A successful exit-her
Success (exit) that begins with seeds and planting is what Anderson has been dedicated to since his training as an agronomist. He travels along different paths to connect crops at different latitudes, ensuring successful planting.
Sowing is not just any word for Anderson: ‘His father raised the whole family through sustained sowing over the years, with hard work, care, dedication and, despite life’s contingencies.’ Anderson says he ‘deeply admires’ his father.
The meaning of sowing is not only related to his professional work, ‘it also extends to other aspects of life. As in romantic relationships, where, in the absence of sowing a good relationship, escape was guaranteed as an unconscious way of defending oneself from possible pain.’
Pain that Anderson has understood in his analysis, ‘is connected to a scene from the past and would possibly be repeated in the future if he did not question his unconscious and his anxiety’.
As Freud(1) would say, something that many call destiny is nothing more than an unconscious quest to repeat an unpleasant scene, which, although it causes pain or displeasure, would serve the pleasure principle, however contradictory that may sound.
After a break-up, Anderson came to psychoanalysis ‘with the natural pain of loss’. In a first cycle of analysis, he tells us, he understood that he was precisely ‘responsible for creating the scene to make his escape, out of a fear interwoven with that scene from the past. It was not wanting to sow the woman’.
According to him, it was not just a matter of fleeing, but also of avoiding getting close. ‘Something that, in his words, somehow began to work with coaching.’ There he underwent a process, the proposal for which was based on ‘a technique, based on certain somewhat generalised actions’.
For example, Anderson tells us, apart from his case, ‘there were others in which someone had to go to a restaurant and throw a salad on their head in front of the other diners. Others had to exchange their clothes with beggars on the street, beg and return to the coaching training centre with the money they had collected. Others had to pretend to be crazy in public places…’.
The latter is still shocking, if we follow José María Álvarez (2), who says that ‘madness is human, all too human, but humans are not prepared to survive any circumstance or situation’.
Madness is a defence for the subject, ‘a necessary defence for survival when someone is overwhelmed by inhuman experiences. Madness may become one of the last and most desperate lifelines, the last frayed rope that keeps them, in some way, in lifeless contact with others’.
There too, during his time consulting through coaching,’ although he found great friends, he encountered the world of the same for everyone‘.
The same for everyone, with generalised recipes that ignored even such sensitive issues as madness itself. ‘
In the promise of helping to achieve each person’s dreams and desires,’ rigid goals, indicators and monitoring strategies are established to help participants reach their objectives. ‘From there, Anderson tells us,’ some simply deserted.”
Deserting can be considered a successful exit in some cases. For placing an authority figure and monitoring would reinforce the psychological instance referred to by Freud(3) as the superego, which, when it becomes severe, could even threaten a certain detachment from objective reality(4).
It could even plunge the subject into an unconscious state of masochistic jouissance. This is true if we consider the superego, following Miller, ‘as the instance that works against the subject’s own good'(5). As for the supposed desire, we would have to listen to the unconscious to see, as Lacan tells us, if it is not the desire of the Other rather than one’s own(6).
In his second cycle of analysis, the subject of the almost appeared as a signifier that marked Anderson’s decisions and actions in his life. He tells us: ‘I almost graduated from university, I almost got my dream job, I almost made it work with women…’
This signifier is also linked to his history and uniqueness, based on ‘a context in which one had to be hidden’. Regarding his admiration for his father, Anderson tells us that, nevertheless, ‘his words had also left their mark on his unconscious, because having received from his father the message that identified him as lazy or incapable, surpassing his father had become a prohibition.’
From the above, for example, not graduating from a university programme in the first instance, which would also serve to sow the field, from the perspective of knowledge. To conclude this interview, Anderson tells us that, ‘by graduating as an agronomist, he had given himself the endorsement to surpass his father in this field.’
‘He has understood that he must make a change to overcome the anxiety that stands between him and what he desires. He must continue sowing in his life, disregarding his father and authorising himself to surpass him as his way out, exit’.
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(1) SIGMUND FREUD.: »Jenseits des Lustprinzips« (1920), in Sigmund Freud. Gesammelte Werke, Band XIII, London, Imago Publishing, 1940.
(2) JOSÉ MARÍA ÁLVAREZ.: Principios de una psicoterapia de la psicosis, Barcelona, Xoroi Edicions, 2020. / Deutsche Version verfügbar ab März 2026, Prinzipien einer Psychotherapie der Psychose, Mössingen, Artemisa Verlag OHG, 2026.
(3) SIGMUND FREUD.: »Das Ich und das Es« (1923), in Sigmund Freud. Gesammelte Werke, Band XIII, London, Imago Publishing, 1940.
(4) SIGMUND FREUD.: »Abriss der Psychoanalyse« (1938[1939]), in Sigmund Freud. Gesammelte Werke, Band XVII, London, Imago Publishing, 1940.
(5) JACQUES-ALAIN MILLER.: Del síntoma al fantasma. Y retorno, Buenos Aires, Paidós, 2018.
(6) JACQUES LACAN.: Desire and its Interpretation, Cambridge, Polity, 2019.
