not understand why they act a certain way (creating internal confusion), but Freud would argue their unconscious is staging a drama (a repressed trauma or desire) through those bewildering actions. (Purdue OWL, Psychoanalytic Criticism)
    - - The text highlights how civil society movements struggle to understand why dominant narratives gain traction so quickly, creating a collective confusion about “what makes [those narratives] effective” and why harmful rhetoric spreads faster than truth. This confusion mirrors Freud’s idea of the ego confronting contradictory external messages that overwhelm its capacity for coherence, generating anxiety and cognitive disorientation. The text describes activists trying to “unmask the narratives used to marginalise and foster hate,” revealing an unstable reality that complicates meaning-making (The Power of Public Narratives, p. 3–4).
    - - Confusion emerges in Srinivasan’s discussion of the conflict between “apt anger” and “prudence,” where individuals face contradictory inner demands. Freud would call this a clash between the id (anger), ego (reality), and superego (moral judgment), producing deep internal confusion. The text describes situations where agents “do not know what they ought to do,” revealing a psychic paralysis similar to Freud’s depiction of neurotic conflict (Aptness of Anger, p. 137).
  - - - “My body and the breath in it are still yours, though you wither them up with this waiting.” – Athobai’s plaintive admission lays bare his affliction: five years of pining have ravaged him. He remains devoted (“body and breath... yours”) yet inwardly withered by longing and rejection. This is the language of Freudian melancholia a pathological mourning where the lost love is incorporated into the self and slowly destroys it from within. Athobai’s suffering is both physical and psychic; his unconscious grief and anger, unable to find closure, turn inward as torment. (The Life to Come, p. 101)
    - - “Many of these young men sought therapy because of debilitating panic attacks: high levels of anxiety and distress that rendered them dissociated, incapacitated, depressed, and in some cases suicidal, suffering inexplicable bodily and psychic pain.” – This passage delineates the profound affliction of racial melancholia. The patients are tormented by “inexplicable… psychic pain” – an anguish with no obvious external cause, rooted in unconscious loss and identity conflict. They experience dissociation, depression, even suicidality: classic symptoms of a psyche in deep pain. In Freudian terms, this is the toll of pathological mourning – the subject suffers from an unresolved grief or dislocated identity that cannot be consciously mourned, so the pain is turned inward on the self. It is an affliction of endless mourning that manifests as both mental and bodily symptoms. (Racial Melancholia, p. 142)
    - - “I was… swallowing the bitterness, sitting here alone and watching them.” – In this poignant reflection, Mrs. Young-Soon Han (a Korean-American shop owner who lost everything) describes her lonely affliction. “Swallowing the bitterness” is a vivid metaphor for internalized sorrow and rage. She endures her pain in silence, a kind of forced repression of her trauma as she witnesses others celebrate “justice” that came at the cost of her livelihood and son. Her emotional state aligns with Freud’s melancholia: she feels forgotten (“left out… we were nothing”), and her bitterness is a poison she turns inward, with no societal outlet for mourning. This chronic, unspoken grief is the very image of affliction – a trauma that festers in the unconscious, yielding both anger and depressive resignation. (Twilight, p. 247)
    - - In Freudian terms, psychological affliction often manifests in conditions like melancholia – what Freud called pathological mourning. In melancholia, the subject cannot consciously grieve a loss and instead turns the anger and pain against their own ego. The result is an agonizing depression, a self-loathing affliction. As Eng and Han note (expanding on Freud), “the most difficult losses suffered in melancholia are unconscious ones…[which] cannot be properly grieved”. The individual is trapped in sorrow because the loss (of a loved object, of self-worth) is repressed rather than worked through. Defense mechanisms like denial or dissociation may temporarily hide the pain, but the unresolved loss festers and inflicts psychic pain. This is why melancholia is considered an affliction of the soul – the person’s libido is still bound to what’s gone, and in punishing themselves they experience a perpetual, unexplainable grief. (Purdue OWL, Psychoanalytic Criticism)
    - - Affliction (suffering caused by external forces) appears when the text describes activists being subjected to “slander and smear campaigns,” which create emotional and social harm. Freud would recognize this as ego-injury — a wound inflicted by external hostility that destabilizes self-esteem and identity. The repeated attacks create a chronic psychological burden, mirroring Freud’s understanding of trauma as ongoing assaults on the ego’s integrity. Activists report this constant pressure as their “daily reality,” a clear sign of affliction (The Power of Public Narratives, p. 4).
    - - Affliction appears when Srinivasan introduces affective injustice, which harms individuals by forcing them to bear emotional costs others do not. This suffering resembles Freud’s account of psychic pain caused by internal conflict and repression. Victims endure emotional burdens—anger they must suppress, choices they cannot resolve—that constitute a “distinctive form of injustice,” a type of ongoing psychic injury or affliction (Aptness of Anger, p. 127–128).
  - - - “He offers unlimited, honest, and guiltless love which the missionary cannot resist, but cannot face or accept in himself either.” The missionary’s immediate reaction to intimacy is guilt. His superego labels their night of passion an “evil act,” so he later denies his true feelings and tries to repress them by marrying a woman. This intense guilt shows the conscience punishing him for his forbidden desire. Psychoanalytically, his self-denial and shame reveal an internalized moral code at war with his id, leading to pathological guilt and repression. (The Life to Come, p. 96)
    - - “Elaine’s depression is a result of internalized guilt and residual anger that she not only feels toward but also identifies with in her mother.” – Here the authors describe a patient whose melancholy stems from guilt turned inward. Elaine has unconsciously absorbed her mother’s disappointments; the rage she harbors (at injustice or abandonment) is redirected at herself as depressive guilt. In Freudian terms, this is the superego at work – Elaine’s psyche has interjected the lost object (the mother’s trauma) and now her ego tortures itself with blame. The internalized guilt shows how, in pathological mourning, anger toward a loved one is converted into self-reproach, producing endless depression. (Racial Melancholia, p. 50)
    - - “Why are you hiding your heads in shame? ... Do you know that buildings are burning and people are dying in South LA because of you?” – This question, hurled at the jurors of the Rodney King beating trial, externalizes guilt and shame. The jurors are literally covering their faces, as if their own superegos cannot bear the weight of what their verdict unleashed. The accusatory tone (“because of you”) strikes the chord of collective guilt, suggesting the jurors’ consciences must now grapple with the destruction and death resulting from their (perhaps repressed) racial biases. In psychoanalytic terms, we see projection and introjection: society projects blame onto the jurors, and each juror may introject that guilt, feeling moral responsibility for the chaos. (Twilight, p. 70)
    - - Freudian theory posits that guilt is produced by the superego, the internal moral watchdog. The superego “houses judgment… and strives for perfection”, reflecting internalized parental and societal values. When a character’s id (instinctual desire) breaks a taboo, the superego punishes them with feelings of guilt and shame. Thus, a protagonist tormented by guilt likely has a strict superego creating intense moral anxiety. This guilt can lead to self-punishing behaviors or neurotic symptoms as atonement, revealing the psyche’s attempt to resolve the conflict between forbidden desire and internalized ethics. (Purdue OWL, Psychoanalytic Criticism)
    - - The text indirectly evokes guilt when activists internalize responsibility for combating negative narratives, feeling that if society becomes hostile, they “must find new and more effective responses.” This matches Freud’s theory of guilt emerging from the superego’s moral demands: activists feel they are failing morally if they do not counter damaging narratives. Their guilt reflects an internalized pressure to protect society from manipulation, even when the burden is overwhelming (The Power of Public Narratives, p. 4).
    - - Guilt arises when victims of injustice must choose between “getting aptly angry” and “acting prudentially.” Freud’s superego imposes guilt when the individual cannot fulfill conflicting moral obligations. Srinivasan frames this as an “invidious choice,” where any decision produces guilt: acting on anger might feel morally right but socially “counterproductive.” This moral conflict mirrors Freud’s idea that guilt is the residue of competing internalized demands (Aptness of Anger, p. 126–127).